 Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Jack Lifton about the US-China trade agreement. How are you today, Jack? I'm fine, Tracy. Thank you. Jack, I'll tell you, I think I speed dialed you after reading it when they had specifically pulled out Scandium and Itrium, and I think you made a reference to Dixie or Pixie Dust. Can you tell us why you think they did that? Well, you have to understand that's a very long detailed bill that you're reading or agreement that you're reading, and sometimes people make mistakes or they just include too much. And the United States does not produce Scandium, has never produced Scandium. It doesn't produce Itrium, has never produced Itrium, and yet these are identified in there. And my comment to my pundit colleagues was they left out Pixie Dust and the philosopher's stone you used to turn, you know, led it to gold, but that's probably on there also. The point is it doesn't make a lot of sense that the United States would tell the Chinese they need to buy rare earths from us. But here's the sense it does make, MP, which bought the Mali Corp mountain pass mine is mining right now in California and has been for about three years. In the 11 months between January and November 2019, the company exported 41,000 tons of concentrated rare earth ore mine in California to China. That material contains about 10,000 tons net of rare earths. So the United States is already exporting enough rare earth to China to be put onto this trade agreement chart. And my guess is that that was a way of sneaking that in without having to mention it. Because it's embarrassing, I think, for a defense department that says we must not buy anything from China to say, but it's okay to sell to them. Obviously there in our very complex United States federal government, there is some lack of communication. I don't really, I personally don't think that there should have been included, but it is and we do so. When I was speaking with Anthony Marchese, he mentioned that he thought it was just added because some people don't understand that Scandium and Itrium are actually rare earths. And he thought that that was the compelling argument for why it had been included. But let's jump to some of the more recent news and you have commented that this is really the greatest opportunity to build a rare supply chain in the United States. Can you tell us a little bit more about that because I'd love to hear your thoughts on this? Well, you think about something. There is no point to a supply chain for anything if there isn't a demand. Right? I mean, does that make any sense to you? You would just make things for the hell of it. So the fact that we're talking to the Chinese or they're agreeing that if we can, if we have something they want, they'll buy it from us. And I think that actually, in my opinion, the Chinese would like to buy rare earth materials in the United States because the Chinese don't, this is what people don't seem to understand. They consider their rare earths a national treasure. And this they're way ahead of us in their thinking. The Chinese, for example, no longer mind heavy rare earths in their country because they feel it's too polluting. That's why they're buying from the country of Myanmar, used to be called Burma. The Chinese have a lot of quotas on producing like where it's, they can only produce so much like rare earth. The government gives a quota to the major companies and that's all they can produce, but they can import as much as they want in the way of rare earth raw materials. Now that's the beginning of the supply chain, isn't it? If we develop mines in the United States that can export raw materials to China at world prices, the Chinese will buy that material. That will be the impetus for the United States to re-implement a total supply chain in the country. We can't do it unless we have rare earths being produced here. There's no point to it. What do you do? Bring them in from another country, process them here and send them out for further processing. The chain has to be in the United States. If the China trade agreement accomplishes nothing else, at least it opens an avenue to get rare earths flowing. Okay. Well, what do you think about the speaking of U.S. based? What do you think of the recent announcement between Eucor and Materion? Well, Materion to the best of my knowledge doesn't have a background in rare earths. However, they are very sophisticated alloy companies. It's not just Beryllium, in which they're the world's major supplier. I think that was a good announcement because I think Materion is a first-class high-tech alloy company. No, they're in metals. They're in metals and alloys. This is a kind of... There's synergy here because the Eucor people don't have experience in this, but Materion does in alloys and metal production fabricating. Again, it's the same thing. Materion, I'm sure, could make rare earth alloys and metals if they could get rare earths. That's the trick, isn't it? Materion, of course, makes finished goods, alloys and forms, which they exclusively sell to the U.S. Defense Department. That was a good choice because they're an approved vendor of the Defense Department. They're a unique vendor of the Defense Department. The only vendor of specialty Beryllium-containing alloys, so they have a long, long history and one other thing, keep your mind. The Defense Department built the Materion Beryllium Processing Plant a few years ago because Materion could not justify it under private equity. The Defense Department said, we need the alloys and Materion said, sorry, we can't afford it. The Defense Department actually funded it and built it and leased it back to them for some trivial payment. Having said that, of course, it is possible that the Defense Department could do that for rare earths. It's very possible because, quite frankly, for the Defense Department's needs, they're going to have to do something like that. Well, Jack, thank you so much for joining us and we'll be back in touch with you next week for an update on the rare earths market. Thank you, Tracy. I appreciate it.