Trump's two contrasts and China's rare earths

 At the NATO meeting in the Netherlands, June 24-25, 2025, President Trump was lavishly praised for having succeeded to make almost all NATO European members spend up to 5% on defense. That was fully deserved, it is a major success! 
But then, when questioned about possible less than good results of his bombing of Iranian nuclear sites three days earlier, he idiotically praised the pilots who flew the planes, adding theses courageous men had been hurt by the press, the NYT and Washington Post's publishing doubts about these results. That he should feel to come up with this totally irrelevant idiocy, while basking in his 5% success, is a strange contrast. He made himself ridiculous, on the same day he was receiving gigantic and deserved praise.

The second contrast is in his attitude rowards Chna's growing threat. On the one hand, he has the correct intuition that there is something wrong there, and that this must be put right. But then, in taking correcting measures, he went about it in a totally unprepared way, resulting in chaos, even stock markets reacting. What a strange contrast, as well.

And then, not a contrast but a fact behind this Chinese threat, when threatened by China that they would stop delivering rare earths that the US industry needs, he was forced to backpedal his tariffs on Chinese goods from 145%, that would have been effective, down to 50%, that will have no effect at all. These puny 50% will atill leve Chinese products cheaper that their US made competitors. The US is thus being held by the throat with by China's near monopoly in these earths. 
The US finding their own sources of rare earths, wherever that may be, is now absolutely vital.