If there’s one thing US President Donald Trump hates, it is feeling like someone else has the upper hand.

But when it comes to valuable minerals there is no question; China holds all the cards.

The Asian superpower has spent the 21st century gaining a stranglehold on natural resources.

Its dominance is so great any company manufacturing products from mobile phones and electric cars to aeroplanes and munitions has to deal with Xi Jingping’s regime to some extent when sourcing materials.

Trump’s problem isn’t just that China has built an unmatched global supply chain for refining minerals like graphite into usable manufacturing components; he also has to deal with the fact that Chinese entities control the majority of mines around the world where these resources are extracted.

The rocks beneath Ukraine are enriched with valuable materials which could, as they remain relatively untapped, offer an alternative for a leader seeking to build a supply chain to rival China.

It’s no secret that Trump hates feeling like the US has given something away for free.

So he’s leveraged military support to land a deal with Ukraine that grants access to resources he sees as crucial in developing American industrial independence.

So he’s leveraged military support to land a deal with Ukraine that grants access to resources he sees as crucial in developing American industrial independence.

The US President’s problem is that this will be an astronomically costly and complicated endeavour.

History also shows that even in Iraq, where infrastructure for tapping into the country’s lucrative oil reserves was in place, the chaos that followed the US war to displace Saddam Hussein meant the economic potential that lay beneath the desert was never realised.

It’s hard to imagine a situation in which the US can use Ukrainian minerals, many of which will be difficult and expensive to extract, to displace a Chinese global supply chain that has been decades in the making.