Hindsight is 20/20, and the president now has a tentative solution to last year’s mineral snafu with China: a strategic reserve.

Maybe it could have been handled earlier. Back in 2019, China fell not so subtle hints that it could retaliate against Trump 1.0 trade restrictions at the time by restricting minerals essential to modern manufacturing—things you’ve probably never heard of like dysprosium, terbium, indium and yttrium. If you have an iPhone, you may have heard that it has tungsten. You can never guess where the tungsten is from.

About five years after that, in the spring of last year, shortly after Trump went for the second aid in the trade war with China, China. made good on its threat and added those rare earth metals to its export control list.

Because China’s large mining sector gives it control over 69% of production for these mineralsand since the US manufacturers began stop operations between sanctions, Trump doesn’t have much to do other than offer concessions, so he tariffs are lowered.

The White House news release about the agreement called it, “a major victory that protects the strength of the US economy and national security while putting American workers, farmers, and families first.” But in fact it is embarrassing for Trump and generally considered a victory for China.

So, according to BloombergTrump announced plans on Monday to create a $12 billion stockpile of these minerals to prevent this from happening again.

“Project Vault,” as the venture is named, looks like it’s now a stockpile of money — $2 billion provided by private capital, along with $10 billion in bank debt.

The purpose of the project is to provide manufacturers with a lifeline in the case of certain events that cause a price shock. Companies will commit to buying rare earth minerals ahead of any such shock at some fixed price. In the meantime, Project Vault must find and store all the minerals. Project Vault holds that inventory, and manufacturers can draw material against their allocation if needed, but that comes with an obligation to replenish the stockpile afterward.

“We don’t want to go through what we went through a year ago,” Trump said, according to Bloomberg. That checks out.