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Notes -
No, it means the entire deal was worthless. The deal wasn't that the US would continue to support Ukraine militarily in exchange for mineral interests; that's what Zelensky was gunning for. The actual deal on the table was that Ukraine would grant the US rights to 50% of the revenue in Ukrainian rare earths, the idea being that it would give the US skin in the game to keep Russia from advancing further into the country. Of course, if defending these interests is more expensive than the interests are worth, you aren't going to defend them. The whole thing was essentially a modest giveaway. This is why Zelensky kept insisting an a real security guarantee.
Minor elaboration (Actually- major elaboration but if I took the time to write it all up by gosh I'll take advantage of it-)
The relevant 50% clause was this-
Which is to say that the US government never gets rights to the money. Rather, the US government gets rights to the management of the fund, the degree of which would be determined later and have to be approved by Ukraine.
If the US had a functional veto over the fund, it could black how the fund was used, but this isn't the same as control.
This is, however, a potentially major sovereignty-infringing demand, since the 50% of all revenues of ALL relevant resource assets could also include all new future projects- regardless of if the US was involved in them. IE, even European-funded mineral projects would funnel revenue (not profits- revenue) into the US-UKR fund.
This would have huge distorting powers over the Ukrainian economy, to American benefit, since an American veto would mean powers either have to include American firms or some other benefit to the US for an American blessing.
The relevant spending clause to directly benefit the Americans would have been-
Any expense the Fund's American and Ukrainian managers agreed was acceptable- with no limits on acceptability- could use the 50% revenues going into the fund. If, hypothetically, that included American arms sales as an 'actual expense incurred by the newly developed project,' well that's not un-approvable.
The relevant not-security-guarantee clause was
Which bears probably deliberate parallels to
Which is the NATO Article 5 language, i.e. about as strong as American security guarantees get.
So the 'hook' is the mineral fund with American oversight, the scale of the influence was the bribe to keep the Americans in, the ability to charge the fund for American-approved expenses was the payment mechanism, and the 'reserve the right to protect our investment (which would be lost if Ukraine goes down)' was the quasi/not-security guarantee.
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