Today's chart & trading, page-2127

At the risk of provoking further submissions, in what seems to me to be a rather tedious and pointless semantic argument, here is my two cents worth.

IMHO, The first three sentences, in the Wikipedia link that you posted, shoot a rather large hole in your argument that rare earths are a commodity, at least in the sense that the term is used in economics. The three sentences are quoted below.

"In economics, a commodity is an economic good or service that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them.

The price of a commodity good is typically determined as a function of its market as a whole: well-established physical commodities have actively traded spot and derivative markets.

The wide availability of commodities typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (such as brand name) other than price."

More than 70% of rare earth production comes from China and China has demonstrated a preparedness to exert controls or threaten to exert controls on its export. So much so that the Japanese have been prepared to underwrite Lynas as a non-Chinese supplier.
On these facts rare earths fail the fungibility test. In other words, in as far as a "market" for the material exists, it does not treat the product equally irrespective of where it comes from or goes to.

It also fails the "market" test, because, inter alia, the Japanese have been prepared to underwrite Lynas on favourable terms, in order that Lynas would survive and continue as a non-Chinese producer.

Cheers