Understanding Dysprosium Criticality, page-6

Look again, if you are interested, at the final statement in that last excerpt:

"While transportation costs are not readily available, it is likely that it could cost less to refine metals domestically [ed., meaning locally, i.e., to co-sited oxide suppliers and metals buyers] rather than pay to transport oxides to an overseas metal refiner and transport metals back to the United States."

This is the view of the US from the POV of the US.

But it seems hardly a stretch to apply similar logic to Lynas in Malaysia wrt shipping carbonates and concentrates to the US only to ship them back to Japan. The margin that China is providing for the refining and metal-making and most other REE-magnet-related operations is again manipulated by them to discourage anyone to compete sans a tariff war. ROW must be unswerving lest they fall into another sultry and dulling Chinese opiate trap.

Someone somewhere knows exactly that and why: Because there is no substitute for REE PM in the Electric Age, they cannot, they must not allow China to maintain their REE monopoly a second longer than they must. Which in turn means their destructive anti-mining policies must be brought under responsible control. China controls 92% of magnet production according to US DOE; up from 70% just a few years earlier! That's a very difficult reality - and the Chinese fully understand the patent landscape from a strategic POV - and they are great at using time-worn systems built on mutual respect amongst free democratic countries they have been granted access to to realize very different goals from those envisioned. Time to react effectively is gone; time to act with alacrity is gone; it's "Houston, we have a problem" time.