The high costs of both environmental protection and American labor have repeatedly scuppered attempts to revive domestic production of strategic minerals, Breaking Defense reported.
While some US mines are still in production, limited refinery capacity means that “the reality is what we mine right now already gets sent back to China,” he said.
“China has too much of an advantage for us to compete. It would just be putting a lot of money down a hole.”
The 17 rare earths are cerium (Ce), dysprosium (Dy), erbium (Er), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), holmium (Ho), lanthanum (La), lutetium (Lu), neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), scandium (Sc), terbium (Tb), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), and yttrium (Y).
Despite their classification, most of these elements are not really “rare.” One of the rare earths, promethium, is radioactive.
Aside from a Malaysian plant operated by Australia-based Lynas Corp., all rare earth separation facilities are currently located in China.
Rare earth elements (REEs) are used in a variety of industrial applications, including electronics, clean energy, aerospace, automotive and defense.
The manufacturing of magnets represents the single largest and most important end use for REEs, accounting for 21% of total consumption.
Permanent magnets are an essential component of modern electronics used in cellphones, televisions, computers, automobiles, wind turbines, jet aircraft and many other products.
REEs are also widely used in high-technology and “green” products because of their luminescent and catalytic properties.
According to the Rare Earth Technology Alliance (RETA), the estimated size of the rare Eearth sector is between $10 billion and $15 billion. About 100,000-110,000 tonnes of rare earth elements are produced annually around the world.
Meanwhile, according to the draft regulation, China’s State Council will set up a coordination mechanism for rare-earth management, tasked with rare-earth policymaking, Global Times reported.
“The draft can be seen as a regulation to further strengthen management, standardize the order of the industry, the core of which is total volume control. The quota control actually started in 2006,” Chen Zhanheng, deputy head of the Association of China Rare Earth Industry, told the Global Times.
In terms of the export, analysts said there will be some impacts.
China’s exports of rare earths have been decreasing in recent years. The total export of rare earths was down to 35,447.5 tons, or 23.5% year-on-year in 2020, China’s customs authority said, registering the lowest figure since 2015.
The Pentagon, of course, has taken note and also expressed alarm that China has grasped control of most of the world’s rare earths supply.
Leaders of a recentbipartisan commission concluded the US needs to move fast, and it must work with allies and partners to compete with China in high tech, not go it alone,Breaking Defensereported.
“I went with the chairman of the seapower committee on HASC, Joe Courtney, the chairman of the Friends of Australia Caucus, to Australia,” recalled Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Republican co-chair of the congressionally chartered Cyberspace Solarium Commission.
In particular, they visited western Australia, a major source of rare earth minerals essential to many high-tech products – minerals that, today, the US mostly gets from China, Breaking Defense reported.
“Our biggest takeaway,” he told a CNAS webcast, “was the need to … really enhance our partnership, particularly with our Five Eyes allies” – Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the US – “and Japan” – which made major investments in its rare earths supply after China put it under embargo.
Overall, Gallagher said, Congress is taking the Chinese threat seriously and moving out but that isn’t guided by a clear strategy.
It is also apparent that China could use rare earths as leverage in the ongoing trade dispute — a position the US does not want to be in.
“I think, in our eagerness to do something about a very real challenge, the United States has leapt without a plan of action,” he said. “We’ve had some positive developments … like the American Foundries Act, the CHIPS Act, the Telecoms Act. But we need a broader strategic effort to shore up our ICT [information and communications technologies] supply chains.”
The commission studied strategic minerals from relatively common ones like silicon and germanium, to esoteric rare earths, the commission’s executive director, retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, explained.
“We used to be a leading extraction, mining and refining country, but it is a very messy process,” he said.
(20min delay)