The Brains Trust - 2020, page-28

Rare Earths
The United States has enlisted Canada in a bid to wrest global control of rare earth elements (REEs) from China.

The Canadian company has developed innovative extracting techniques for rare earths that could help break China’s hold, but it has never focused on the problem due to the low value of REEs and the threat of China driving down prices to put foreign competitors out of business

One of the reasons the United States is taking China to task via the trade war is to get the Chinese regime to stop subsidizing its companies, which impairs fair competition in a variety of markets that U.S. companies aim to participate in.

China has been able to maintain dominance in REEs by disregarding the environmental standards of the West and using its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to undercut and bankrupt foreign companies. China is well-known for using its SOEs to gobble up market share with only a secondary consideration for profitability

The United States used to be the world’s largest supplier of rare earths until the mid-1990s, when China started taking over. China was virtually the world’s only supplier until 2012, when the now-bankrupt U.S. producer Molycorp Inc. and the Australian company Lynas Corp. Ltd. began production.

The United States is hamstrung. It currently has one operating rare earth mine, in Mountain Pass, California, but all of its ore is shipped to China for processing under a contract. It is reaching out to allies like Australia, Japan, and the European Union, which all fear being dependent on China for the key minerals.

Article from the epoch times.com January 8th 2020