Source: The Daily Economy
by Walter Donway
“[T]he United States, long the world’s leading industrial power, has become dependent on the goodwill of a strategic rival for materials central to its economy and its defense. That dependence did not arise because rare earth minerals are scarce. They are not. Nor did it arise because China alone possesses the technical capacity to mine or refine them. It arose from a long chain of economic and political decisions — made largely in free societies — that concentrated production in a country willing to accept costs others would not. Understanding how that happened is essential to understanding why China’s apparent monopoly is far less ‘coercive,’ and far less durable, than it looks.” (01/14/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/chinas-rare-earth-monopoly-and-why-markets-will-break-it/