While China accounts for approximately 60 percent of global REE production, it is responsible for 90 percent of processing, a

Given that position, China has control of the global market’s supply and demand. For example, China can undercut new supply sources by flooding the market with a mineral, lowering the price, and making the new project less attractive. China can also do the opposite by imposing sharp limits on supplies available to U.S. companies, hampering... See more

Brent Elliott, a research associate professor of geology at the University of Texas, estimates the U.S. has sufficient resources to meet demand. "It's about the extraction potential and the logistics of getting it out of the ground in a way that is environmentally sensitive but also socially responsible," he says.

Partly because it is... See more

ther US companies, eager to avoid new mine permitting issues, are trying another tactic to build domestic supply: recovering rare earth metals from existing mine waste

"They put a lot of state resources behind building processing capabilities, such that the minerals come from different places and then they get sent to China for refining," Baskaran says. "What China has been extraordinarily good at is connecting their foreign policy to secure rare earths from around the world."