As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, Beijing declared rare earths a “strategic resource” in 1991, blocked foreign ownership, subsidized production and consolidated hundreds of local mines into a handful of national champions. You need a persistent rare-earth mining and processing business in the U.S. to entice students to study the science and workers to enter the field. It did it through a state-engineered strategy: declaring rare earths “strategic,” weaponizing prices, and forcing the world to depend on them.
Author: John Carney, John Carney
Published at: 2025-10-21 22:50:57
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