Senior administration officials are scrambling to stem economic damage from China’s restrictions on rare-earth exports, as President Donald Trump’s trade war risks cutting key industries and defense contractors off from supplies of metals crucial to production, according to three people familiar with internal deliberations. While companies search for alternative suppliers and urge the White House to cut a deal that will keep the materials flowing to U.S. manufacturers, the Trump administration is finding there are no easy solutions. China has a lock on the supply of certain elements that are essential to making such things as military drones, consumer electronics and battery-powered vehicles. “China knows this is a very strong bargaining chip, and it is why they are playing it,” said Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, who was a deputy director for batteries and critical materials at the Energy Department during the Biden administration. “This is fast emerging as our Achilles’ heel. What makes these bans particularly dangerous is oftentimes one of these materials is a single point of failure for entire supply chains, and its production rests solely in China.” The restrictions, imposed by Beijing in response to Trump’s steep new tariffs, have provoked deep consternation at high levels of the administration. Aides at the White House National Security Council, National Economic Council, Council of Economic Advisers, Commerce Department, Energy Department and Office of the Trade Representative, among other agencies, have been involved, said the people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal matters. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/24/rare-earths-trade-war-us-china/ What a strange article. Why would the Trump admin be concerned about this? We're talking about the greatest negotiator the world has ever seen. Pretty soon China will be paying us to take their minerals.
So what should we do continue to grow dependence on China for those things? It should have never gotten to that point. At some point we need to change direction and cut off the dependence on China for things that critical to our defense and well being.
This is an excellent point. But where was the forward planning TO PREPARE our country for this inevitability caused by a trade war. And that is perhaps my biggest beef — if we feel the need to engage in an economic war, what plans were studied and conceived to ensure we would be able to maintain the “fight,” (b) sustain the fight, (c) meet the repercussions and responses, and (d) have sufficient reserves and sufficient sources of supply to last us through the economic war. We had none of that. Instead, we had our president unilaterally execute economic war like he handles twitter —with Cofveve-like precision.
I agree with your general point. But, wasn’t there a smarter, more strategic way to go about it? The mechanism is proving to be completely stupid, so far.
China has the world's largest deposit of rare earth materials. The US has a decent deposit, but they are located in protected wilderness areas of California and Nevada. It begs the question, what's better? Allow China to mine all their RE materials now while we can keep our reserves? And if/when we need ours, hopefully, we have better mining tech that we can then move to our RE materials? Or, mine and destroy natural areas at home today and use up our reserves of RE materials more quickly? I'm fine with using all of China's RE materials first. Allow them to deal with environmental problems current mines create. It avoids all the lawsuits we'd have opening up our own land, and we tap China's reserves first, keeping our reserves untapped for the moment. But Trump, with no plans and only bluster, screwed things up. And now what?
That is a great plan until they stop selling the US what they need to make weapons, pharma, computers and everything else we depend on. UNless we are ready to go into production in a short amount of time it is a dangerous way to go. I am willing to bet we could not start producing the things we need on short notice right now.
I agree, but up to this point it seems others have only dug a deeper hole. Maybe this will at least get us started in the right direction. I think Trump will back off as he does in most things at some point and might get a little something good out of it. China needs to sell stuff to us as bad as we need the stuff so there will be some compromise, I would hope. I really don't know the answers as it is way above my pay grade and no one in charge really gives a crap what I think anyway.
Why do you view trade as some kind of rug pull? I realize that Americans, especially conservatives understand economics primarily as a scamming activity to separate suckers from money and dominate/leverage them, but that is not the consensus view around the world. Its sort of antithetical to the spirit of capitalism, and its supposed merits. If its a matter of dominance, why trade with anyone? That entails buying stuff from other people. Just take it, right?
I'm bummed thinking about all the money I've thrown away just dumping my charcoal ashes after grilling into my compost bin.
Who is "we" in this story? Aren't private companies supposed to be responsible for the production of products, not countries, in a capitalist economy?
This is a good question. We're the largest customer of rare earth materials. Why would China want to piss us off?
Diamond Joe was already working on that when he was in office but we are years away from seeing the fruits. Unfortunately Trump's lack of a plan has screwed us Department of Defense Awards $4.22 Million to Increase Production of Terbium and Other Rare Earth Elements https://www.defense.gov/News/Releas...illion-to-increase-production-of-terbium-and/
Seems like decoupling is the surer path to eventual confrontation and violence. But people with scam mentality always think the other guy is gonna pull the rug, because they are at heart scammers themselves. We have less recourse for dealing with North Korea than our biggest trading partner, China.
Different rare earth and different source. "Rare Earths" is kind of a misnomer. They aren't exactly "rare". They just aren't usually found in high concentration and require extraction.
