Battlefield rare earths: How the U.S. lost to China

“There is a political decision made in China that they're going to make a stand on this, punish Japan over arresting their guy. And most notably, China informally, quietly, just stopped selling all rare earth products to Japan. Japan suddenly realizes that their car industry and their electronics industry is totally dependent on rare earth products.”

“What Mark found out was, before his time, like in the 1960s, the CEO of Molly Corp had invited a whole bunch of people to come and see how the world's rare earth monopoly does its thing, how they mine the stuff at Mountain Pass, the elaborate processes of refining and turning it into useful stuff, and that group of visitors? All from China.”

“Very quickly, China released a bunch of Rare Earth product on the global market and the price for Rare Earth products, the exact kind that Mark was going to refine, the price for those dropped. They sent a very strong message. You were not going to produce that much Rare Earths in today's market. It's nothing more than an allegation, but I don't think there's anybody in the Rare Earth world that would suggest something other than what I just suggested.”

“The Europium is what caused the red color in the colored televisions. And so for a period of time, every single colored television that was made in the world had Europium from the Mountain Pass deposit used to make that red color. If you're looking for a moment where rare earths burst onto the scene, you could do worse than choosing this one.”

“Rare earths are used to reduce distortion in tiny glass camera lenses, to improve sound from tiny speakers, or to make bright colors on a screen. And so Japan, famous for its high-tech manufacturing, losing its rare earth supplier, very bad. The world had become incredibly reliant on this weird class of metals, and China had a lot of power over the global economy as a result.”

“The federal government has started to pour billions of dollars into companies developing mines and refining facilities. There have been grants and loans. The US has even bought into a handful of American rare earths companies. The US is even trying to get Mexico and Europe and Japan to agree to a rare earths price floor, so China cannot crater the price again.”

“Yeah, basically no commercial use. Of course, today, rare earths are critical to making like everything from iPhones to fighter jets to microwaves. And now it is China that is processing about 90% of the world's rare earths. But none of that industry existed when those prospectors first heard their little Geiger counters click, click, clicking in that mountainous spot in the California desert.”

“It gets sold to a company called MP Materials, and then a Chinese, one of the Chinese state companies buys a stake in MP Materials. And up until last year, MP Materials would send their rare earth ore to China to get refined and processed. But then last year at the Department of Defense took out a 15% stake in MP Materials as well. And it's looking to refine everything in the US now.”