The post Will America Finally Set A Sane Path Forward For Rare Earth Elements? appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

An aerial view of the MP Materials rare earth mine and processing facility in Mountain Pass, … More California. Image courtesy MP Materials The good news on rare earth elements is that in the past five years, numerous companies have been laboring to break China’s stranglehold on these vital minerals. The bad news is that the efforts have thus far been too few and far too slow. REEs are critical for applications using the high-powered magnets made from them, in sectors such as tech, defense, automotive, industrial and aerospace. China’s recent imposition of duties and export controls on them should have been a surprise to nobody. It happened to Japan in 2010, and China’s increasing hostility on the world stage should have been a plain warning that our turn was only a matter of time. Part of the problem, however, is the complexity of the production steps to get a finished rare earth magnet, which include mining, separation, refining, and final product manufacturing. “That’s where I think a lot of the coverage starts to break down, because we talk about it as this monolith when it’s actually several different pieces of the supply chain that have to come together,” said Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, now principal at Smoketree Resources, a strategic advisory and venture development firm focused on critical minerals, and formerly the deputy director for batteries and critical minerals at the U.S. Department of Energy. “In the U.S. and broadly in the West, we’re having to stand up the entire supply chain. Inherently, these processes are slow. It’s IP development, hard asset development, enormous capital investments, and so it’s not an overnight process to stand up, particularly with the backdrop of Chinese export bans. You really have to step back and think, ‘How can we scale something quickly as an interim…

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Filed under: News - @ April 23, 2025 6:21 pm