The core problem is, of course, China. In the 1980s, the U.S. was the undisputed world leader in rare earth production. Then China embarked on its crash industrialization program. At the same time, the U.S. was outsourcing and offshoring many industries in the great globalization experiment. Meanwhile at home, mounting environmentalism made it increasingly difficult to operate mining or mineral processing facilities. U.S. production facilities were shut down and in some cases sold to Chinese companies, to be physically disassembled, transported across the Pacific and reassembled in China.
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