Fifteen Years Later: My Warnings on China’s Rare Earth Dominance Are Now a Frontline Issue in U.S. National Security
In my 2010 article "How China's Rare Earth Embargo Impacts High Tech Companies", I warned that China’s control over rare earth elements (REEs) was not just a trade issue—it was a strategic vulnerability. I called it a “wake-up call” for non-Chinese mining companies, governments, and global manufacturers to take proactive steps to escape China’s growing chokehold on materials critical to modern technology.
In 2016, I expanded that warning in "China's EV Battery Industry Could Be a Repeat of Solar and Rare Earth Dominance", showing how China’s central planning and industrial subsidies were enabling dominance in entire downstream sectors. Then in 2018, I noted that a renewed rare earth embargo would threaten the technological competitiveness of several U.S. firms deeply reliant on imported materials for advanced manufacturing.
But it was in 2019 that I shifted the conversation directly to national security. In my article "China Trade – Invest Based on Rare Earth Price Hikes", I laid out the scale of rare earth dependence in the U.S. defense sector—from precision-guided weapons to stealth fighters and nuclear submarines. I detailed exactly how vulnerable American defense programs were to Chinese export controls—and now in 2025, those risks have become a central topic in policy, markets, and military planning.
Note that data for all these articles came from my report entitled Rare Earths Elements in High-Tech Industries: Market Analysis and Forecasts Amid China’s Trade Embargo, available from The Information Network.
China’s Strategic Grip on Rare Earths Tightens in 2025
China still supplies the vast majority of global rare earth materials. With the U.S.–China trade conflict escalating once again, export restrictions on critical elements such as dysprosium and yttrium are no longer threats—they are active levers of geopolitical pressure.
The structure of the market hasn’t changed in over a decade. Non-Chinese producers have failed to scale meaningfully, leaving China dominant in both upstream production and downstream processing. To put that into perspective: