These figures above are hyperbole, and incorrect, somewhat akin to how 60% of restaurants failed and never reopened.
I like to stick to reliable figures when they are available.
No, they are not hyperbole. You can look them up if you wish. And the 60% was me quoting Yelp from an old article I read awhile back. I didn't make it up. Yelp did. Turns out they were wrong, as The Real Deal reported according to the National Restaurant Association the actual number was 14%.
The Nixon administration allowed China and it's mining industry and scientists to come and observe US rare earth mines in the 70s and basically taught them how it's done. This
obviously backfired on the US- as did most US dealings with China. US market became more expensive to produce as environmental regulations and huge clean up costs became massive cost burdens on the mining companies and China eventually ramped up production and strategically flooded the entire rare earths market- subsidized the entire Chinese rare earths industry and sold their product at a loss in order to undercut the entire world market and take over. Instead of the US trying to subsidize a vital industry important to national interest as well as putting protections like massive tariffs on Chinese rare earths and putting sanctions the Chinese- US basically just let it happen. In 1980 the US controlled 99% of the rare earths market. In the 1990s the US started to give up their chokehold on rare earths to China with not even an attempt to stop it from happening - all while the US gave China most favored nation status which made permanent trade relations normalized - and the US paved the way and pushed for China to join the WTO. The US gov't
obviously should not have done any of this. They did this all so US multi-nationals can exploit cheap slave labor in China. And then when our stupid short sighted multinational set up shop in China - the idiots agreed to set up new joint-ventures that with CCP backed entity owning half of the jv....and oh yeah...they also forced US multi-nationals to give up trade secrets, IP, and tech. GREAT JOB 'MERICA!
80% of US imports of rare earths in 2019 came from China. China has used their world dominance on rare earths as a geopolitical weapon, even blocking the export of rare earths to Japan and suspending exports to the US and Europe as well. China is not our friend. They are our enemy.