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Notes -
China just chose the nuclear option:
TLDR:
China’s Ministry of Commerce just created an extra-territorial export-control net around rare earths and anything made with Chinese rare-earth technology. The bar is set extremely low, so this will ripple through EVs, wind, electronics, and defense supply chains worldwide.
(Assuming that this isn't a ploy designed to be a bargaining chip in order to get Trump to overturn export restrictions on advanced chips).
Now, while rare earths are very much not rare (though they do come from the earth, mostly), 90% of the actual processing happens in China, even if many deposits are elsewhere. Why is that the case? Well, rare-earth mining is not the most eco-friendly of industrial processes, and everyone else prefers it happen outside their backyards.
Just about every consumer and commercial electronic item is wrapped up in this. China dominates processing and magnet making, so the 0.1% trigger will catch a very large share of motors, drives, sensors, HDDs, speakers, drones, missiles, EVs, and wind-turbine components that contain NdFeB or SmCo magnets.
Assuming that a pleasant agreement isn't reached by Trump and Xi, this is going to do numbers on the trout population, and the economy. I don't even have to specify which economy, it's that global. It'll take years to onshore or friend-shore processing, even if deposits could ramp up to meet the demand. Really, I can't stress the chaos this will cause if the Chinese truly exercise their discretion, so we're going to have to strap in and see. Maybe nothing ever happens, maybe it does.
Obviously the best solution for the US is to bring all of these capabilities in-house (to one degree or another) but the funniest solution would just be to say "these Chinese have made their ruling, let them enforce it" and then buy secondhand from India, same way the Russians have been getting around our sanctions.
Actually, the best solution would be for the US to perform a magic ritual, invoking Moloch and begging him to supply them with rare earth metals in exchange for sacrificed children - which is more likely to succeed than your proposal. The USA isn't actually capable of replacing China's role in the productive economy in any timeframe that's actually relevant. Do you think the tech and defence industries can sustain a complete pause in production for the 10-15 years it'll take to onshore this stuff? This means no more harddrives, no more lithium batteries etc.
It's not an either/or, the US can pursue onshoring as a permanent long-term solution while pursuing other avenues in the interim.
Replacing China's worldwide economic production isn't necessary; what the US ideally needs to be able to do is fulfill domestic national security needs. Nevertheless, it's worth noting that the US (re)opened a single rare earth mine in 2018 and in a couple of years it supplied 15% of worldwide production.
First off, it does not. It means the Chinese are putting regulations on export. If you read the article it suggest the Chinese will likely ban exports to defense companies. So yes, I suspect the tech and defense industries will actually be able to source harddrives, lithium batteries, etc. for the next 5 - 10 years.
Why? Well, setting aside the fact that the US actually has at least some rare earth mining and refining capability in-country (and is currently, as I understand it, in the process of building more, so 7 - 10 years to have at least some replacement for Chinese goods is probably pessimistic even if you don't assume the US invokes national security to cut through red tape), I'd just remind you that Russia has been able to source actually embargoed items for its military from Western sources despite the US having a much better ability to deploy soft and hard power worldwide to sanction them than China does to sanction the US. If the Chinese move to cut US defense firms out of the loop, that
There is almost no big USA company that has not some DoD contracts.
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