The U.S. Moves To Ease Dependence On Foreign Rare Earths

Late last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that seeks to curb U.S. dependence on foreign sources of critical minerals. Chief among those foreign sources is China, which controls an overwhelming majority of the world’s rare earths mining and processing. “Our dependence on one country, the People’s Republic of China (China), for multiple critical minerals is particularly concerning,” the executive order reads. “The United States now imports 80 percent of its rare earth elements directly from China,…