I am sure you have been made aware of china possibly stopping shipments of rare earth metals to the USA, as a result of the trade war

Well Golly Gee whiz

china doesn't have a lock on available rare earth metals

What they do have is a lock on cheap price, and lack of environmental regulations

Last yr china produced 80& of all rare earth metals used

The media of course sounded the alarm of the sky is falling, with out doing the research

The USA, Aus. and other places have deposits

In fact the USA imported only 160 million  of rare earth metals from china in 2019, which is only 4% of chinese production

What USA did import was finished products with the metals already in the finished product

So" Will china  effectively take them selves out of the market, for finished products, made in china

China might stop exporting rare earth metals but if it did, it would not be disaster, for the USA or the world

Other sources would quickly step in and fill the void albeit at  higher prices

Mean while, if sales of finished products from their own country were to stop, this would result in massive lost jobs

The USA can simply re-open closed mines and/or simply buy from a different source, and tell china to go pound salt

The world does not have a scarcity of rare earth metals

The world might have a scarce supply of cheap metals as the current mines can not compete with china"s low price

But, china does not have a lock on production or source of rare earth metals

I wish the media would stop trying to grab head lines with this kind of reporting

How many people do you think believe the media story about the scarce supply of these metals