Summary
China has now imposed export controls on a range of critical rare earth minerals and magnets, dealing a major blow to the US.
“Rare earths” are a group of 17 chemically similar elements that are crucial to the manufacture of many high-tech products. Everything you can switch on or off likely runs on rare earths.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that China accounts for about 61% of rare earth production and 92% of their processing.
A US Geological report notes that between 2020 and 2023, the US relied on China for 70% of its imports of all rare earth compounds and metals.
Americans fucked around. We took our democracy for granted. We were too polite to challenge the bigots in our lives. We were too afraid of being called elitist or communist or soft, so we sat on the sidelines with furrowed brows and clutched pearls while shitty people steamrolled our freedoms to pave the road to their own successes.
We’re all to blame. The Conservative shitbags, the opportunistic centrists, the ineffectual progressives, and the shiftless appliticals who never bothered to try. Trump didn’t happen to America. Trump is the inexorable conclusion of America.
It was very carefully and insidiously taken from you
I agree that it was inevitable though. It was a county founded on the idea of fucking people over to get ahead
Maybe there’s hope for the future. I sure hope that there is