JackLifton
New member
A post today, April 4, 2026, entitled:
Caught my attention. It's very well argued, but I don't think the author has much, if any, hands-on experience within the commercial and operational industry that produces and processes rare earths for use in rare earth electronic, property-enabled, and used products. Of course perhaps as much as 90% of this industry is within the People's Republic of China. But this industry originated in the West, first in Europe and then in the United States. Even now we have remnants of every aspect of the total rare earth enabled product supply chains still existing in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Korea.
The problem is, as has been well laid out in some previous articles on this site, that the Chinese have committed enormous amounts of capital and education and training to create within their own country a rare earth industry that now dominates the world.
The West cannot catch up because it's too far behind. I suspect that the United States military will be self-sufficient by the end of this decade. But commercially it will be Asia that dominates this industry. An outlier is France, which in combination with Japan will be self-sufficient in advanced materials-enabled products by the end of this decade.
I've been involved in the rare earth industry in one way or another for more than six decades. I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist.
I welcome challenges to my assertions and I look forward to discussing them.
JackLifton
A Race Against Reality: America’s Rare Earth Push Meets Industrial Limits
Caught my attention. It's very well argued, but I don't think the author has much, if any, hands-on experience within the commercial and operational industry that produces and processes rare earths for use in rare earth electronic, property-enabled, and used products. Of course perhaps as much as 90% of this industry is within the People's Republic of China. But this industry originated in the West, first in Europe and then in the United States. Even now we have remnants of every aspect of the total rare earth enabled product supply chains still existing in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Korea.
The problem is, as has been well laid out in some previous articles on this site, that the Chinese have committed enormous amounts of capital and education and training to create within their own country a rare earth industry that now dominates the world.
The West cannot catch up because it's too far behind. I suspect that the United States military will be self-sufficient by the end of this decade. But commercially it will be Asia that dominates this industry. An outlier is France, which in combination with Japan will be self-sufficient in advanced materials-enabled products by the end of this decade.
I've been involved in the rare earth industry in one way or another for more than six decades. I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist.
I welcome challenges to my assertions and I look forward to discussing them.
JackLifton
