Hope indeed! But is it too little, too late? Shame, shame on the globalists in both of our major political parties that encouraged this situation to develop.
Among China’s advantages are unity, continuity, and consistency.
You can bet that if the DSA comes to power, they will completely abandon and probably reverse the policies and programs of the current administration, and surrender to our adversaries or perhaps even join them in their efforts to dismantle what the DSA calls the American empire.
China’s advantage was built on political dictatorship, not something worth emulating. I was born and grew up in China. It sends chills down my spine chord when Americans talk about China’s advantages in admirable ways. Yes, DSA is evil, it must be defeated if America is to remain free.
"Critical minerals are the most consequential reverse salient in the American economy today, underpinning nearly every essential industrial process. China does not merely dominate these sectors; in many instances, it maintains near-total control.",
From The Godfather, "How did things ever get so far."
A lot of important information in this article. I've read it three times, and will probably read it again. Now I know what reverse salients are, and there's far too many of them in our supply chain. And how the heck can it take 29 years to bring a new mine from discovery to production? Ridiculous.
But at least, as the article points out, "the administration has taken a series of executive actions to speed up permitting and simplify approvals." I wonder how these executive actions have turned out: are they being used, is building a new mine now faster?
Also, it is critical that government funding in building our own mineral supply chain never stops. This continual investment will get those in the private sector to invest also, as it provides a degree of certainty. Maybe it should be encoded into law that this investment must never stop. I'd hate to have some administration down the line pull the plug.
Also, it'd be great if a referential trade zone among allied nations for critical minerals was formed, as JD Vance proposes. My only reservation about that is suppose one of those allies becomes an enemy at some point; even friends have falling outs. That's part of why I didn't like globalization in the first place, as a friend might not always be a friend, especially if some president decides to put 50% tariffs on you (wink, wink). Anyway, thanks for this article.
With all due respect the US did no such thing. It was the result of globalist ideology implemented by corporate executives chasing quarterly profits that drove their stock options which exist because of legislation limiting salary compensation. Combine that with luxury beliefs like environmentalism and NIMBYism and here we are. Not only did American security get left behind but so did broad parts of the working class. China took brilliant advantage of our foolishness.
Funny that you said ‘US did no such thing’. Who is the US? The elites and successive administrations sleep-walked the country into this trap, that is not the doing of the US? We all must take responsibility as citizens for such outcomes. Only then we could hope to recover and reclaim citizenship as American Compass declared to do
Sometimes I wonder if the implementation of NAFTA (now USMCA) and Globalization should have been put to a national vote, which each citizen having the chance to vote at the ballot box on this extremely important issue. Where was the democracy here? As you say, the elites and successive administrations sleep-walked us into this trap. The elites had their say, what about the rest of us?
Well, it's easier to say that after the fact. Democracy is not a perfect defense against human ignorance, sometimes making it worse. If everything must be put to a vote, a society will die by paralysis. America just won the Cold War. There were no worthy enemies in sight. The theory and hope was that if capitalism could defeat the Soviet Union, why not the Chinese Communist Party? Let's flood China with capitalism and defeat Chinese Communism through an economic vs military victory. It was naive in hindsight but there were hardly any opposing voice, from either left or the right. I hold the elite responsible not because the non-elites would have done better but by definition the elite must lead, for better or worse. A society without elite only exists in fiction, not in reality.
China's dominance of critical supply chains threatens American military and industrial competitiveness more than it threatens American national sovereignty. That dominance did not arise by accident. For decades, many American companies prioritized short-term profits by outsourcing nearly every stage of production except final assembly, sacrificing supply chain resilience for lower costs. There is little evidence that they are prepared to reverse those decisions voluntarily.
Every advanced manufacturing supply chain begins with minerals. Control over the mining, processing, and refining of critical minerals is the foundation of China's supply chain advantage. Any supply chain that does not include these upstream stages remains vulnerable to disruption, regardless of where the intermediate and final products are assembled.
China's long-term strategy has also benefited from sustained government support for science, engineering, and industrial development. By contrast, the United States often struggles to execute comparable industrial strategies because major projects face lengthy local, state, and federal permitting processes, extensive litigation, and shifting political priorities. As a result, building new domestic supply chains is both expensive and time-consuming, with development timelines that can stretch into decades.
Even if the United States eventually develops complete domestic supply chains, it will still face a significant cost disadvantage. China enjoys the benefits of decades of investment, economies of scale, a vast domestic market, and well-established export markets. These advantages will make it difficult for new American producers to compete on price.
The challenge is compounded by relatively weak domestic demand for many of the products that rely on advanced materials. Opposition to electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines has slowed growth in sectors that helped drive China's leadership in battery materials, rare earth mining & processing, and other critical supply chains. Without robust demand, the economic incentives to invest in comparable American supply chains are diminished.
It is also worth noting that China did not impose significant restrictions on exports of rare earth materials to the United States until trade tensions escalated dramatically, including the imposition of tariffs as high as 150 percent on many Chinese imports. Whether those tariffs were justified is a separate policy question, but they were part of the sequence of events that intensified economic retaliation between the two countries.
You stated all the economic reasons why China has all the advantage. It is exactly this kind of single minded economic thinking that led the US into this trap. It’s time to wake up and update your playbook.
And no where was it stated that 'China's long term strategy' also included massive amounts of theft of intellectual property, mostly being stollen from the U.S.!!! Nor was it stated that China's economy is failing (thank God), down to maybe half a percent growth this year.
It's hard for westerners to imagine how China was and is. China was desperately poor when I was still living there 40 years ago. It would do anything to get wealthier, just as a homeless person would do anything to get food and shelter. It was the naive Americans with a singular mind of optimizing economic efficiency that gave China a chance to produce an economic miracle which they certainly did and deserves credits. However, building up wealth on borrowed technology (stolen IP) and low cost labor is one thing, sustaining a middle class economy based on internal innovation and consumption is an entirely different game that China never had the chance to practice. Now the real estate bubble has bursted and massive government debt is slowing down further investment and, no less important, the naive Americans have finally waken up with the election of Donald Trump, China is facing unprecedented challenges. The only thing that keeps it going is the high, high pain threashhold of the Chinese people. This is the biggest difference between China and the West. Western consumers will repel when their gas prices go up by 10%. The Chinese will dig in and survive even if half the population is starving! So don't expect China to crash and burn like western stock market does. It will swallow any hardship and survive. That's the reality that westerners must learn to live with and manage. I don't see China replace the US as a superpower at all. It is incapable of doing that. On the other hand, Americans themselves could certainly self-destruct and become a 3rd world country if Mandani and DSA became popular and gained power. I pray to God that it doesn't happen for the good of not just America but humanity as a whole, including China. In other words, China is much less threatening than DSA to America's future.
I understand why you think my original comment was single-minded--because I did not address the motivation of Chinese people to improve their lives. I also did not address the fact that Chinese leadership was and is well aware of the U.S. tendency to use economic tools to threaten other countries and that decades ago China's leaders instituted long range plans to ensure China would not be vulnerable to U.S. economic warfare (including blocking China's oil supplies or products and technology China depended on.) I also did not address that China's political system promotes people based on competence rather than popularity and that while most of China's leaders have scientific or engineering education, most of America's leaders have legal education. China's leaders plan decades ahead. Plans made by American leaders are often discarded after the next election. I fear that America does not understand the damage that is being done to our educational system, scientific organizations, legal system, and business ethics or appreciate the important contributions of immigrants to the innovation that made America the envy of the world. Donald Trump hasn't awakened America, he is destroying many of the institutions, government agencies, ethical values, and legal protections that made America strong and that attracted the best and brightest people of the world to come to America to build a better life for themselves and, in the process, enrich the lives of all Americans. I think Mandani is popular for the same reason Trump was/is popular--our educational system has not produced people who value character and competence over entertainment.
Frankly, you have at least mild TDS. The loss of American industrial base happened under the watch of presidents before Trump. Yes, Trump is erratic but at least he has some common sense as a real estate business man. The advantages of the 5-year planning process were misunderstood and greatly exaggerated. It was copied from the Soviet Union and produced nothing but disasters until Deng Xiaoping introduced capitalism into China, starting in 1978. The Chinese economic miracle was produced not by state planning but half-baked capitalism. Even half-baked capitalism is far superior than socialism/communism. Since Deng's death, especially since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China is going backward to dictatorship and state planning. That is not a recipe for success. It's just a matter of time, not if, China will implode. The only question is if the United States would self-destruct even sooner. It's essential for good people like youself to wake up from TDS and recognize where the real dangers are. For example, while it's gross for Trump to issue cryptos while in office for personal gain, he is also taking bold steps to fix critical supply chains for the American millitary and industrial base. As far as I am concerned, Pete Hegseth could have as many affairs as he wants, as long as he restores the department of defense for war. We forgot that all men or women are flawed in one way or another. If we are obsessed with their and our own flaws, we would exile ourselves into irrelevance and chaos. That is exactly what the DSA and the left wing of the Democratic Party have done and are doing to America.
I agree with your last statement, although it's not just the DSA but also the Democrat leftists too. Maybe a group of ex-residents, like you, of the CCP China, Cuba, Venezuela under Maduro, etc. could go on tour? Do radio/TV/online informational spots, in order to educate the uneducated masses? Example: Friends from the past (a married couple - very much upper middle class) we're always "Well, we like to listen to both sides....we're pretty down the middle", etc. and then they listened to a Glenn Beck online talk/seminar on the difference between socialism and free-market capitalism (which we need to get to more "free-market", in my opinion and dump corporate "welfare", unless it has to do with our self-defense). After they watched the whole thing, they've voted Republican ever since (including Trump). Note that I spoke up, over the years and they told me that I and one other person were the only ones to do so, out of the many friends and acquaintances they had (the hubby was high up in the corporate world). This was in a very blue state.
It takes much more than mere words for people to learn from life. My own children who were born and grow up here have difficulty of imagining what life was like in China and the dangers posed by socialism/communism. There is some truth in the saying that good times make weak people; weak people make hard times and hard times make strong people. I am just hoping that we do not lose hard earned capital system in the process. If America goes down, humanity will go back to middle ages or worse.
I agree that it would be the middle ages or worse. As for "more than words", words worked for my friends, but they had "learned from life" because they were middle aged at the time.
American Industrial Purchasing Departments evaluate off-shore risk. This threat was understood and the decision to walk into this trap was made by financiers who controlled the decision to source off-shore.
Check all the mining stocks on the exchange. US choked its own capacity in the short term for private profit. Now we all get to pay to fix it.
The author mentions Yergin and what most people don’t understand is that America had an energy crisis from 2002-2009. Energy prices were an issue in the 2000 election and then the mild recession and 9/11 delayed the energy crisis that would inevitably arise during the China commodity super cycle. Bush negotiated China into the WTO in the aftermath of 9/11 and making China great again was a Bush family goal for 40 years. China factored into Bush’s macroeconomic plan in two ways—Chinese goods would keep core PCE at target because Chinese labor was cheap AND China had cheap electricity as it was willing to poison its citizens with coal and diesel pollution while displacing millions with hydro dams. So China would have cheap labor and cheap energy which would keep America’s consumer spending economy going strong. What Bush and Bernanke got wrong was oil and natural gas prices would go too high and erode lower income households spending power to such a degree the American economy would grind to a halt in 2008 as CPI remained elevated for years and peaked at 5.6% in July 2008. So macroeconomics was trumped by thermodynamics as we couldn’t print more oil and natural gas like we could print dollars.
Yes, globalization off-shored US Manufacturing destroying the rich US manufacturing base(communities) and exported its wealth. And yes, energy prices increased too. Not hard to see which 5 yr plan won in the longer term.
The author lists "two distinct tactics to maintain its stranglehold on critical mineral supply chains." I suggest that a third tactic being employed is the financial and propaganda support for the US Environmental Movement. These litigious non-profits and NGO's challenge and try to stymie any and all extractive and infrastructure project in the name of 'protecting the environment and/or the public".
They use law suits, group organizing and propaganda, which are expensive activities. Where does the money come from? Such an effective way for China to protect their monopolies, by supporting these groups. We need to follow the money.
Thank God Trump and his administration is doing this. Democrats will try to stop it, if they get in power and we MUST stand firm when they do: email, call, protest and Republicans in Congress (and in the individual states) must play hard ball (not something they are used to, I know) to thwart Democrat's un-American and traitorous desires.
Hope indeed! But is it too little, too late? Shame, shame on the globalists in both of our major political parties that encouraged this situation to develop.
Among China’s advantages are unity, continuity, and consistency.
You can bet that if the DSA comes to power, they will completely abandon and probably reverse the policies and programs of the current administration, and surrender to our adversaries or perhaps even join them in their efforts to dismantle what the DSA calls the American empire.
China’s advantage was built on political dictatorship, not something worth emulating. I was born and grew up in China. It sends chills down my spine chord when Americans talk about China’s advantages in admirable ways. Yes, DSA is evil, it must be defeated if America is to remain free.
"Critical minerals are the most consequential reverse salient in the American economy today, underpinning nearly every essential industrial process. China does not merely dominate these sectors; in many instances, it maintains near-total control.",
From The Godfather, "How did things ever get so far."
A lot of important information in this article. I've read it three times, and will probably read it again. Now I know what reverse salients are, and there's far too many of them in our supply chain. And how the heck can it take 29 years to bring a new mine from discovery to production? Ridiculous.
But at least, as the article points out, "the administration has taken a series of executive actions to speed up permitting and simplify approvals." I wonder how these executive actions have turned out: are they being used, is building a new mine now faster?
Also, it is critical that government funding in building our own mineral supply chain never stops. This continual investment will get those in the private sector to invest also, as it provides a degree of certainty. Maybe it should be encoded into law that this investment must never stop. I'd hate to have some administration down the line pull the plug.
Also, it'd be great if a referential trade zone among allied nations for critical minerals was formed, as JD Vance proposes. My only reservation about that is suppose one of those allies becomes an enemy at some point; even friends have falling outs. That's part of why I didn't like globalization in the first place, as a friend might not always be a friend, especially if some president decides to put 50% tariffs on you (wink, wink). Anyway, thanks for this article.
With all due respect the US did no such thing. It was the result of globalist ideology implemented by corporate executives chasing quarterly profits that drove their stock options which exist because of legislation limiting salary compensation. Combine that with luxury beliefs like environmentalism and NIMBYism and here we are. Not only did American security get left behind but so did broad parts of the working class. China took brilliant advantage of our foolishness.
Funny that you said ‘US did no such thing’. Who is the US? The elites and successive administrations sleep-walked the country into this trap, that is not the doing of the US? We all must take responsibility as citizens for such outcomes. Only then we could hope to recover and reclaim citizenship as American Compass declared to do
Sometimes I wonder if the implementation of NAFTA (now USMCA) and Globalization should have been put to a national vote, which each citizen having the chance to vote at the ballot box on this extremely important issue. Where was the democracy here? As you say, the elites and successive administrations sleep-walked us into this trap. The elites had their say, what about the rest of us?
Well, it's easier to say that after the fact. Democracy is not a perfect defense against human ignorance, sometimes making it worse. If everything must be put to a vote, a society will die by paralysis. America just won the Cold War. There were no worthy enemies in sight. The theory and hope was that if capitalism could defeat the Soviet Union, why not the Chinese Communist Party? Let's flood China with capitalism and defeat Chinese Communism through an economic vs military victory. It was naive in hindsight but there were hardly any opposing voice, from either left or the right. I hold the elite responsible not because the non-elites would have done better but by definition the elite must lead, for better or worse. A society without elite only exists in fiction, not in reality.
China's dominance of critical supply chains threatens American military and industrial competitiveness more than it threatens American national sovereignty. That dominance did not arise by accident. For decades, many American companies prioritized short-term profits by outsourcing nearly every stage of production except final assembly, sacrificing supply chain resilience for lower costs. There is little evidence that they are prepared to reverse those decisions voluntarily.
Every advanced manufacturing supply chain begins with minerals. Control over the mining, processing, and refining of critical minerals is the foundation of China's supply chain advantage. Any supply chain that does not include these upstream stages remains vulnerable to disruption, regardless of where the intermediate and final products are assembled.
China's long-term strategy has also benefited from sustained government support for science, engineering, and industrial development. By contrast, the United States often struggles to execute comparable industrial strategies because major projects face lengthy local, state, and federal permitting processes, extensive litigation, and shifting political priorities. As a result, building new domestic supply chains is both expensive and time-consuming, with development timelines that can stretch into decades.
Even if the United States eventually develops complete domestic supply chains, it will still face a significant cost disadvantage. China enjoys the benefits of decades of investment, economies of scale, a vast domestic market, and well-established export markets. These advantages will make it difficult for new American producers to compete on price.
The challenge is compounded by relatively weak domestic demand for many of the products that rely on advanced materials. Opposition to electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines has slowed growth in sectors that helped drive China's leadership in battery materials, rare earth mining & processing, and other critical supply chains. Without robust demand, the economic incentives to invest in comparable American supply chains are diminished.
It is also worth noting that China did not impose significant restrictions on exports of rare earth materials to the United States until trade tensions escalated dramatically, including the imposition of tariffs as high as 150 percent on many Chinese imports. Whether those tariffs were justified is a separate policy question, but they were part of the sequence of events that intensified economic retaliation between the two countries.
You stated all the economic reasons why China has all the advantage. It is exactly this kind of single minded economic thinking that led the US into this trap. It’s time to wake up and update your playbook.
And no where was it stated that 'China's long term strategy' also included massive amounts of theft of intellectual property, mostly being stollen from the U.S.!!! Nor was it stated that China's economy is failing (thank God), down to maybe half a percent growth this year.
It's hard for westerners to imagine how China was and is. China was desperately poor when I was still living there 40 years ago. It would do anything to get wealthier, just as a homeless person would do anything to get food and shelter. It was the naive Americans with a singular mind of optimizing economic efficiency that gave China a chance to produce an economic miracle which they certainly did and deserves credits. However, building up wealth on borrowed technology (stolen IP) and low cost labor is one thing, sustaining a middle class economy based on internal innovation and consumption is an entirely different game that China never had the chance to practice. Now the real estate bubble has bursted and massive government debt is slowing down further investment and, no less important, the naive Americans have finally waken up with the election of Donald Trump, China is facing unprecedented challenges. The only thing that keeps it going is the high, high pain threashhold of the Chinese people. This is the biggest difference between China and the West. Western consumers will repel when their gas prices go up by 10%. The Chinese will dig in and survive even if half the population is starving! So don't expect China to crash and burn like western stock market does. It will swallow any hardship and survive. That's the reality that westerners must learn to live with and manage. I don't see China replace the US as a superpower at all. It is incapable of doing that. On the other hand, Americans themselves could certainly self-destruct and become a 3rd world country if Mandani and DSA became popular and gained power. I pray to God that it doesn't happen for the good of not just America but humanity as a whole, including China. In other words, China is much less threatening than DSA to America's future.
I understand why you think my original comment was single-minded--because I did not address the motivation of Chinese people to improve their lives. I also did not address the fact that Chinese leadership was and is well aware of the U.S. tendency to use economic tools to threaten other countries and that decades ago China's leaders instituted long range plans to ensure China would not be vulnerable to U.S. economic warfare (including blocking China's oil supplies or products and technology China depended on.) I also did not address that China's political system promotes people based on competence rather than popularity and that while most of China's leaders have scientific or engineering education, most of America's leaders have legal education. China's leaders plan decades ahead. Plans made by American leaders are often discarded after the next election. I fear that America does not understand the damage that is being done to our educational system, scientific organizations, legal system, and business ethics or appreciate the important contributions of immigrants to the innovation that made America the envy of the world. Donald Trump hasn't awakened America, he is destroying many of the institutions, government agencies, ethical values, and legal protections that made America strong and that attracted the best and brightest people of the world to come to America to build a better life for themselves and, in the process, enrich the lives of all Americans. I think Mandani is popular for the same reason Trump was/is popular--our educational system has not produced people who value character and competence over entertainment.
Frankly, you have at least mild TDS. The loss of American industrial base happened under the watch of presidents before Trump. Yes, Trump is erratic but at least he has some common sense as a real estate business man. The advantages of the 5-year planning process were misunderstood and greatly exaggerated. It was copied from the Soviet Union and produced nothing but disasters until Deng Xiaoping introduced capitalism into China, starting in 1978. The Chinese economic miracle was produced not by state planning but half-baked capitalism. Even half-baked capitalism is far superior than socialism/communism. Since Deng's death, especially since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China is going backward to dictatorship and state planning. That is not a recipe for success. It's just a matter of time, not if, China will implode. The only question is if the United States would self-destruct even sooner. It's essential for good people like youself to wake up from TDS and recognize where the real dangers are. For example, while it's gross for Trump to issue cryptos while in office for personal gain, he is also taking bold steps to fix critical supply chains for the American millitary and industrial base. As far as I am concerned, Pete Hegseth could have as many affairs as he wants, as long as he restores the department of defense for war. We forgot that all men or women are flawed in one way or another. If we are obsessed with their and our own flaws, we would exile ourselves into irrelevance and chaos. That is exactly what the DSA and the left wing of the Democratic Party have done and are doing to America.
I agree with your last statement, although it's not just the DSA but also the Democrat leftists too. Maybe a group of ex-residents, like you, of the CCP China, Cuba, Venezuela under Maduro, etc. could go on tour? Do radio/TV/online informational spots, in order to educate the uneducated masses? Example: Friends from the past (a married couple - very much upper middle class) we're always "Well, we like to listen to both sides....we're pretty down the middle", etc. and then they listened to a Glenn Beck online talk/seminar on the difference between socialism and free-market capitalism (which we need to get to more "free-market", in my opinion and dump corporate "welfare", unless it has to do with our self-defense). After they watched the whole thing, they've voted Republican ever since (including Trump). Note that I spoke up, over the years and they told me that I and one other person were the only ones to do so, out of the many friends and acquaintances they had (the hubby was high up in the corporate world). This was in a very blue state.
It takes much more than mere words for people to learn from life. My own children who were born and grow up here have difficulty of imagining what life was like in China and the dangers posed by socialism/communism. There is some truth in the saying that good times make weak people; weak people make hard times and hard times make strong people. I am just hoping that we do not lose hard earned capital system in the process. If America goes down, humanity will go back to middle ages or worse.
I agree that it would be the middle ages or worse. As for "more than words", words worked for my friends, but they had "learned from life" because they were middle aged at the time.
American Industrial Purchasing Departments evaluate off-shore risk. This threat was understood and the decision to walk into this trap was made by financiers who controlled the decision to source off-shore.
Check all the mining stocks on the exchange. US choked its own capacity in the short term for private profit. Now we all get to pay to fix it.
The author mentions Yergin and what most people don’t understand is that America had an energy crisis from 2002-2009. Energy prices were an issue in the 2000 election and then the mild recession and 9/11 delayed the energy crisis that would inevitably arise during the China commodity super cycle. Bush negotiated China into the WTO in the aftermath of 9/11 and making China great again was a Bush family goal for 40 years. China factored into Bush’s macroeconomic plan in two ways—Chinese goods would keep core PCE at target because Chinese labor was cheap AND China had cheap electricity as it was willing to poison its citizens with coal and diesel pollution while displacing millions with hydro dams. So China would have cheap labor and cheap energy which would keep America’s consumer spending economy going strong. What Bush and Bernanke got wrong was oil and natural gas prices would go too high and erode lower income households spending power to such a degree the American economy would grind to a halt in 2008 as CPI remained elevated for years and peaked at 5.6% in July 2008. So macroeconomics was trumped by thermodynamics as we couldn’t print more oil and natural gas like we could print dollars.
Yes, globalization off-shored US Manufacturing destroying the rich US manufacturing base(communities) and exported its wealth. And yes, energy prices increased too. Not hard to see which 5 yr plan won in the longer term.
Given the current state of American governance, what’s your problem?
The author lists "two distinct tactics to maintain its stranglehold on critical mineral supply chains." I suggest that a third tactic being employed is the financial and propaganda support for the US Environmental Movement. These litigious non-profits and NGO's challenge and try to stymie any and all extractive and infrastructure project in the name of 'protecting the environment and/or the public".
They use law suits, group organizing and propaganda, which are expensive activities. Where does the money come from? Such an effective way for China to protect their monopolies, by supporting these groups. We need to follow the money.
Thank God Trump and his administration is doing this. Democrats will try to stop it, if they get in power and we MUST stand firm when they do: email, call, protest and Republicans in Congress (and in the individual states) must play hard ball (not something they are used to, I know) to thwart Democrat's un-American and traitorous desires.