THE U.S.A. ISN’T GETTING THESE ANYMORE !

If you’re American, this will be the most important read this tariff war.

“China Just Turned Off U.S. Supplies Of Minerals Critical For Defense & Cleantech’: The materials China just restricted aren’t random. They’re chosen with the precision of someone who’s read U.S. product spec sheets and defense procurement orders.

The [U.S.] stockpile gaps were documented. But instead of building resilient supply chains, the U.S. chose to chase lowest-cost sourcing and pretend that critical materials would always be available like app updates or breakfast cereal.

Now the reckoning is here, and it’s being administered by a country that understands resource leverage the way a tiger understands a sheep.”

1. Start with dysprosium. If your electric motor needs to function at high temperatures - and they all do - then mostly it is using neodymium magnets doped with dysprosium… If dysprosium doesn’t come out of China, it doesn’t come out at all.

2. Then there’s tungsten. The metal that makes bullets bulletproof. Literally. Tungsten is what you use when you need to cut, drill, punch, or penetrate anything harder than stale marshmallow. It’s in the tiny vertical connections between layers of circuitry in semiconductor chip, CNC machine tools, and high-performance alloys that go into everything from jet engines to deep-drilling rigs.The U.S. hasn’t produced meaningful amounts of it since the Obama administration, and China sits on 80% of global production.

3. Terbium, dysprosium’s equally awkward but equally vital cousin, got scooped up too. You want high-efficiency motors in your EVs and offshore wind turbines? You want night-vision goggles, sonar systems, or magnetostrictive actuators? You’re going to need terbium. Like dysprosium, terbium comes almost exclusively from Chinese soil.

4. Indium is a quieter casualty but no less critical. It’s the transparent conductor that makes your screens light up, your fiber optics communicate, and your laser diodes actually lase. Without indium, touchscreens become paperweights, and 5G base stations start to look like 3G nostalgia boxes. The U.S. has zero domestic production.

This is an extract from a much larger article by Michael Barnard that you are vigorously encouraged to read!