U.S. lawmakers propose to ban defense contractors from using Chinese rare earth Expert: Very absurd

On the 14th local time, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona joined forces to propose the "Restoration of Rare Earth Basic Energy and Local Safety Reserves Act", claiming that this is to protect the United States from the threat of rare earth supply interruptions, encourage domestic rare earth production, and reduce the United States' dependence on China's imports. Some experts told the Global Times reporter that the US congressman's proposal is a kind of "political correctness" that ignores the facts of the customer view, and it is also very absurd to ban Chinese rare earths on the grounds of worrying about China's "stuck neck".

According to the introduction of this proposal on Cotton's personal official website, the proposal first requires the US government to establish a rare earth strategic reserve. The proposal says the U.S. Department of Defense and the Interior department will establish a strategic reserve of rare earth elements and products by 2025 to meet the one-year demand of the U.S. military, defense industry and technology sectors and other critical infrastructure in the event of supply disruptions, and the proposal also requires U.S. Department of Defense contractors to track and disclose the origin of rare earth magnets used in systems they deliver to the U.S. military, and prohibit defense business contractors from buying Chinese rare earths by 2026. In addition, the proposal would require the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department to submit reports to Congress on China's unfair trade practices in the rare earth metal market, followed by possible tariffs on China. Cotton claimed that the global supply of rare earths is "neck-choked" by China, ending the United States' dependence on China in the mining and processing of rare earths is crucial to winning strategic competition with China and protecting U.S. national security.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, nearly 80 percent of U.S. rare earth imports in 2019 came from China. Reuters reported that there is currently only one rare earth mine in the United States and does not have the ability to process rare earth minerals. In order to establish a strategic reserve, the U.S. Department of Defense also needs to purchase some rare earths from China. The proposal is said to be incorporated into the Department of Defense's appropriations bill later this year, but it does not directly support the nascent rare earth industry in the United States.

He Weiwen, a senior researcher at the Chongyang Institute of Financial Research at Chinese University, analyzed the Global Times reporter on the 16th that the proposal of the US congressman is a kind of "political correctness", but it does not conform to the objective facts. The United States is worried about being "stuck in the neck" of China in rare earths, which is a kind of reverse thinking in the chip industry to card China's neck, but rare earths themselves do not contain technology, and the proposal does not propose solutions for local companies, but it adds fuel to the fire that China may cut off supply at any time and anywhere, violating WTO rules, which is very absurd. He Weiwen believes that many members of the US Congress have specially engaged in some destructive and confrontational proposals, and the United States should think about how to abandon such thinking.

Previously, in the face of Western countries' concerns about China's monopoly of the rare earth market, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that China has always adhered to the principle of openness, coordination and sharing to promote the development of the domestic rare earth industry, and we are willing to meet the legitimate needs of the development of all countries in the world with rare earth resources and products, and play an active role in promoting the development of China's economy and the world economy. We live in an era of globalization, where global industrial chains are closely linked and interlinked. In this case, it is not feasible to dominate or monopolize a certain field or market, or to artificially cut or exclude a certain section of the chain.