DEGLOBALIZATION: China Plans to Ban Exports of Rare Earth Magnet Tech. “Beijing is currently in the process of revising its Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted from Export — a list of manufacturing and other industrial technologies subject to export controls — and released a draft of the revised catalog for public comment in December. In the draft, manufacturing technologies for high-performance magnets using such rare earth elements as neodymium and samarium cobalt were added to the export ban. The solicitation of comments ceased late January and the revisions are expected to be adopted as early as this year.”

It isn’t that rare earths are all that rare. It’s that Western enviros won’t let us process ours.