This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague, Ellen Toddlson, about rare earth,

which are not rare on the planet.

However, the processing is rare these days because China dominates the market.

How did that happen?

How did China, which doesn't have that much rare earth in its own territory, come to be so dominating that it can intimidate the President of the United States and the trade deal?

Cutting off the rare earth magnet making would lead to a catastrophe in the high-end electronic business.

How did this happen?

Who was asleep?

Alan describes generally what's happened.

There's much more detail tonight.

Alan Tonelson on the non-rare earth and the Chinese Communist Party cornering the market right

in front of it.

The Trump administration's trade policy strategy and its

overall approach to dealing with China for the time being, because these rare earths magnets are

vital for an incredibly wide variety of not only civilian economy applications, for example, the automotive industry, but for defense-related applications too.

So at this point, certainly the Chinese have the United States over a major barrel.

However, I'm not convinced that that situation is going to last for too much longer.