China's leverage over the United States extends far beyond rare-earth metals. Beijing is the dominant supplier of pharmaceutical ingredients including ibuprofen and certain antibiotics, leads the world in lithium-ion battery production and mass produces legacy semiconductors. A cutoff of any of these exports would devastate American industries.
The breadth of China's supply-chain dominance represents a set of vulnerabilities that U.S. policymakers have only begun to address, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis highlighted by "Hvylya".
Last year, China demonstrated exactly how it can exploit such advantages. Beijing weaponized its control of roughly 90% of the world's rare-earth magnet supply, cutting off access to metals used in cars, weapons and electronics. The move forced U.S. factories to idle and Washington to soften its trade demands. Edward Fishman of the Council on Foreign Relations described the embargo as the most potent act of economic coercion in recent memory.
While Washington has taken steps to address its mineral dependency - including Trump's $12 billion Project Vault stockpile fund and a preliminary deal with Australian miner Lynas for heavy rare earths - these efforts barely scratch the surface of the broader problem. Pharmaceutical supply chains and battery manufacturing cannot be reshored overnight.
Chris Miller, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, warned that open-market democracies are especially exposed to this kind of pressure because supply shocks translate into visible price spikes almost immediately - giving adversaries a powerful lever to force political concessions.
Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines, acknowledged that the U.S. is "in a better place than it was" regarding vulnerability to China, but stressed that many backed projects remain years away from production. With conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East already straining mineral supplies, time is not on Washington's side.
Also read: Carnegie Expert Explains Why Russia's Bond With China Is Now Unbreakable.