{"id":4933,"date":"2021-04-12T22:14:49","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T22:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=4933"},"modified":"2021-04-12T22:14:49","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T22:14:49","slug":"tom-cottons-big-plan-to-beat-china-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=4933","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cotton\u2019s big plan to \u201cbeat China,\u201d explained"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“What Vekasi did agree with, though, was another element of Cotton\u2019s plan: ending America\u2019s reliance on China\u2019s extraction and processing of rare-earth elements<\/a>. These elements are used in high-technology items like smartphones and flat-screen TVs, as well as military weapons systems like warplanes \u2014 and that makes them extremely valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is that China is simply dominant in this space. In the making of specialized magnets for electronics, for example, \u201cthe Pentagon has had to repeatedly waive a ban on using Chinese-built components in US weapons so that it could install rare-earth magnets in F-35 fighters,\u201d Cotton wrote in his report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t help that when the US extracts rare-earth elements from mines in California and Colorado, more often than not they\u2019re shipped to China<\/a> to be made into American products, Vekasi told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US simply doesn\u2019t have the labor force to compete with Beijing\u2019s industries, and it won\u2019t unless and until Washington decides to subsidize workers to get trained in that field and companies to hire them, Cotton argues. Until the government does that, the US will remain beholden to China\u2019s firm grip on the rare-earths sector.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22289711\/tom-cotton-beat-china-strategy-explained<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“What Vekasi did agree with, though, was another element of Cotton\u2019s plan: ending America\u2019s reliance on China\u2019s extraction and processing of rare-earth elements. These elements are used in high-technology items like smartphones and flat-screen TVs, as well as military weapons systems like warplanes \u2014 and that makes them extremely valuable.<\/p>\n

The problem is that China is simply dominant in this space. In the making of specialized magnets for electronics, for example, \u201cthe Pentagon has had to repeatedly waive a ban on using Chinese-built components in US weapons so that it could install rare-earth magnets in F-35 fighters,\u201d Cotton wrote in his report.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t help that when the US extracts rare-earth elements from mines in California and Colorado, more often than not they\u2019re shipped to China to be made into American products, Vekasi told me.<\/p>\n

The US simply doesn\u2019t have the labor force to compete with Beijing\u2019s industries, and it won\u2019t unless and until Washington decides to subsidize workers to get trained in that field and companies to hire them, Cotton argues. Until the government does that, the US will remain beholden to China\u2019s firm grip on the rare-earths sector.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[89,217,619],"class_list":["post-4933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-china","tag-economics","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4934,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933\/revisions\/4934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}