That yale.edu article needs additional context. It's verbatim repeating the PRC's talking points on the US-China trade dispute, the one over China's rare earth

That yale.edu article needs additional context. It's verbatim repeating the PRC's talking points on the US-China trade dispute, the one over China's rare earth tariffs that was litigated before the WTO. The US position is that the export tariffs are a tactic to subsidize Chinese consumers of rare earths—their manufacturing sector—by giving them preferential prices for Chinese rare earths, the raw inputs. That's illegal under WTO rules. The PRC's position, what e360 is legitimizing (and amplifying), is that the West *morally deserves* to compensate China for the ecological costs of China's own mining industry, because we are its end consumers; and that these tariffs should be permitted under WTO rules as an environmental measure, not a protectionist one. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earths_trade_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earths_trade_dispute https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade-idUSTRE6BM3S420101223 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade-idUSTRE6B... https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/US-wins-victory-in-rare-earths-dispute-with-China https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-... It's jarring to suddenly be reading CPC foreign policy talking points in a random environmental article!