Actually the US has a pretty fantastic supply of rare earths. the US used to mine a TON, then imports from China got cheaper, so they stopped mining domestica

Actually the US has a pretty fantastic supply of rare earths. the US used to mine a TON, then imports from China got cheaper, so they stopped mining domestically. In this process, lots of "knowledge capital" was lost, but we still have vast reserves of rare earths. The big problem now is the lack of infrastructure to get at them again.