Rare earth elements are essential for many of our modern day technologies. It’s used in rechargeable batteries, phones, fiber optics, wind turbines, televisions, dvd players and many others.

Some countries control majority of supply and use this as a means to pressure other countries.

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It’s expected to become one of the issues at stake in the ongoing trade war between the #US and #China. Rare earth elements are crucial to manufacturing phones, computers and wind turbines. China currently controls 90 percent of their production, but the US is also determined to extract these precious #minerals and has just reopened a rare earth elements mine in California. Our France 2 colleagues report, with FRANCE 24’s James Vasina.

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