This country could have – and should have – been mining large volumes of its own rare earths

China has restricted exports of rare earths into the U.S. in retaliation for the president’s tariffs on Chinese exports.

John Sutter : Rare earth elements are crucial to our modern existence, as well as our advanced defense systems.

China provides 70% of the rare earth compounds we buy from abroad, Sutter says.

The Trump administration has had an unusually busy first 100 days, much of it expending massive amounts of time and resources unwinding the messes left by the Biden White House .

There's more to be done, though, and accelerating America ’s mining independence needs to be one of the many priorities.