The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

I looked up rare-earth mining info on the usgs site after i posted and the remaining resource at Mountain Pass is something like 27 Mtonnes at something like 11% rare-earth oxides which makes it one of the richest REE deposits in the world (going by memory now so i could be off on the numbers but the conclusion is correct). Cost of mining (labor and environmental) is undoubtedly why the mine couldn't compete with China. Of course, sucking their mines dry first seems perfectly reasonable and strategic to me.