Latest news:China plays a rare earth card as us India dig deep.see More

TIMES OF INDIA:

The TOI Correspondent from Washington: Dysprosium and Neodymium sound like the names of couple of medications, perhaps cough syrups.

In fact, they are two “Rare Earth” elements from group of 17 in the periodic table that are critical for a range of technologies from missiles to wind turbines to EVs, and they made a splash on Monday after China, which has a 90 per cent hold on the field, suspended all exports.

TIMES OF INDIA: The move, one of the cards held by Beijing in the tariff war launched by US, sent shock waves through American tech industry, even as the White House has momentarily relaxed tariffing some electronic imports.

Even though the US has gradually dialed down rare earths import from China from 80 per cent in 2017 to around 70 per cent now, its import from other countries also involve Chinese processing because Beijing owns 90 percent of the world’s refining capacity.