We can safely bet that no one is more gleeful about America’s leadership vacuum than President Xi Jinping, of China.
Why?
The possibility of a Harris-Walz administration continuing in the rutted green energy tracks of the of the former Biden-Harris White House, while embracing the trading away of American energy independence.
A scenario for reliance upon imported rare earth minerals needed for transitioning away from petroleum fueled cars to electric vehicles (EVs).
China’s Communist Party (CCP) currently controls a vast majority of the world’s rare earths needed for new EV batteries and nighttime solar energy storage to recharge them.
China also controls more than $1 trillion in vast mineral riches made available to them, following the total U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan to their Taliban partners.
Additionally, Beijing has made no secret of its intentions to exploit current Biden administration weakness in defense of Taiwan, a major source of computer chips that go into virtually all of today’s myriad of electronic devices: very much including both conventional petrol and plug-in vehicles.
As recently as last March the Harris-Biden administration finalized a crackdown on gas cars, pushing the EPA to enact regulations that are expected to result in more than two-thirds of passenger cars and light trucks sold by 2032, to be electric or hybrid vehicles.
In comparison, 84% of all cars sold in America are powered by internal combustion engines, both despite $7,500 federal tax credit subsidies offered as EV incentives to reluctant buyers as well as jacked up costs for gasoline models needed to keep vehicle manufacturers financially afloat.
Large batteries represent much of the added EV costs.
Of these, lithium iron phosphate (LFP batteries) produced in China are rapidly replacing more expensive nickel and cobalt types previously used in the U.S. and Europe, resulting in dangerous supply chain dependency.
Ford, which posted a $62,016 loss on each EV it sold during the third quarter of last year, has been offering a $7,500 cash rebate on top of the federal tax credit on some F-150 Lightning pickup trucks.
As consequences, U.S. and European auto companies are racing into a Chinese rare earth monopoly and other supply traps posing inevitable economic and national security threats.
American EV consumers who ride along will be left in a ditch along with dealers who lack essential inventory and profitable markets.
This is already occurring.
U.S. customs officials have seized thousands of German Volkswagens over a single part made in China’s Xinjiang region believed to be in violation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) which requires importers to provide evidence that their goods were not produced with forced labor in order to avoid penalties.
The German company is a joint venture partner with Chinese-owned SAIC Motors which owns a factory in Xinjing’s capital, Urumqi.
Volkswagen was previously linked to such a violation when the German newspaper Handelsblatt reportedly obtained photographs showing Uyghur workers in military uniforms during the three-year construction of a car-testing track.
A Human Rights Watch report has also warned that carmakers including Tesla, General Motors, Volkswagen and Toyota are failing to ensure they aren’t using aluminum produced by Uyghur forced labor.
Then factor in influences of new and existing environmental regulations influencing rare earth mining and processing for batteries which represent a major EV cost.
China controls a stranglehold monopoly of about 80% of the global supply of rare earth minerals and compounds to leverage in a trade war against the West, with Congo a 90% source of vital cobalt.
A report from Securing America’s Future Energy indicates that China also currently controls nearly 70% of electric vehicle battery manufacturing capacity, compared to just 10% by the U.S.
Making matters even worse, many of the rare earths mined in the USA are processed in the People’s Republic of China because it’s cheaper to have them do it than to pay for American regulatory environmental and workplace safety costs.
Although America has an abundance of rare earths, environmental opposition to mining them has resulted in a regulatory minefield of local, state, and federal rules that has turned permitting into a costly decades-long process.
Lawmakers have all but banned rare earth mineral exploration and development on materials-rich federal lands, and the few once-active mines have been shuttered largely due to compliance costs.
Until recently the only remaining active U.S. rare earth mine, Mountain Pass in California, sent its materials to China for processing.
Last year the company, MP Materials, inked a deal with Sumitomo Corp. to supply the Japanese giant with some key elements, such as neodymium and praseodymium, helping the trading house bypass China in EV rare-earth supply chains.
During Trump’s final days in office, the Bureau of Land Management announced new decisions that took effect January 15 to expand and fast-track permitting of potential mining — including rare earths — on federal lands.
Last year the Biden administration blocked plans for a major mine in northern Minnesota containing an estimated 95% of the nation’s nickel reserves and 88% of American cobalt that could have helped supply minerals for their so-called "net-zero" plans.
A 2024 political climate change returning the presidency and Congress to Republican control will hopefully replace that EV subsidy supply chain with free market choices that will end the greatest threat of all — Harris and Xi influence over what we buy and drive.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.