How China could shut down auto factories around the world

China domination of the world supply chain is starting to injure car manufacturers.

On April 4, the country cut the exports of a class of minerals called “elements of rare heavy land” and it sent the global panic automotive industry.

Rare earths are A class of 17 elements Who have become essential in all kinds of applications – everything, fighter planes and submarines, smartphones and household appliances. You can Even find them in sports equipment, such as tennis snowshoes and baseball bats.

They are also essential, of course, essential to the modern automobile. Gas cars use them to filter pollution through the catalytic converter of the vehicle. Electric vehicles use them in engines and batteries.

“Rare Lands are really critical, not only for electric vehicles,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical mineral security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are in your seat belt, your steering wheels, different parts of your electrical components. You are not going to make a car without rare earths.”

Rare earths are divided into additional categories, depending on their atomic weight. Light rare earths are easier to find. These are the means and heavy that China has completely monopolized. China controls around 70% of rare land mines in the world. But where it really dominates treatment.

The name “elements of rare earths” is a little misleading – the elements themselves are not so rare by nature. What makes them “rare” is the complex and difficult process to separate them from the rock in which they are anchored and each other. China controls approximately 90% of the treatment of rare earths in the world, and has a total monopoly on the treatment of heavy rare earths.

Since at least 2023, China has tightened its grip on several of the main critical minerals it provides in the world, said Baskaran.

However, the export restrictions of April 4 shocked the automotive world.

“He came out of nowhere,” said Dan Hearsch, Managing Director at Alixparters. “No one had time to react. I mean, in a few weeks, all the pipeline equipment had come out.”

European car manufacturers Close the factories. Ford was to slowdown of its popular explorer SUV.

This month, China has started to allow access to companies that provide parts to certain car manufacturers. And this week, the Trump administration said He had concluded an agreement to accelerate rare land and loving expeditions to the United States

We still do not know how durable these offers will be.

“We are not yet out of the woods,” said Baskaran. “There is a lot of volatility in the American-Chinese relationship between prices and mineral restrictions. We have seen China accelerate restrictions over two years. The rare earths are only the most recent.”

There are longer -term solutions if China again reduces access: recycling, developing other sources and innovation, for example. This crisis can even encourage industry to take measures that reduce dependence on China.

But this rare earth crisis is only the last in a series of supply disturbances in recent years. Heavesch said it will probably get worse.

“Today, these are the rare earths,” said Heardsch. “But tomorrow it can and will be something else we may not think of, it may not even be so precious and suddenly.”

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