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.Mining for rare earths is often difficult and expensive. The procedure is rarely eco-friendly, creating hundreds of gallons of salty wastewater per minute, consuming huge amounts of electricity, requiring toxic materials for the refining process and occasionally unearthing dirt that is radioactive.

The high costs and damaging techniques pushed most rare earth mines out of business in the early 1990s. Only China kept its mines going, positioning itself for the ensuing high-tech boom and the resulting rare earth-hungry products.

"Bottom line, we fell asleep as a country and as an industry," Smith said. "We got very used to these really low prices coming out of Asia and never really thought about it from a supply chain standpoint."

But recently, China began cracking down on illegal rare-earth mining operations that had cropped up there because of the high demand. The supply squeeze has raised tensions in the delicate relationship between the U.S. clean-tech industry and its Asian counterpart. The U.S. trade representative's office has said that if China continues to rebuff requests to ease export limits on rare earths, it may take the dispute to WTO...."

From the above article, it just shown how selfish human beings are and also stupidity & cunning on the part of some people. What's there for the US trade representative's office to take China to court / WTO?
* You want the minerals and you have them abundantly on your own soil, why not mine them on your own & break the Chinese's stranglehold on these commodities? -- Isn't it stupid on American's part?
* But knowing very well how mining of such minerals will cause harmful effects on your environment, you want the Chinese to harm their own environment -- On the other hand, it's also cunning on their part.