Duggan Flanakin: The U.S. re-enters the rare-earths race

Hardly anyone in 1972 saw President Nixon’s decision to reopen diplomatic relations with the Peoples’ Republic of China as the beginning of a half-century of America surrendering its mining and manufacturing superiority to the fledgling Communist regime.

Successive administrations did little or nothing to halt the export of American skilled labor jobs, or even to promote skilled American labor as vital to national security. Unlike his predecessors, President Trump determined to promote American labor and restore mining and manufacturing as the pathway to a stronger nation and a prosperous economy.