JAMES CARTER And JACOB CHOE: When ‘Free Markets’ Aren’t Really Free

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For years, Washington treated critical minerals as a paperwork problem. If only permits moved faster, investors would flock, and supply chains would hum.

That tidy theory has finally—and irretrievably—crashed into reality. As Vice President JD Vance argued at the recent Critical Minerals Ministerial, the global market for critical minerals is NOT a free market.

Critical minerals aren’t boutique commodities. They’re essential—the building blocks of global economic and military power. They run through missile guidance systems, semiconductors, electric vehicle batteries, and power grids. Whoever controls their supply controls the future.

The pattern has become painfully familiar. A rare-earth project gathers financing. Optimism builds. Then—bang—global supply soars, prices plunge, and the project collapses. Investors retreat. The fledgling mines never open. (RELATED: Embattled California Republican Leads Charge To Counter China’s Critical Mineral Supremacy)

What looks like volatility is really strategy: deliberate overproduction and price dumping to crush rivals in their infancy.

No country has perfected this playbook like China. Through lavish subsidies, strict export controls, and tolerance of environmental shortcuts, Beijing has cornered one sector after another.

When the competition dies,........

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