Op-ed: Import reliance is Achilles’ heel

What is not on the Trump Administration’s list of Chinese goods slapped with a new 25 percent tariff is far more revealing than what is.

Omitted from the latest volley of the trade war are rare earths and other strategically important minerals whose supply is dominated by Chinese companies.

China’s grip on the minerals market is alarmingly tight and U.S. import reliance alarmingly high. Minerals — the very building blocks of every technology and gadget our modern economy relies upon — have become America’s soft underbelly. Or, as Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has pointedly labeled them, our “Achilles’ heel.”

Read the full op-ed here.