U.S. manufacturing affected by raw minerals supply chain

In an op-ed in The Detroit News, Mark Perry, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan Flint campus and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, contributed to the mounting debate surrounding China’s export restrictions on rare earth minerals. Perry focused on the restrictions’ effect on manufacturing, as “U.S. manufacturers are now more than 40 percent dependent on imports of many commodity and rare earth metals…These minerals are critical for defense and energy technologies and many high-tech consumer products.”

Perry concluded that to remedy the issue, the U.S. permitting process must be streamlined “so that it accomplishes the dual objectives of minimizing the environment impact of mining and at the same time meeting our nation’s advanced manufacturing and defense needs.”