China’s Rare-Earth Clampdown Threatens to Upend Global Defense and Trade

China’s latest export controls on rare-earth minerals risk not only reigniting a trade war with the United States, they could also come with far-reaching implications for efforts to rearm Ukraine and infrastructure development in Central Asia. Tensions between Beijing and Washington flared again over rare earths — an essential group of 17 elements that find themselves in everything from electric vehicle batteries to smartphones to vital defense technology == on October 9 when China added new export controls for five rare-earth metals on…