Investors with long memories might be forgiven for a sense of deja vu over warnings about rare earths and Chinese supply.
Chinese state media reports grabbed global attention Wednesday as they dropped heavy hints about export cuts. Rare earths – a group of 17 obscure, hard-to-pronounce elements used in high-tech and military applications – are produced for the most part in China. The US has just one mine, and that was at the center of a cautionary tale of commodity boom and bust earlier this decade.