In the U.S., freedom drives the economy.  You and I and everyone else can buy whatever we want and can afford.  Manufacturers sell what they think and hope we will buy.

Theory claims and experience has shown that a free economy for everyone from individuals to the biggest companies works the best – more and better products and more wealth for everyone.

China has always been and remains a country politically the opposite from the U.S.  China’s economy is controlled by its politicians – the emperors of old, the Communists, and the present nominally-communist government, dominated and controlled by dictator Xi Jinping.  

China is now attempting to corner the market on “Rare Earth” minerals.  

These are minerals that are indeed rare.  But they are essential to electronic devices – a list that includes cell-phones, flat-screens, data storage circuitry, jet engines, satellites, and use in military weapons, to name a few.  

Rare Earth minerals sales are part of China’s yearning for international dominance – not for trade per se, but for political control.  

Like anyone who believes they can establish a monopoly, China wants to control the sales of Rare Earth minerals and drive prices even higher into the stratosphere – and pick its customers according to its political goals of control.  

Led by the U.S., the rest of the world has organized the mining of Rare Earth minerals in Japan, Australia, Canada, the U.S., Europe, and several Southeast Asia countries including, ironically, Vietnam.  

Monopolies are never a welcome environment by those who wish to engage in trade.  History is replete with companies – and countries – who attempted to develop a monopoly under their control, and for every monopoly, a pathway eventually emerges to circumvent it.  

Rare Earth minerals are not easy to mine.  The resulting toxic wastes and complex chemical processes involved were the reason why Rare Earth mining was outsourced to China in the past.

But now that China is attempting to turn the tables on those who do not mine Rare Earth minerals to its political advantage, other countries are restarting their own mining of Rare Earth minerals.  

Instead of the economic gains that could have been China’s road to further riches, their political maneuvering is causing them to be totally cut out of the economic wealth Rare Earth mining will bring, to the benefit of other countries, and which could have brought economic benefits to China.  

Politics, as it has for thousands of years, drives China’s economy.  

Starting from essentially nothing, America’s free economy of the past four hundred years, in contrast, has made such tremendous growth that its economy now dominates the world.  

America’s political freedom has made that huge economy possible – and it is crucial to understand that it is America’s economics and not its politics which has led to its standing in the world.

China may yearn to similarly dominate the world.  But that requires first and foremost a free economy.  

By choosing not to have a free economy, China’s efforts are self-limited.  

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