The problem with "The Future Made In Australia": everything ends up in China anyway

The problem with "The Future Made In Australia": everything ends up in China anyway
Australia hopes to build supply chains for rare earth metals that are not reliant on China.
In addition to the mining of the metals, they seek to create new industries for separation and refining, to capture significantly more value-added profits downstream of the mining.

But Australia would still be dependent on China for reagents, and for shipping to final users--the manufacturers of magnets. And those end users are all in China.

Australian industry would also struggle to compete against China's lower costs. Specialized labor, logistics, materials, capital expenses, and electricity all are several times more expensive in Australia, compared to China.

What's more, for many rare earth metals, today’s wholesale pricing is far above companies' cost of production. Only a handful of companies are making money industry-wide, and this is a high hurdle in attracting non-Chinese investors into new mining projects.