Rare earths have been a major sticking point in trade negotiations between China and the United States.
China dominates the production of these critical resources – which power everything from electric vehicles to fighter jets and data centres – with Beijing disrupting production around the world when it cut off supplies earlier this year.
But one project in Australia is hoping to ease the bottleneck.
We visit one of the key sites.
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Presenter: Suranjana Tewari Producer: Jaltson Akkanath Chummar
(Picture: A rare earth mining site in Western Australia.)