The clock is ticking before a tenuous U.S.-China trade truce expires this fall, and the countdown has left U.S. President Donald Trump increasingly desperate to ditch Chinese rare earths once and for all.

Few world powers understand that feeling quite like Japan. After all, the country has been in Washington’s shoes before: China shocked the world in 2010 when it halted rare-earth shipments to Japan over a geopolitical spat, driving a supply chain reckoning in Tokyo.

The clock is ticking before a tenuous U.S.-China trade truce expires this fall, and the countdown has left U.S. President Donald Trump increasingly desperate to ditch Chinese rare earths once and for all.

Few world powers understand that feeling quite like Japan. After all, the country has been in Washington’s shoes before: China shocked the world in 2010 when it halted rare-earth shipments to Japan over a geopolitical spat, driving a supply chain reckoning in Tokyo.

Sixteen years later, Japan is often hailed as the country that has most successfully diversified away from Chinese rare earths. Yet it is far from out of the woods.

In apparent retaliation against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks about Taiwan last year, Beijing has again unleashed its supply chain might against Japan. The pressure campaign is still going: Customs data released last month showed that Beijing continued to strangle its flows of key rare earths to Japan in June, and firms and manufacturers across the country are feeling the pain.

As Washington follows in Tokyo’s footsteps, the latter offers a window into just how challenging it can be to break free of Beijing’s chokehold—with stark lessons for U.S. policymakers.

“Japan is a cautionary tale,” said Gracelin Baskaran, a mining economist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

One of the most formidable weapons in China’s trade arsenal has been its chokehold over global supply chains of rare earths, the elements that underpin powerful technologies ranging from fighter jets to wind turbines.

China dominates around 85 percent of rare-earth processing and 92 percent of magnet production. Its command is particularly pronounced when it comes to the industrial separation of a subset of rare earths known as heavy rare earths—giving it immense leverage over other countries.

That became clear in 2010, when China briefly halted rare-earth exports to Japan. Alarmed, Tokyo waged an all-out........

© Foreign Policy