Staff working at a manufacturing facility that produces lithium battery for export in Huaibei, in japanese China’s Anhui province on June 11, 2024. STR/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
China monopolizes greater than 80 % of essential uncooked battery minerals utilized in U.S. navy tools, posing a critical nationwide safety menace, new analysis has discovered.
Beijing’s “brute pressure economics” makes use of a bevy of nonmarket practices, together with worth manipulation, export dumping, and mental property theft, to construct a dominant provide chain of batteries which can be important in vehicles, cellphones, and U.S. navy drones, in accordance with a July 21 report from Basis for Protection of Democracies (FDD), a Washington-based suppose tank.