>>518604072
>the main reason we don't refine anything is because of environmental regulations.
'Tis. Mutts had most of the REE production back before it was a thing (Molycorp, or some such); but, like your jobs and qualify of living, off-shored it all to the lowest bidders where they were willing to poison their environment in order to catch up to the West. Thus, the chinks trawled it all up -- clearly knowing ahead of time the import of owning an non-substitutable resource that was going to be integral to almost every electronics of note today; including warfighting.

Today, only the Oz company, Lynas (ASX:LYC) are of any competitive note, and even they have issues with the processing (off-shored to Malaysia, which can be manipulated by China). They are in the process of building processing in plants in Muttland... However, I haven't checked on the progress of that, aside from knowing it takes 10~15 years to get such projects running to capacity.