Long before trade wars and tariffs, China secured manufacturing dominance by controlling rare earths - a reality so consequential that the United States and its allies are now pledging more than $8.5 billion just to claw back some control of the supply chain. As global manufacturing expanded over the past two decades, rare earth processing was steadily pushed out of Western supply chains. It was capital-intensive, technically demanding, and difficult to defend on short-term economics. China made the opposite choice, keeping those capabilities in…