Recent U.S. presidents and their senior administration officials have frequently blamed political leaders in Europe for making their countries overly dependent on Russian energy. President Trump has been the most vocal critic. For years, Washington’s warnings against that dangerous dependency mostly fell on deaf ears. The risk became evident only after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when the Russians tried to use energy as a weapon to stop Europe from coming to the aid of Ukraine.

In the nearly four years since the invasion began, Europe has acted quickly to diversify its sources of energy supplies. The continent has drastically reduced its oil and gas imports from Russia, and is currently aiming to completely wean itself off Russian energy within the next one or two years. The U.S. has been the primary beneficiary of this shift. The bulk of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) produced in this country is now exported to Europe.

It turns out that for all the time that the U.S. was warning the Europeans about their addiction to Russian energy, it didn’t heed its own advice about the danger of excessive dependence on an adversarial country for the supply of critical resources. Much has been written in the last few months about the attempts by China to choke off exports of rare-earth minerals to the U.S. in response to President Trump’s tariffs on imports from China. The Chinese tactic has thus far been quite successful. It has forced the Trump administration to either retreat or delay some of its tariff measures to create space for negotiations.

The Wall Street Journal says that “rare earths are required for all sorts of electronics, auto parts, AI chips and chip-making equipment, medical devices, drones, Tomahawk missiles and much more.” China is said to account for about 70 percent of rare-earth mining and more than 90 percent of refining. The Journal adds that “China has a stranglehold on these minerals, and it’s a serious problem.”

There have been news reports in recent weeks about the possibility of U.S. auto plants being forced to shut down if China were to carry out its threat to cut off exports of rare-earth magnets to the U.S. Given the crucial importance of those minerals in some of the most critical sectors of our economy, one has to wonder why our political leaders were not more alert to the growing vulnerability all those years. Bloomberg reports that as far back as 2019, even The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, recognized the problem when it stated bluntly: “Don’t say we didn’t warn you!”

In the view of the Wall Street Journal, it will be difficult for the U.S. to produce significant quantities of rare earths in the short term, and perhaps even the medium term. The Journal blames destructive permitting obstacles in the U.S. for the current situation.

Our increasing inability in this country to agree on the most basic of things is going to cause us huge problems. Mindless political partisanship distracts us in all kinds of ways while our adversaries march ahead. Our leaders inexcusably took their eyes off the ball on rare-earth minerals. They, and the rest of us, need to wake up quickly before we become dangerously vulnerable in other areas.