I was talking about the rare earth producers, They can’t sell more even if they want to.You talk about military weapons for an imminent war, and then talk about how stock piling isn't sane business practice. These contradict each other.
The military doesn't care about "sane business practice" in a scenario of imminent (next few years) war. They will stock pile what they need. They will accelerate reopening commercially intractable refineries. They will do whatever it takes to wrest rare earths from their allies' supply chains. Industry won't do this, but the military will.
Giving the US a grace period of a month to order as much of the newly restricted rare earths as it wants, doesn't make sense if it's about delaying US military action. We can agree to disagree about this though, and just see what happens next.
In case you don’t know, China has all the refining technologies for heavy rare earth elements.
I think you overestimate Western countries’ ability to build anything. This is the state of the collapsed bridge in Baltimore, 18 months later:
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