Wait, so the US stopped mining rare earth material for environmental concerns, but wants China to mine more of them and export the material to the US - what about the environment in China? And remember when "an incovinient truth" was at its height US officials blamed China for causing so much environmental issues - c'mon, what do you really want them to do?

A link in the above article points to another article where there's a similar scenario of trade vs clean energy - isn't government subsidy of clean tech an universally good action for our environment? - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/business/global/18trade.ht...