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Aren't the materials to make rare-earth magnets... not actually that rare? It's only rare in the sense of their dispersal in the earth's crust, this making it a rather dirty and ecologically disruptive activity sourcing them. The US could theoretically start producing rare-earth metals, couldn't they?

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Yes, but it trivializes the issue. You might ask why colonies needed to import finished goods from the motherland when they had all this wood and iron available.

This is not the same thing

Colonies many times weren’t even allowed to produce manufactured goods

There might be some learning curve but the extraction of rare earth materials should be well documented, it used to be done in the US

I don’t know about the manufacturing of goods from the extracted elements though.

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