Rodrigo Tavares is an adjunct professor on the Nova College of Enterprise and Economics in Portugal.

A battle is raging between China and the West over crucial minerals. Beijing controls the separation, refining, metal-making and magnet manufacturing that flip these minerals into sought-after technological inputs, leaving the remainder of the world scrambling to construct out infrastructure. But as an alternative of working collectively to loosen China’s grip on critical-mineral provide chains, the US and Europe are competing with one another for a similar scarce property.