What are 'rare earths' for?

This broad category includes dozens of materials such as cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite, and lithium -- as well as "rare earths," a set of 17 metallic elements that are essential to many high-tech devices and whose production is dominated by China. Neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium Global raw production of rare earths increased from 220,000 tonnes in 2019 to 390,000 tonnes in 2024 -- an increase of 77 percent over five years, according to a benchmark commodities report by French research group Cercle CyclOpe.