Right now–in your home–you probably have hundreds of items that came from China. They are our biggest trading “partner” by far. But, as we evolve technologically, the most disturbing stat is our consumption of batteries from China. Coming out of COVID and, most recently, difficult foreign relations with China over the Taiwan sovereignty issue, the US imported $15 billion in batteries in 2023–so far. This represents a 58% increase over 2022. When you combine this to the fact that nearly 80% of the world’s lithium comes from China the obvious conclusion is–like it or not–we need them much more than they need us. The US and Canada are currently drilling in Nevada and other locales to find lithium deposits here and places that are more accessible than China. But that effort is slow and tedious. One operation in Nevada was actually been shut down for a while because a native plant was found to grow only in that area. Can you imagine allowing a single (useless in no way) plant to continue to exist rather than to forge ahead with lithium mining? It happened. Speaking of Taiwan, computer chip manufacturing is that country’s “bread and butter”. So we depend on Taiwan to support our tech growth on a grand scale. Think about this…if we continue to support Taiwan against China’s attempt to annex that country and China succeeds, the US could lose its access to BOTH lithium and computer chips for the immediate future. So, the next time you hear China and lithium mentioned in the same sentence you might want to ramp up your attention.
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