We must loosen China’s chokehold on battery supply chains

Excerpt

A ceasefire in the U.S.-China trade war doesn’t change the fact that Americans are subject to Beijing’s whims when it comes to critical supplies of everything from magnets to minerals. This is not an accident but is the result of decades of Beijing’s deliberate practices to build monopolies, dominate supply chains, stifle competition, and foster resource dependencies. 

But the U.S. and its allies can break China’s stranglehold on the battery supply chain, if they work together now to build the components and mine the minerals that go into advanced batteries, while fighting back against China’s market manipulation.

In our new report, Unplugging Beijing: A Playbook to Reclaim America’s Advanced Battery Supply Chains, we lay out the scale and scope of China’s non-market practices in battery supply chains — dumping, price manipulation, intellectual property theft, monopolies, and forced technology transfers — and, more importantly, say what America can do about it.

Elaine Dezenski is senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Joshua Birenbaum serves as deputy director.