Companies: Where shortages of rare earths hit German industry particularly hard
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Reading time: 5 min.
|Defense goods, electric cars, renewable energy, and high-tech: Many sectors are vital without rare earths. Due to China's export controls, some materials are in short supply in Germany.
Anyone seeking to produce high-tech products can hardly avoid the so-called rare earths. The 17 elements grouped under this name are among the basic resources of German industry. This applies especially to those sectors considered to be of the future, including, more recently, the defense industry. Nervousness there is growing by the day, as the trade war between China , the USA, and the EU is now leading to serious shortages of some rare earth elements – and this is threatening production.
süeddeutsche
