Two decades ago, factories in Indiana that turned rare earth metals into magnets moved production to China — just as demand for the magnets was starting to soar for everything from cars and semiconductors to fighter jets and robots.

二十年前，印第安纳州将稀土金属转化为磁铁的工厂纷纷将生产线迁至中国，当时恰逢汽车、半导体、战斗机和机器人等各种产品对磁铁的需求开始飙升。

The United States is now reckoning with the cost of losing that supply chain. The Chinese government abruptly halted exports of rare earth magnets to any country on April 4 as part of its trade war with the United States.

美国现在正在承受失去这条供应链的代价。作为中美贸易战的一部分，中国政府在4月4日突然停止了对所有国家的稀土磁铁出口。

American officials had expected that China would relax its restrictions on the magnets as part of the trade truce the two countries reached in mid-May. But on Friday, President Trump suggested that China had continued to limit access.

美国官员曾预计，作为两国在5月中旬达成的贸易休战协议的一部分，中国会放松对磁铁出口的限制。但上周五，特朗普总统暗示，中国仍在继续限制供应。

Now, American and European companies are running out of the magnets.

现在，美国和欧洲的企业正面临磁铁耗尽的困境。

American automakers are the hardest hit, with executives warning that production at factories across the Midwest and South could be cut back in the coming days and weeks. Carmakers need the magnets for the electric motors that run brakes, steering and fuel injectors. The motors in a single luxury car seat, for example, use as many as 12 magnets.

美国汽车制造商受到的冲击最大，高管们警告，未来几天、几周内，中西部和南部地区的工厂有可能减产。汽车制造商需要磁铁来生产驱动刹车、转向系统和燃油喷射器的电机。举例来说，一个豪华车座椅的电机就可能用到12块磁铁。

Factory robots depend on rare earth magnets, too.

工业机器人同样依赖稀土磁铁。

“This is America’s, and the world’s, Achilles’ heel, which China continuously exploits,” said Nazak Nikakhtar, who was the assistant secretary of commerce overseeing export controls during Mr. Trump’s first term.

“这是美国乃至全球的‘阿喀琉斯之踵’，而中国一直在利用这一点。”特朗普首届任期内负责出口管制的前商务部助理部长娜扎克·尼卡赫塔尔说。

中国龙南的一个稀土加工中心。

The Chinese government has said little lately about its rare earth export restrictions. Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that Mr. Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, could speak about trade as soon as this week, though no date had been set.

中国政府近期对稀土出口限制措施甚少表态。白宫国家经济委员会主任凯文·哈西特周日在ABC《本周》节目中透露，特朗普总统与中国领导人习近平最快将于本周就贸易问题通话，但具体日期尚未确定。

After China stopped all exports, it said that future shipments would require separate export licenses. China’s Ministry of Commerce has struggled since then to issue licenses. It gave a handful to European companies in mid-April and a few more for American companies last week, but world supplies are dwindling fast.

自全面停止稀土出口后，中国表示后续出口需逐项审批。自那以来，中国商务部在发放许可证方面一直进展缓慢。4月中旬，它向欧洲企业发放了少量许可证，上周又向几家美国公司发放了一些，但全球供应正在急剧萎缩。

“There are a few approvals coming through, but they are far from being sufficient to prevent imminent production halts,” said Jens Eskelund, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. “We are still facing a major disruption of supply chains.”

“虽然目前有少量申请获批，但远不足以防止即将到来的停产。”中国欧盟商会主席彦辞(Jens Eskelund)表示，“我们仍然面临着供应链的重大中断。”

To make matters worse, some Chinese rare earth magnet makers have stopped producing while waiting for permission to resume exports. The weekslong gap in magnet production is moving through supply chains and may soon reach manufacturers.

更糟糕的是，一些中国稀土磁铁制造商在等待出口许可期间已暂停生产。这种持续数周的生产空档正在向供应链下游传导，可能很快就会影响到制造商。

“China could bring America’s automotive assembly plants to a standstill,” said Michael Dunne, an automotive consultant specializing in China.

“中国可能让美国的汽车装配厂陷入瘫痪，”专门研究中国的汽车咨询师迈克尔·邓恩说。

China produces 90 percent of the world’s nearly 200,000 tons a year of high-performance rare earth magnets. Japanese companies produce most of the rest in Japan and Vietnam, mainly for Japanese manufacturers.

中国生产全球每年近20万吨高性能稀土磁铁的九成产量。剩余部分则主要由日本企业在本土及越南生产，主要供应日本制造商。

The United States produces practically none, although small factories will start full production this year in South Carolina and Texas. A succession of administrations has tried to restart the industry ever since China drew attention to its dominance by imposing a two-month embargo on shipments of rare earths to Japan during a territorial dispute in 2010.

尽管南卡罗来纳州和得克萨斯州的小型工厂今年将全面投产，美国在稀土磁铁方面几乎完全依赖进口。2010年中日领土争端期间，中国对日本实施了两个月的稀土禁运，引起人们对其主导地位的关注，此后多届美国政府试图重启本土产业。

But little has happened because of a gritty reality: Making rare earth magnets requires considerable investments at every stage of production. Yet the sales and profits are tiny.

但进展甚微，一个残酷的现实是：稀土磁铁生产的每个环节都需巨额投资，而销售额和利润却微不足道。

Worldwide sales of mined rare earths total only $5 billion a year. That is minuscule compared with $300 billion industries like copper mining or iron ore mining.

全球稀土矿年销售额仅50亿美元，与铜矿、铁矿等3000亿美元级的产业相比微不足道。

China has a formidable competitive advantage. The state-owned industry has few environmental compliance costs for its mines and an almost unlimited government budget for building huge processing refineries and magnet factories.

中国拥有巨大的竞争优势。这个国有产业几乎无需承担环保合规成本，并且拥有几乎无限的政府预算用于建设大型加工精炼厂和磁铁工厂。

Processing rare earths is technically demanding, but China has developed new processes. Rare earth chemistry programs are offered in 39 universities across the country, while the United States has no similar programs.

稀土加工技术门槛极高，但中国已开发出新的工艺。全国有39所大学开设了稀土化学专业，而美国没有类似的专业。

China refines over 99 percent of the world’s supply of so-called heavy rare earths, which are the least common kinds of rare earths. Heavy rare earths are essential for making magnets that can resist the high temperatures and electrical fields found in cars, semiconductors and many other technologies.

重稀土是最不常见的稀土种类，在这个领域，中国更掌控着全球超99%的精炼产能。这类稀土对制造耐高温、耐电场磁体至关重要，这些是汽车、半导体等许多技术领域所需要的特性。

The sole American rare earths mine, located in Mountain Pass, Calif., stopped producing in 1998 after traces of heavy metals and faintly radioactive material leaked from a desert pipeline. Chinese state-controlled companies tried three times without success to buy the defunct mine before it was acquired by American investors in 2008.

美国唯一的稀土矿位于加利福尼亚州的芒廷帕斯，1998年因一条沙漠管道泄漏出微量重金属和微弱放射性物质而停产。中国国有企业曾三次试图收购这个废弃矿山未果，最终由美国投资者于2008年接手。

A $1 billion Pentagon-backed investment program followed in 2010 to improve environmental compliance and expand the mine and its adjacent refinery. But the costly complex was unable to compete when it briefly reopened in 2014, and closed again the next year.

2010年，一项由五角大楼支持的10亿美元投资计划随之启动，旨在改善环保合规并扩大矿山及其毗邻的精炼厂。但这处耗资不菲的设施在2014年短暂重启后未能产生竞争力，于次年再度关闭。

MP Materials, a Chicago investor group that included a minority partner company partly owned by the Chinese government, bought the mine in 2017. The mine reopened the next year, but shipped its ore to China for the difficult task of separating the various kinds of rare earths.

2017年，芝加哥投资集团MP Materials（其小股东包括一家部分由中国政府持股的公司）收购该矿，次年重启开采，但仍将矿石运往中国进行高难度的稀土元素分离工序。

Only in recent months has the mine become able to chemically separate the rare earths in more than half its output. But this loses money because processing in China is so inexpensive.

直到最近几个月，该矿才实现过半产量的化学分离能力，但因中国加工成本极低，此项业务目前仍处于亏损状态。

MP Materials built the new factory in Texas that will turn separated rare earths into magnets.

MP Materials在得州建了新厂，把分离后的稀土转化为磁铁。

在马萨诸塞州伯灵顿的凤凰尾矿设施里，两名研究人员正在检查化学分离工艺，这是将稀土转化为金属锭的关键前序环节。

A considerable bottleneck lies in transforming separated rare earths into chemically pure metal ingots that can be fed into the furnaces of magnet-making machines. A New England start-up, Phoenix Tailings, is addressing that shortcoming, but its small scale underlines the challenge.

一个重大的瓶颈在于如何将分离后的稀土转化为可送入磁铁制造炉的纯金属锭。一家位于新英格兰地区的初创公司凤凰尾矿(Phoenix Tailings)正试图填补这一空白，但它的规模很小，也凸显了这个挑战的艰巨。

Phoenix Tailings has taken over much of the staff and equipment of Infinium, a start-up that had tried to do the same thing. Infinium ran out of money in 2020, when American policymakers were more focused on the Covid-19 pandemic than rare earths.

凤凰尾矿接手了曾尝试同一技术的初创公司Infinium的大部分员工和设备。Infinium在2020年耗尽资金，当时美国的政策制定者更关注新冠疫情而非稀土。

With Chinese rare earth minerals hard to get, Phoenix makes the metal from mine tailings: leftover material at mines that has already been processed once to remove another material, like iron.

由于中国稀土矿物难以获得，凤凰尾矿利用矿渣提取金属：这些矿渣是矿山在第一次加工过程中，为了提取其他物质（比如铁）而留下的废料。

Phoenix Tailings has four machines each the size of a small cottage at its factory in Burlington, Mass. Each one produces a 6.6-pound ingot every three hours around the clock. The operation’s overall capacity is 40 tons a year, said Nick Myers, Phoenix’s chief executive. He declined to identify the buyer but said it was an automotive company.

在马萨诸塞州伯灵顿的工厂，凤凰尾矿有四台机器，每台的尺寸都相当于一栋小木屋的大小。它们昼夜不停运转，每三小时可产出一块约3公斤的金属锭。公司首席执行官尼克·迈尔斯称年产能为40吨。他拒绝透露买家身份，但表示是一家汽车公司。

Phoenix is installing equipment at a larger site in Exeter, N.H., to produce metal at a rate of 200 tons a year — still tiny compared with Chinese factories that produce more than that in a month.

凤凰尾矿正在位于新罕布什尔州埃克塞特的一个更大厂区安装设备，目标年产能200吨——这仍然是一个不起眼的数字，不及中国工厂一个月的产量。

Thomas Villalón Jr., Phoenix’s chief technical officer, said that ramping up production quickly was important during a trade war: “It’s a race right now.”

该公司首席技术官小托马斯·比利亚隆说，在贸易战背景下加速产能扩张至关重要：“眼下这就是一场赛跑。”