Mines

While China has most of the rare earth metals used in modern electronics they not only mine the ore they process the ore into usable metals. Countries, including the United States, sends ore to China for processing. China also mines materials needed for EV batteries but they receive some ore from Australia and Africa and then they process the ore into materials needed for the batteries. In the final step they manufacture the batteries. The administration has stated that 50% of all cars must be electric by 2030. There are currently 2 million EV's in the US among the 280 million cars. Not counting any new growth over the next eight years it means that the number of electric cars must increase from 2 million to 140 million. That represents a 70 fold increase. Just looking at cobalt as one of the metals needed the problem is brought into focus. 70% of the worlds supply of cobalt comes from the Congo in Africa. As of 2022 there are 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children, some as young as six years old. A 70 fold increase means 2.8 million children working in the mines. This job entails having children pick up rocks and put them in bags and then placing the bags on a truck. Are people who are driving EV's and promoting EV's aware of these cobalt mines.