China's Upper Hand: Rare Earth Metals

Summary

Summary of "China's Upper Hand: Rare Earth Metals" – The Daily
Release Date: June 10, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Daily, hosted by Natalie Kitroeff, the focus is on the pivotal role of rare earth metals in the ongoing trade tensions between the United States and China. Natalie is joined by her colleague, Keith Bradshaw, who provides an in-depth analysis of how the U.S. became heavily reliant on China for these critical materials and the implications of China’s recent export restrictions.

The Significance of Rare Earth Metals

Natalie Kitroeff introduces the topic by highlighting that the central issue in the U.S.-China trade war revolves around a select group of rare earth metals. These elements are not only scarce but also crucial for both industrial and military applications. China’s recent decision to restrict exports of these metals poses significant threats to U.S. industries and national security.

Keith Bradshaw elaborates on what rare earths are, explaining that while some, like lanthanum and cerium, are relatively common and used in applications such as oil refining and glass polishing, others like dysprosium, gadolinium, and samarium are much rarer and predominantly controlled by China. He emphasizes their importance in manufacturing powerful magnets essential for electric vehicles, aircraft, and military hardware. For instance, samarium is vital for producing magnets that can withstand high temperatures, making it indispensable for fighter jets and missiles.
“These rare earths now are critical both to the economy and to national security.” [05:19]

Historical Context and China's Dominance

Natalie probes into how the U.S. became dependent on China for rare earths. Keith traces the history back to the 1980s and 1990s when the United States, alongside Japan, led in rare earth mining and magnet technology. The Mountain Pass mine in California was the primary source until it shut down in 1998 due to environmental issues and high cleanup costs.
“China had been ramping up its own rare earth production through the 1980s through the 1990s, doing it very cheaply without a lot of environmental compliance at all.” [06:44]

As China's production surged, legal and illicit operations proliferated. Keith describes the rudimentary and often illegal methods used in China’s rare earth mining, involving simple techniques like "bucket chemistry" that rely on corrupt local officials to bypass environmental regulations.
“It's very straightforward. It's called bucket chemistry... All it really takes is a corrupt local politician willing to look the other way.” [10:41]

The 2010 Embargo and Its Aftermath

In 2010, China leveraged its dominance by imposing an embargo on rare earth exports to Japan amid a territorial dispute, causing significant disruption. Keith explains that Japan responded by investing heavily in alternative sources and stockpiling rare earths, effectively reducing its dependence on China.
“The embargo was so traumatic that the government and the companies said never again. The companies began pouring money into building stockpiles...” [16:01]

Contrastingly, the U.S. struggled to maintain momentum in developing domestic sources. Efforts to reopen the Mountain Pass mine were thwarted by a glut of cheap rare earths flooding the market from China, leading to its bankruptcy in 2015.
“The mine ended up closing again the next year in 2015, and went bankrupt.” [18:33]

Current Scenario and U.S. Response

Fast forward to 2025, China has again restricted exports of rare earths, significantly impacting U.S. industries and military capabilities. In response, the U.S. has exerted pressure through various measures, including halting sales of jet engines to Chinese competitors and limiting visa issuances to Chinese students.
“The US has stopped selling jet engines... and also mobilized a battalion of 700 Marines to the city.” [20:06]
“Almost entirely, actually.” [20:58]

Keith assesses that while these pressures have led China to resume some exports, the volumes remain insufficient for long-term U.S. self-sufficiency.
“China may not allow enough rare earths to be exported for people to build stockpiles...” [21:00]

Long-Term Solutions and Industrial Policy

The dialogue shifts to potential solutions. Keith argues that achieving self-sufficiency requires significant industrial policy changes in the U.S., including:

• Domestic Production: Reestablishing rare earth mining and processing facilities.
• Long-Term Contracts: Encouraging U.S. companies to commit to long-term agreements with non-Chinese suppliers, even at higher costs.
• Tariffs: Implementing sustained tariffs on Chinese rare earth imports to incentivize domestic and allied production.

“A long term solution requires... producing these kinds of rare earths in the United States...” [23:44]
“Another way you can force them to buy American magnets... to discourage customers in the United States from choosing Chinese suppliers...” [24:10]

Natalie connects this scenario to broader geopolitical strategies, suggesting that Trump’s previous policies may have inadvertently exacerbated the dependence on China by targeting their strategic vulnerabilities.
“Trump kind of did the worst thing possible for the American manufacturers that he says he's trying to help...” [24:38]

Keith expands on the potential shift in global manufacturing dynamics, where companies might relocate production away from China to regions like Mexico, Vietnam, or India to mitigate risks associated with over-reliance on Chinese rare earths.
“We might see companies... move our purchasing contracts to Mexico and Vietnam and India...” [26:26]

Conclusion

The episode underscores the critical vulnerability of the U.S. and allied nations due to dependence on China's rare earth metals. It highlights the urgent need for strategic industrial policies to rebuild domestic capacities and diversify supply chains to enhance national security and economic resilience.

“This is proving it all over again. In fact, you could make a case there are few worse examples of misplaced industrial policy than how America has handled its rare earths dependence.” [27:43]

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Key Takeaways

• Rare Earth Metals: Essential for modern technology and military applications, with China controlling the majority of their supply.
• Historical Dependence: The decline of U.S. rare earth production in the late 1990s led to increased reliance on China.
• Geopolitical Leverage: China's export restrictions serve as a strategic tool in trade negotiations.
• Need for Policy Intervention: Reestablishing domestic production and diversifying supply chains are crucial for reducing vulnerability.
• Global Implications: Other countries reliant on U.S. defense exports may also face challenges due to rare earth restrictions.

Notable Quotes

• “These rare earths now are critical both to the economy and to national security.” – Keith Bradshaw [05:19]
• “It's like making coffee... the hill is like coffee grounds.” – Keith Bradshaw [09:34]
• “China might have bungled this in a different way...” – Keith Bradshaw [26:12]
• “Few worse examples of misplaced industrial policy than how America has handled its rare earths dependence.” – Keith Bradshaw [27:43]

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This comprehensive exploration by The Daily illuminates the intricate web of global dependencies on rare earth metals and the pressing need for strategic reforms to safeguard economic and national security interests.

Transcript

[Ray Dalio]

Legendary investor Ray Dalio's new book, how Countries Go the Big Cycle, explains the mechanics behind big debt crises. Larry Summers says Dalio's brilliant, iconoclastic approach is an invaluable resource. And Hank Paulson says it provides a solution to what is the biggest and most certain threat to our prosperity. Read it to understand the greatest economic issue of our time available now, wherever books are sold.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

From the New York Times, this is the Daily. I'm Natalie Kitroweff. In the ongoing trade war between the US And China, the biggest sticking point is a handful of metals that are extremely rare, essential to the US and almost entirely under the control of China. The problem is China has now cut off America's access to those metals, threatening US Industry and its military. Today, my colleague Keith Bradshaw explains how the US Became so dependent on China for these metals in the first place and just how hard it'll be to live without them. It's Tuesday, June 10th. Keith, it is lovely to see you again.

[Keith Bradshaw]

It's great to be back. Thank you.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

So it's Monday evening. Delegations for the US And China met in London today to try to hash out a deal to deescalate this trade war. There's going to be another set of meetings on Tuesday. And at the heart of these negotiations, we know, are these rare earth metals. China essentially banned shipments of them to the US in early April, and that's caused a lot of problems. You, Keith, have been covering this industry from inside of China for many, many years, which, I mean, respect. But if you would ask me a year ago whether we'd be doing an entire daily episode on this, I might not have believed you. So tell me about this rare earths business.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Well, first, just as an overview, the Rariths industry has it all. It's got murderous gangsters, acid pits, dirt bikes, American defense contractors, electric cars, clean energy, possibly mass layoffs in the U.S. economy. You name it, this industry's got it.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Wow, you had me at dirt bikes, Keith.

[Keith Bradshaw]

The dirt bikes we're going to get to. First, what are these rare earths? These are elements near the bottom of the periodic table that everybody saw on their classroom walls even if they didn't pay attention to them. And some of these rare earths really aren't that rare. You've got lanthanum, which is used at oil refineries to separate the oil into the gasoline and the diesel and the jet fuel and so forth. You've got cerium, which is used for polishing glass for your camera lenses. But there are seven rare earth Elements that are considerably less common. China completely dominates the world's supply of them. It mines most of them and processes almost 100% of them. Those seven are dysprosium, gadolinium, lutetium, samarium, scandium, terbium, and yttrium.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Okay, some of us may have never heard of scandium before, but, but it sounds like these are both very rare and very important. What do they go into? Give me a sense here of why we should care about these things.

[Keith Bradshaw]

These elements are used in many products that have changed our lives. They're in aircraft parts, they're in lasers. They are in the contrast agent that's used when you go to the hospital for medical imaging. And the most important and fastest growing uses are for very powerful magnets. You can make a rare earth magnet that is 15 times as strong as an old fashioned steel magnet. Take a car, for example. If you went back quite a few years, you had to move the car seat back and forth manually. These days, a single luxury car seat may have 12 separate motors to do all kinds of little adjustments to that seat. Your thigh adjustment, your lower back adjustment, the tilt of the back of the seat. All these things these days have little electric motors. And each of those has a rare earth magnet. And it's not just limited to cars. For example, the seventh of these rare earth elements, samarium, has lots of military applications because it can stay strongly magnetic even at temperatures that will melt lead. And as a result, samarium magnets, you find 50 pounds of them in an F35 stealth jet. You find them in missiles, you find them in drones, you find them in smart bombs. Really, these rare earths now are critical both to the economy and to national security.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Okay, so I want to understand, Keith, how we got to a situation where China has near total control over the supply of these metals and magnets that are so important where we're at their whim, how did this happen?

[Keith Bradshaw]

What's particularly striking is that it was the United States and a little bit Japan that invented these amazing magnet technologies using rare earths. They really came out of General Motors research in the 1980s. And in the 1990s, the US was making these magnets in Indiana, and it was mining much of the world's rare earths for those magnets right in the United States at Mountain Pass, California, which is close to the California Nevada border. It's out in the desert. I've been there. Beautiful place. Anyway, that mine in Mountain Pass was the world's largest and even main mine for producing rare earths. For decades. In fact, the europium, a different rare earth element from that mine, put the color red in the early color televisions.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Wow.

[Keith Bradshaw]

But in 1998, that mine was forced to close. It stopped production.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Why? Why did it stop production?

[Keith Bradshaw]

It turned out that it had a pipeline that leaked traces of heavy metals and a faint radioactive residue in a desert area, including where there were a few rare tortoises. And the cost of the cleanup and of improving the environmental compliance was more than the owners of the mine could afford. So the mine shut down. And meanwhile, China had been ramping up its own rare earth production through the 1980s through the 1990s, doing it very cheaply without a lot of environmental compliance at all. And many big businesses were welcoming China's decision to join the World trade organization in 2001. And so the feeling was that this was the beginning of a closer economic integration with China.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Right. This is the heyday of free trade orthodoxy. I mean, this is the moment for optimism around this. And I'd imagine that the US closing its only mine for rare earths, ceding the field to China, makes for a pretty big business opportunity over there for businesses that want to get into this.

[Keith Bradshaw]

That's exactly right. So a lot of people saw a chance to make money and set up their own mines and processing facilities, both legal businesses and also organized crime.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Tell me about that, Keith. Why organized crime?

[Keith Bradshaw]

These rare earths are not that hard to mine. Doesn't take lots of big sophisticated equipment. And they were being mined, in the case of the best ore deposits of all, in a poor province in south central China with a reputation for corruption. Let me tell you how they mine them. You get a guy with a dirt bike, he carries.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

This is where the dirt bikes come in.

[Keith Bradshaw]

That's exactly right. You get a guy with a dirt bike and a drives up the side of a pine covered red clay hill, digs a small hole in the dirt, dumps in a sack of cream colored powder, it's ammonium sulfate. In less concentrated versions, it's actually a fertilizer. And then he dumps a bunch of water in it. And as it percolates down through the inside of the hill, it dissolves a lot of the rare earths with it and it begins coming out the bottom of the hill. Just because water eventually comes out somewhere.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

It'S just like making coffee.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Yes. Wow. I never heard that explanation before. That is exact. That is exactly what it's doing. The hill is like coffee grounds. The coffee is coming out the bottom of the hill into a pit you dig in the clay and you dump in a lot of oxalic acid into the slurry, and that causes the rare earths to settle out as faintly pink crystals on the bottom of the clay pit. So then you dump out all the remaining acid and other liquid and contaminants into the creek, let the faintly pink crystals dry. Then from there, after the different rare earths are separated from each other, they're taken to the magnet factories in Ganzhou and turned into these extraordinarily powerful magnets. But the first stages of that process easily lend themselves to criminal activity.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Because it's straightforward to do this is what you're saying.

[Keith Bradshaw]

It's very straightforward. It's called bucket chemistry. Doesn't take a lot of resources to do it. All it really takes is a corrupt local politician willing to look the other way as you start digging holes in public lands and dumping chemicals in them and pumping out what comes out of the bottom of the hillside.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

I have to say, it really reminds me of when I saw fentanyl being made when I was reporting in Mexico. Just as an aside, there's something similar about the bucket chemistry of it all.

[Keith Bradshaw]

It's a good comparison, because some of these rare earths sell for hundreds of dollars per kilogram.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

So it's also lucrative.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Yes, there's a lot of money in it. When I first started covering this industry in 2009, the buyers used to be taken in the trunks of cars so that they wouldn't know where they were going. To a secret warehouse in Guangzhou, and then they'd climb out of the trunk and they'd be shown the various merchandise. So this was a very dubious industry.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

A wild west, it sounds like. My question is, were American companies getting their metals from these kind of rogue producers?

[Keith Bradshaw]

What's remarkable is that companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, everybody depended on these very dubious rare earth value chains. But nobody was clear on where their rare earths were coming from. How much was from legal mines, how much was from illegal mines. At the same time, demand for these rare earths was exploding as companies found more and more uses for them. So by 2004, China had acquired an almost complete grip on the entire supply chain for rare earths and rare earth magnets. But then, in 2010, China shocked the world. Our top story. Several tiny uninhabited islands in the East China Sea are at the heart of an escalating dispute between China and Japan. China and Japan were arguing over who owned a small group of uninhabited islands north of Taiwan.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Beijing's countermeasures took aim at the heart.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Of the Japanese economy, and China suddenly imposed a total embargo on any shipments of rare earths to Japan, which at the time really played the central role in making the magnets and many other technologies. Industry Minister Ohata said it's clear Japan is ill prepared to lose its supply of rare earth metals, and these factories were producing a lot of the basic industrial materials that in turn then went to the United States, Europe, South Korea and elsewhere. Frankly, this story is about the rare earth exports being held up as a kind of leverage that I thought went out with the Cold War 20 years ago. And the embargo lasted for two months. But this incident, which really shook Japan and to some extent the US resulted in both countries taking actions on rare earths, although what Japan did would prove much more effective than the American response.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

We'll be right back.

[Ray Dalio]

Legendary investor Ray Dalio's new book, how Countries Go the Big Cycle, explains the mechanics behind big debt crises. Larry Summers says Dalio's brilliant, iconoclastic approach is an invaluable resource. And Hank Paulson says it provides a solution to what is the biggest and most certain threat to our prosperity. Read it to understand the greatest economic issue of our time available now wherever books are sold.

[Chris Wood]

Hi there. I'm Chris Wood, audio engineer on the Daily. That means that I put the finishing touches on the show, make everything sound a little bit better, and hit publish on my computer. That sends the day's episode out into the world so it's ready before most of our listeners wake up. So the Daily team makes a show every weekday that can mean late nights, and that's when they pass it off to me. Part of the reason that I'm able to do the work with a clear head is that it's not the middle of the night for me. You might have already guessed from my accent. I live in London and we're five hours ahead of New York. The Daily is only possible because it involves people all over the world, and that includes the whole fleet of New York Times journalists who give us their expert analysis and in depth reporting five days a week. So if you're a loyal listener and want to support what we do, as well as explore everything that the New York Times has to offer, you can [e-mail] subscribe. Cheers.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Let's talk about Japan's response. What does Japan do after this embargo?

[Keith Bradshaw]

For Japan, the embargo was so traumatic that the government and the companies said never again. The companies began pouring money into building stockpiles of these rare earths. And the government, in cooperation with one of the big trading companies of Japan, began providing the financing for a big mine to be dug in Australia and for mineral processing then to be done in Malaysia. So those moves reduced considerably Japan's dependence on China.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Interesting. So Japan decided to try to become self sufficient because of all of this. What did the US do in the.

[Keith Bradshaw]

United States, there was a lot of talk about taking action about ending American dependence on Chinese rare earths.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

The bottom line is China is cornering the market on rare earth materials, and we, the United States, are falling behind.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Some members of Congress were expressing a lot of concern about it in late 2010.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

The fact is that they're called rare earth for a reason. They are rare.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State then, expressed strong concern.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

The world as a whole needs to find new sources, which we will be pursuing.

[Keith Bradshaw]

And investors started to see rare earths as an attractive possibility. This is Mountain Pass mine. It's over 50 years old, currently getting ready to go back into operation. At the Mountain Pass mine in California, a billion dollars were spent on very elaborate environmental precautions. There were points in our history that we are not proud of. Environmentally. We have learned from those issues and we have redesigned our processes to make sure that mine finally reopened in 2014. But something else was happening at the same time. The bottom falling out in rare earth equities. China released a flood of additional rare earths into world markets. And that flood of rare earths pushed the prices way down. It wasn't possible for the Mountain Pass Mine to earn enough money selling rare earths at these low prices to pay back its debts. And so the mine ended up closing again the next year in 2015, and went bankrupt.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

But was that not an issue in Japan, this influx of cheap metals from China?

[Keith Bradshaw]

It was an issue. And the Japanese companies were willing to pay a little more to get production that they knew wouldn't be interrupted from Australia. And the Japanese corporate and government alliance was willing to keep lending money to make sure that the Australians didn't go out of business.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Basically, what we're talking about here is industrial policy, right? Japan showed a willingness to prop up an industry that may not be profitable, but is seen as critical to national interests.

[Keith Bradshaw]

That's exactly right. The United States tried to do the same, but after a few years, as sometimes happens, people began to lose interest. There wasn't the same enthusiasm for maintaining a separate supply chain from China. So the US Sort of lost track of this issue. And then when China suddenly halted supplies in April 4. That failure to keep track of it came back to haunt the United States.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Right here we are today facing another situation in which China is restricting the export of rare earths, putting the US And a lot of countries in a really difficult position. So what does the US do now? What are the steps the administration has taken?

[Keith Bradshaw]

We've seen considerable pressure by the United States on China to allow an immediate resumption of rare earth exports. The American and European carmakers need these rare earths, and China has begun allowing some of them out as the US has put on the pressure. Now, what kind of pressure are we talking about? The US has stopped selling jet engines to the commercial aircraft that China is starting to build in competition with Boeing. The United States has also halted the delivery of some computer chip design equipment to China. And the US Briefly said that it would stop issuing many visas to Chinese students to put pressure on China to get more of these rare earths.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

I had no idea that the potential limitations on Chinese students coming to the US were part of this negotiation.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Almost entirely, actually.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Keith, what do you think of this pressure campaign? How likely is it to succeed?

[Keith Bradshaw]

Well, it has been a way to show China that the US Is very serious about the rare earth issue and that the US Also has cards to play that the two countries need each other in many ways. And so the US Effort has helped lead to the talks now underway in London. The real question is what kind of an agreement can be reached going forward. So for that, it's likely we're going to see China resuming commercial supplies of rare earths to the West. The difficulty, however, is that China may not allow enough rare earths to be exported for people to build stockpiles so that they know the next time China cuts off supplies, they won't run out immediately. So we'll likely see continued limits on the volumes, even for commercial and then for national security uses, for military uses, it may be extremely difficult to persuade China to resume shipments of samarium, which are needed for all of these fighter jets, missiles and so forth, and are needed not just by the United States, but for weapons deliveries to places like Ukraine or Israel or Taiwan.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

So this doesn't just make the US Vulnerable, it actually has these ripple effects where there's all these other countries that rely on the US for weapons that may also be squeezed because of this.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Absolutely.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

And it sounds like even in the best case scenario for the US where the pressure campaign works and China starts letting these metals back in, even in that scenario, the US has not addressed the longer term issue Here like that wouldn't do anything to wean the US off of China for these rare earths.

[Keith Bradshaw]

That's right. A long term solution requires, first of all, producing these kinds of rare earths in the United States, producing the magnets that come from these kinds of rare earths in the United States, and then making sure that new production doesn't just close down again in a couple of years as happened the last time around. So how do you keep that production going? Well, first of all, American companies need to be willing to sign very long term contracts for magnets and so forth from suppliers that are not in China, even if that means agreeing in the long term to pay a somewhat higher.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Price, which seems difficult.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Yes, but there's another way you can force them to buy American magnets, and that would be to put lasting high tariffs on imports of rare earths and rare earth magnets from China to discourage customers in the United States from choosing Chinese suppliers and to encourage them to buy American products instead.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

So just stepping back here, it seems like one way you could look at this is that Trump kind of did the worst thing possible for the American manufacturers that he says he's trying to help, which is that he essentially provoked China to hit them right at their Achilles heel, where they're most vulnerable, which is their reliance on China for these extremely rare and important metals.

[Keith Bradshaw]

That's one of the two theories, is that the administration has triggered a crisis for American manufacturing. And to take it farther, that some American manufacturers might conclude that it's safer to start making their entire brake motors or steering motors or other systems in China just to make sure that those motors can get enough magnets. In fact, that's what happened after the 2010 crisis. A lot of companies did move, for example, magnet manufacturing into China because they said, well, boy, if I can't get the rares out of China, then I better be making my magnets in China. Because in the 2010 crisis, China did not restrict the export of magnets, it just restricted the raw materials. Now it's taking the second step, restricting rare earths and magnets. So then some companies are beginning to say, well, maybe we need to make the whole motors in China. That's one theory. The other theory, however, is that China might have bungled this in a different way, which is that American companies, and for that matter, European companies and Japanese companies might say, we can no longer really trust China with a big role in our supply chains and we need to move a lot of production out of China. It is possible that what we'll see is companies, for example, automakers might say we why are we buying all of our starters and so many of our fuel injection systems and so forth from China if on any day because of a geopolitical dispute, they might cut us off and shut down all our factories?

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Right.

[Keith Bradshaw]

And so you might see American companies and Japanese companies and European companies say, okay, that's the last straw and we're going to move our purchasing contracts to Mexico and Vietnam and India and places like that.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Yeah. It's funny. Like another way you could see this is that the episode itself highlights just how dependent we are on Chinese imports and how vulnerable that makes us. And that is sort of a central tenet of Trump's theory of the US Relationship with China. The question is, again, can you go the Japan route in the United States? Can you really design some policies here that prioritize self sufficiency, national security over the profitability of a potential mine? Which seems like is difficult in the context where China dominates.

[Keith Bradshaw]

It's difficult in the United States because the history has been a reluctance to lend a lot of government money to a specific project like this mine. And then also because there's been quite a bit of hostility to tariffs.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Right. Industrial policy is not something that America has done particularly well.

[Keith Bradshaw]

No. And this is proving it all over again. In fact, you could make a case there are few worse examples of misplaced industrial policy than how America has handled its rare earths dependence.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Keith, thanks for coming on the show.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Really good to talk to you. Natalie, always my pleasure.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

We'll be right back.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Foreign.

[Ray Dalio]

Legendary investor Ray Dalio's new book, how Countries Go the Big Cycle explains the mechanics behind big debt crises. Larry Summers says Dalio's brilliant, iconoclastic approach is an invaluable resource. And Hank Paulson says it provides a solution to what is the biggest and most certain threat to our prosperity. Read it to understand the greatest economic issue of our time available now wherever books are sold.

[Eric Kim]

Hi, this is Eric Kim with New York Times Cooking. As a recipe developer, I spend a lot of my time trying to come up with dishes that are quick, easy, but also very special. For me, that means dishes like gochugaru salmon. It's a crispy salmon filet with a salty sweet glaze that bubbles the in up in candies. I love cooking this because it only takes 20 minutes. You can get this recipe and so many more ideas on New York times cooking. Visit nytcooking.com to get inspired.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Here's what else you need to know today. Protests over deportation Roundups continued for a fourth day in Los Angeles and spread to other cities as tensions rose over the Trump administration's aggressive response to the demonstrations. On Monday, the Pentagon ordered an extra 2,000 National Guard troops to be sent to LA, double the number already on the ground, and also mobilized a battalion of 700 Marines to the city. Meanwhile, the feud between President Trump and California Governor Gavin Newsom intensified. California sued the Trump administration to stop the deployment of National Guard troops, arguing that it violated the Constitution. Newsom told the Times the deployment was, quote, a provocation and said many of the 2,000 soldiers already dispatched to the city were not being put to work. And after the president's border czar, Tom Homan, suggested the administration was prepared to arrest Newsom if he interfered with his immigration enforcement, Newsom hit back.

[Keith Bradshaw]

Come after me, arrest me. Let's just get it over with, tough guy.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

And U.S. health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Fired all 17 members of a committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on immunization. The panel wields enormous influence, and its recommendations determine vaccine coverage for insurance companies, companies and government programs like Medicaid. Kennedy's decision directly contradicts a promise he made during his confirmation hearings when he said he would not alter the committee. Today's episode was produced by Mary Wilson, Alex Stern and Stella Tan. It was edited by Lisa Chow and Chris Haxel, contains original music by Diane Wong and Dan Powell and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landswerk of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily. I'm Natalie Kitroweff. See you tomorrow.

[Ray Dalio]

Legendary investor Ray Dalio's new book, how Countries Go the Big Cycle, explains the mechanics behind big debt crises. Larry Summers says Dalio's brilliant, iconoclastic approach is an invaluable resource. And Hank Paulson says it provides a solution to what is the biggest and most certain threat to our prosperity. Read it to understand the greatest economic issue of our time available now. Wherever books are sold.