Being harvested by all, except the USA. Rare Earth Elements: Why the U.S. is missing out on the race to mine trillions of dollars worth of metals from the ocean floor - 60 Minutes - CBS News
^ Yup. And what a cover story it was, too. Project Azorian - Wikipedia read Building and Cover story first.
From: https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-rare-earths.pdf Although, technical reserves for the U.S. sit roughly at 1.4M metric tons (China has 44M by comparison). Still, the problem has been price, not availability. China can and does undercut US rare earth mining costs, making them economically unprofitable to dig them out of the ground. Don't see that changing if we try to mine them from the ocean floor instead.
