China shares a small border with Afghanistan. Just enough to put in a fortified railway to ship all those electric car battery minerals (that sleepy Joe is mandating) to China.

Follow the money trail. It never lets you down..

Lynda

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The immediate consequences of U.S. President Joe Biden’s botched exit from Afghanistan may be just political but its economic impact will ripple across several advanced industries in the years to come. Biden may have just gifted China an opportunity to grab Afghanistan’s considerable reserves of rare earth metals, including the world’s largest lithium deposits, and cement its domination of the market for these crucial minerals.

Director of emerging market debt at asset management firm AllianceBernstein, Shamaila Khan told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that minerals in Afghanistan “can be exploited,” and with the Taliban now in control of those valuable resources, it is a “very dangerous proposition for the world.” Khan added that at this point, the international community should watch China closely if it seeks to become allies with the Taliban after the militant group captured Kabul on Sunday.

Afghanistan has large reserves of lithium, neodymium, silver, gold, mercury, and other valuable elements, said Ahmad Shah Katawazai, a former diplomat at the Afghan Embassy in Washington D.C. He said rare earths in the country were estimated to be valued between $1 trillion and $3 trillion last year. An internal Department of Defense memo in 2010 called Afghanistan “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”

The Taliban has already called China a “welcome friend” in Afghanistan.

Rare earth metals are important for most advanced industries, from electric vehicles to satellites. The Financial Times reported in February that Beijing is planning export curbs on rare earths in order to hobble the U.S. defense manufacturing, including the F-35 stealth fighters.

Afghanistan’s lithium reserves, in particular, are considered important for the advancement of the clean energy sector. Lithium is an essential metal used for renewable energy products, and questions have been raised about how the Taliban will wager the largely untapped reserves.