Varun Sivaram, Noah Gordon, and Daniel Helmeci
Introduction
The United States battery industry has fallen dangerously behind the global leaders. A cornerstone of the modern economy, batteries are essential and ubiquitous across consumer electronics such as cellphones, military equipment such as drones, and clean energy products such as electric vehicles (EVs) and power grid storage installations.
Over the past decade, China has come to dominate this critical industry. Across every stage of the value chain for current-generation lithium-ion battery technologies, from mineral extraction and processing to battery manufacturing, China’s share of the global market is 70–90 percent.1 Japan and South Korea, once world leaders in battery technology and production, now hold minority market shares, and the United States is in a distant fourth place. As a result, the United States almost entirely relies on Asian imports for the batteries widely used today.
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