Also: Classroom tech & Carbon Emissions

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Expert analysis made easy. Breaking down the news with data, charts, and maps.

Edited by Brady Africk and Hannah Bowen

Happy Thursday! In today’s newsletter, we examine China’s trade strategies and rare earth export controls, the impact of technology on American classrooms, and how the global impact of carbon emissions is measured.

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1. Beijing's Rare Earths Edge

01 Miller ([link removed] )

Topline: After the Dutch government took control of Nexperia, a Netherlands-based, Chinese-owned chipmaker, Beijing paused overseas sales of the company’s chips. These chips are used by 49 percent of European auto companies, 95 percent of the mechanical engineering sector, and the continent’s entire defense industry. If China does not reopen Nexperia’s exports, AEI’s Chris Miller warns ([link removed] ) that the Western manufacturing base will face critical supply-chain shortages.

Rare Earth Restrictions: Beyond the Nexperia pause, China’s most recent round of export controls has Europe caught in the crossfire. Beijing expanded restrictions on rare earth exports—driving up prices, making non-Chinese manufacturing less competitive, and renewing fears of a rare earth magnet shortage. President Trump has countered China’s trade maneuvers with tariffs, but Europe has now become the center of the supply-chain struggle.

Economic Warfare: Economic warfare presents two primary challenges: knowledge and asymmetric costs. Governments often have poor visibility into the depth of their own supply chains and struggle to find economic maneuvers that induce higher costs on their rivals. While President Trump remains sensitive to elections and stock market reactions, China’s Xi Jinping can choke off rare earths to desperate global manufacturers with fewer political repercussions.

"But as China drip feeds rare earths to desperate manufacturers abroad, 'just in time' is central to Beijing’s strategy to keep global multinationals hooked on its supply.”—Chris Miller ([link removed] )

More on China & Trade
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2. Dangers of Digital Learning

02 Buck ([link removed] )

Topline: Approximately 14 million of the 50 million public school students in the US spend nearly every minute staring at a screen. According to an Education Week survey ([link removed] ) , 55 percent of American students spend between one and four hours of class time on screens, and 27 percent spend five or more hours. AEI’s Daniel Buck makes the case ([link removed] ) that the reliance of the US education system on screens and devices has become more harmful than helpful to students and learning.

Learning Devices: Since the early 2000s, screens have slowly infiltrated the education system, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed technological reliance to new levels. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, two-thirds of high schools and 40 percent of elementary schools provided devices to their students. After the pandemic, however, those numbers soared to 90 and 84 percent, respectively.

Education’s Future: Students across the country have faced an increase in anxiety and depression, rewired brains that struggle to focus, lower academic achievement, and loneliness since technology has permeated the classroom experience. Buck argues that while 21st century students need the skills and experience in technology to be literate and prepared for life after school, this does not mean that all learning needs to be delivered through screens and technology. In fact, research suggests students learn best when work and notes are completed by hand.

"Technology has done wonders for the advancement of humanity, but that’s not a reason to bring a phone to family dinner or a computer to story time before bed. Neither is it a justification to force every new, untested technology into the hands of students.”—Daniel Buck ([link removed] )

More on Technology in Classrooms
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3. Understanding Carbon Emissions

03 Pielke ([link removed] )

Topline: Carbon dioxide is emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere through a multitude of human activities—like burning coal, oil, or natural gas—and the danger of these emissions remains a contentious debate among policymakers. AEI’s Roger Pielke Jr. illustrates ([link removed] ) the accumulation of carbon emissions in the atmosphere by comparing it to water filling a bathtub that will eventually overflow. Climate policy has varied between trying to stabilize the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and avoiding global temperature increases.

The Kaya Identity: The Kaya Identity is a formula that breaks down global carbon emissions into four factors that paint a picture of how societal growth interacts with our emissions levels:

1. Population

2. GDP per capita

3. Energy intensity of the economy

4. Carbon intensity of energy

These four factors also establish a framework for understanding the possible options for reducing carbon emissions.

Long-Run Possibilities: Improving energy intensity and carbon intensity are the only viable ways to reduce carbon emissions. Energy intensity improves when our economies reduce carbon-hungry activity and when we more efficiently use energy. Improvements in carbon intensity come from getting more power from low-carbon energy sources. In practice, this means moving toward net zero by reducing or replacing energy consumption from our most carbon-intensive energy sources.

"There are however longstanding debates over how much added carbon dioxide might be “dangerous,” in the language of the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (to which the United States is a signatory). That is equivalent to debating how high the side of the bathtub is, and at which point the filling tub overflows and becomes a damaging house flood.”—Roger Pielke Jr. ([link removed] )

More on Carbon Emissions
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Dive Into More Data

04 Malkus ([link removed] )

Daily Student Attendance ([link removed] )

More on Absenteeism
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05 Stirewalt ([link removed] )

The Cost of the Government Shutdown ([link removed] )

More on the Government Shutdown
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Special thanks to Isabella Grunspan and Drew Kirkpatrick!

Thanks for reading. We will be back with more data next Thursday!

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