Japan Plans to Inject $80B into Private Industries to Cut Rare Earth Dependency

Japan just announced that they are planning to inject approximately $80 billion dollars into private industries to cut their rare earth dependency by a third. China, who is the current dominant rare earth producer and exporter, is facing rapidly dwindling supplies. Rare earth metals are special chemical elements that currently have no synthetic replacement. These metals are vital for the production of many high-tech devices like solar panels, semiconductors, and flat screen TVs.
The reason this is of interest is that this may have the potential to change the entire landscape of the market in the next few years. With increased demand coming from newly developed countries like China and India, the prices of these rare metals would probably go up if the supply problems aren’t addressed or there isn’t any new development to circumvent some of the demand. Solar stocks, electronics, semiconductors, auto stocks and many more stocks would be down if it was to occur in the future as their progress would be slowed down with raising cost of integral materials.
If Japan is to succeed, a new class of hot stocks would be born. I like to compare this to how global warming became the big sensation a few years back and now fast forward, solar stocks and wind stocks are a few of the hottest stocks except this global crisis wouldn’t be life threatening; but technological and idea crisis. Just something that came across my mind today. Feel free to comment. I would like to hear other’s views on this issue.
-Tony