"Strategic metal or not, historically this was meant with relation to good old bad Soviet Union. Now probably China is also included for that purpose. I don't think the US want any metal to be fully controlled by these two countries."

IMO, replace "the US" with "US companies" and you have a correct statement. It seems the North American governments have little interest in preserving anything domestic; foreign ownership and supply is the trend and likely will be for decades to come. Control/ownership of base metals probably won't be any different, it just seems to be an on-going game of Monopoly we're not interested in playing. Pretty soon every move we make will have us landing defenseless in front of a hotel laden property that we don't own.