Chinese buyers are raiding US scrap yards for a metal critical to missiles and weapons

When metal recycler Kent Vandiver visits suppliers these days, he keeps hearing the same thing. The Chinese were just here. Sometimes they left minutes before he arrived. Sometimes they had already offered more money than anyone else. One supplier reportedly told him the buyers had made a simple promise: whatever price American companies offered, they would beat it. The object of this unusual bidding war is not gold, silver or copper. It is tungsten, a dense, ultra-hard metal found in worn-out drill bits, mining tools and industrial machinery that has become increasingly valuable as governments and manufacturers scramble for critical…