• My husband and I lived in the DC metro area for nearly 20 years before we left.
• We grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to Pittsburgh so we could save for and buy a house.
• Although the DC metro area was great, we’re happy being homeowners in the Pittsburgh suburbs.

Although we grew up in Pennsylvania, my husband and I spent nearly 20 years building our lives in the Washington, DC, area.

We loved it and thought we’d live there forever, but our plans changed when we got married in 2021 and started looking to buy our first home.

We soon realized we couldn’t afford much in Rockville, Maryland, where we’d lived for eight years, or any other part of the DC metro area.

After pricing some homes, it dawned on us that we’d be about halfway to my hometown in Pittsburgh before we could even think about affording a decent house.

At that point, we thought, why not go back to our roots? So in 2022, after two decades in the DC area, we packed up our apartment and moved four hours north to Pittsburgh.

It was hard to save for a home when we lived in a high-cost-of-living area

Although we loved living in a big city with plenty of choices for everything from grocery stores to transportation to museums and theaters, we struggled to save for a down payment while living in the DC area.

After all, those perks — and walkability — came with a fairly high cost of living. DC is one of the most expensive cities to live in in the US. Rockville was no bargain, either, with the cost of living there estimated to be 37% higher than the national average, according to Paycale.

Even ordering food or going on a dinner date was pricey — we couldn’t have a night out without spending at least $100.

On the other hand, Pittsburgh has long been considered one of the most affordable cities to live in and buy a home in.

When we left the DC area, we lived in an apartment in Pittsburgh for a year and a half and were actually able to save money while house hunting.

We also found way more houses within our budget here. According to Realtor.com, the median home price in Pittsburgh is about $259,000, compared to $619,000 in Rockville.

We’re now in our first home in a Pittsburgh suburb, and we love it

Eventually, we found a ranch home in a cozy neighborhood about 20 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh.

Although there’s not as much to do here as there was in Rockville, Pittsburgh has continued to win us over.

Our neighborhood is made up of a series of cul-de-sacs, and we were pleasantly surprised to see how close the neighbors on our street are.

We were welcomed with open arms and have enjoyed getting to know the friendly couples, sweet pets, and adorable children who live nearby.

Plus, it’s been great to live closer to more family members and attend more birthday parties and holiday gatherings without having to travel far.

Earlier this December, the Chinese government announced that it would curb the export of several key industrial minerals, as well as certain types of graphite. The move came in the context of mounting pressure on China from Washington, and in anticipation of stringent tariffs that Donald J. Trump has promised to levy when he returns to the presidency next year.

Chinese government spokespeople have argued that curbing export of these minerals is in line with their government’s antiproliferation efforts. They have said that the materials are “dual use,” and that they might be used in manufacturing weapons. Officials in the United States have historically also argued the same thing about some of the minerals, such as graphite, which the US put under strict export controls in 2006.

Among the minerals are antimony (which is used in night-vision goggles and bullets), gallium (precision-guided weapons and radar systems), and germanium (powerful sensors that are mounted on tanks, ships and helicopters). Superhard metals like tungsten may also be included in the restrictions, as is graphite, a type of carbon familiar from its use in pencils. Certain types of graphite are used in gun barrels, and others are dispersed on the battlefield as a sort of smoke that confuses electromagnetic wave detection devices.

Most of these materials also have considerable civilian uses. For instance, graphite is used in the anodes, or negative electrodes, of almost all lithium-ion batteries. (If you’re reading this article on a battery-powered device, you’re probably using graphite in some form.) What export controls mean is that non-Chinese companies that use the material in products destined for the United States will have to apply for export licenses. Such licenses will be up to Chinese officials to grant or withhold.

China controls the vast majority of the processing of some of these materials—a fact that began to register widely in Washington only as tensions began to ramp up with China during the previous Trump administration. China, for instance, produces 61 percent of natural graphite and 98 percent of the world’s final processed graphite. Graphite is also a key material in the green energy transition and electric vehicles: Last year, some 50 percent of the world’s natural graphite went into electric vehicles.

Beijing has managed to extend its grip across the supply chain in recent years. Efforts have been made—most notably through Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act—to create a supply chain for critical minerals that is independent of China, as well as the development of new technology that reduces the need for hard-to-get materials. But progress has been slow. “China is still set to be the dominant player,” said Tony Alderson, the senior anode and cathode analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a specialist provider of supply chain and energy transition information. “I think the investment that they are putting in is huge, and it is more than the US with regard to the anode supply chain.” Despite paeans to progress from politicians in Europe and the US, 2024, he said, was “the year of delays,” and a widening gap between supply and demand for critical minerals in everywhere but China.

By banning the export of these minerals, the Chinese government is showing that it has leverage over critical parts of the supply chain for electronics. “We see it in the industry as a shot across the bow,” Michael R. Hollomon II, the commercial director at US Strategic Metals, a mining and processing firm focused on green transition materials, told me. He noted that the Chinese have enacted similar bans of critical minerals in the past, including a ban last year of specific gallium and germanium products. “The Chinese government have put their money where their mouth is.”

Markets have reacted to the news of the most recent reductions: The price of antimony surged 40 percent on news of China’s most recent export curbs. It was something that worried Gary Evans, the CEO of US Antimony Corporation, the only domestic processor of antimony. Evans, speaking on Fox Business, worried that high prices would cause businesses to be priced out of the market.

Hollomon said that the Biden administration had often talked about building a supply chain independent from China, but that promised projects were often not followed through on, and that funding was held up at critical stages. China, on the other hand, has been able to fund projects and drive down costs for Chinese firms through massive injections of state capital into the mining, processing and industrial use of critical metals and transition technology. “We’ve been playing with our hands tied behind our backs—that is the way the West has been operating for the last 15 years,” he said.

But there is a more fundamental question at play as well. The United States traditionally limited technology transfers to China because of copyright concerns: This year, President Biden imposed an 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. The US government recently prepared restrictions on the import of AI technology into China (Beijing responded with an antitrust investigation into the US chip giant Nvidia), and Washington has been talking about “decoupling” from China for the last several years. In 2022, the US Department of Defense even released a 74-page report on “securing” the supply chain for materials used in military hardware. Chinese graphite is already subject to a 25 percent tariff in the US. (Last Wednesday, a North American trade association of active anode material producers asserted that such a tariff was “far too low” and asked the US government to levy a 920 percent tariff on Chinese graphite imports, a move that would double the cost of an electric vehicle Stateside.) Why would China help the United States build a supply chain that subverts its own interests and diminishes market share for Chinese companies?