China Moving To Restrict Neodymium Supply 477
GuyFawkes writes with this quote from the Independent:
"Britain and other Western countries risk running out of supplies of certain highly sought-after rare metals that are vital to a host of green technologies, amid growing evidence that China, which has a monopoly on global production, is set to choke off exports of valuable compounds. Failure to secure alternative long-term sources of rare earth elements (REEs) would affect the manufacturing and development of low-carbon technology, which relies on the unique properties of the 17 metals to mass-produce eco-friendly innovations such as wind turbines and low-energy light bulbs. China, whose mines account for 97 per cent of global supplies, is trying to ensure that all raw REE materials are processed within its borders. During the past seven years it has reduced by 40 per cent the amount of rare earths available for export."
not so green, huh? (Score:1, Interesting)
very gooood. i think this is highly amusing, on several fronts. the first is just the irony of the country touted as having "A Bad Human Rights Record" (when in fact they are just using common sense to keep control over 1.3 billion people) happens to now hold a damocles sword over the rest of the world if it wants to go "green".
the second irony is that it takes rare metals, which are, by definition, in limited supply, to go "green" in the first place. the missing bit that is not specifically stated is, "if the world wants to 'Go Green' (tm) and still maintain a high level of technology".
there is a simpler way to "go green" and not be dependent on chinese exports of rare earth metals: a return to subsistence-style living and community-driven societies, with countries like Poland, who have just absolutely amazing self-reliant and vibrant communities, already leading the way in that regard, having not really changed their way of living for centuries in the first place as "technology" passed them by.
whilst this suggestion of a solution is pretty much guaranteed to provoke outrage in certain (lazy) 1st world westerners, such lazy individuals might want to think about this: that the combination of restrictions on supply of "rare earth" metals, and the predicted "peak oil" period due to hit only next year, i think it's pretty much on the cards that the "technological age" which consumes 50% of the world's resources in the U.S. alone is almost certainly coming to an end.
so the only remaining question to ask is: are you ready for that change; are you just going to "wing it", are you going to stick your head in the sand, or are you just going to sit there until you die, waiting for the lights to come back on, the phone to ring and the gas boiler to provide you with heating again?
Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, and I think we will see much more such too. China is improving its economy fast currently, with the USA's economy crisis and huge debts. They're getting their foot between the door, and I think both China and Russia will be starting to have a lot larger influence on global economy soon. Russian entrepreneurs are already [techcrunch.com] buying big shares of US companies and gaining larger share of US corporations. China (and Taiwan) is attacking from the cheap manufacturing and resources supply front, India is attacking from the cheap programming and computer technology front, and Russia is attacking from the ownership of US companies front. With the huge government debts and economic slowdown, what will happen to US? It's already known the spendings are too much and theres no possibility to live on debt forever.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
The willingness of China to send actual goods(at the cost of deferring domestic consumption) in exchange for little green US treasury gift cards as some sort of neo-mercantilist scheme is rather convenient.
There ARE Alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.choruscars.com/Chorus_NEO_WhitePaper.pdf [choruscars.com]
There are plenty of prospective or former mines around the world; it's just that China was so much cheaper that it made little or no sense to exploit those sites until now.
The real trouble here is the sudden change in price, but at the rate demand for it has been going up, it seems inevitable that engineers are going to need to find alternatives to it -- regardless of what China does.
--Greg
Re:and why not ? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think both China and Russia will be starting to have a lot larger influence on global economy soon
China currently has unprecedented influence on the US, even if none of us wants to come right out and say.
Re:and why not ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Obviously (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:and why not ? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:and why not ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Another factor in the trade deficit is their willingness to simply rip off Western IP
You mean, the west is willing to damage it's own economy by implementing the various privatized taxation equivalents called IP, while the Chinese economy practices a freer market, gaining the advantages of lower costs through competition. Not to mention that those IP taxation rights are more and more often held by companies in other countries anyway, which means it'll end up creating even further deficits.
The west could certainly learn something from that; decommission the various inefficient and anti-competitive IP systems and with lower costs on everything from healthcare to high-tech the western economy and western workers would be that much more competitive.
ratios (Score:4, Interesting)
And how much of that stuff is dependent today on Chinese supply of components? And how much is stagnating in the west, and just being shifted to China? How much is "assembled here" as opposed to really "made here"? And what have the trends been? That's the main point and is related to the entire topic.
Here's one example from your list, Caterpillar, two articles that should to to show what I am talking about
http://www.chinasourcingnews.com/2008/08/29/12503-caterpiller-expands-its-global-business-model-in-china/ [chinasourcingnews.com]
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/CG24504.htm [cnn.com]
And you can go back and look, or remember, Cat was one of the primary lobbyest forces to restrict imported steel tariffs. Using them as an example of "all made in merika!" is just false. They use a lot of foreign sourced, and are gradually shifting production eastward, just like every other manufacturing industry has been doing. Of course not all the way yet, but this is the trend, and thousands and thousands of abandoned factories in the US prove this.
When I was a kid, and the US was the largest creditor nation, we really *did* have a lot of "all made here" things, heck, most everything was. As manufacturing keeps getting outright offshored or has become dependent on imported components so all there is is the last stage assembly, we have gradually replaced produced wealth from the "vertical stack" manufacturing model we used to have with *debt*, national and private, and running trade deficits, and have been sneaking up on economic collapse. This economic situation has exactly paralleled the shift in manufacturing.
Manufacturing is the big kahuna on producing wealth. You stop doing it, you start to go downhill. You increase doing it, you prosper. The more that is vertically integrated within your own area, the more those currency units get spent and respent and respent where they improve the over all local economy. The more you ship them out, the more the local economy goes sour and the more in debt you go.
There is going to come up a point where the manufacturing nations like china will no longer be interested in IOUs and will only want to do business with such areas as provide them with real wealth, the raw resources and energythey need, for their products (a few billion people, a good market size), and that combined with their own internal markets will be *large enough* for them to just say "thanks, but don't really need ya anymore as customers old western nations, see ya!" to the nations that previously made stuff..like the US.
Now I know this doesn't matter to the top 1%, they are globalists and can just move, they don't care. The rest of the people though..
This is the deal, is this economy, the "official" numbers, a reflection of the good deal for wall street, their economy, or of main street? Which is more important, making sure the top 1% keep getting richer, or trying to maintain a better balance, especially within your own middle class?
Re:and why not ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't mistake kleptocrats seeking to hoard/hide their money in places where a new Russian regime can't forcibly seize as some sort of complicated ploy for world domination. Russia faces a very severe demographic brick wall, and China will do so in 20-50 years. That will truly be nightmarish.
Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Interesting)
We just pulled a large chunk of our production back from China. Shipping costs are too high.
This move by the Chinese government may effect things a small amount but it will drive the profitability of recycling efforts skyward. It will stimulate innovation in the area of metamaterials that can take the place of scarce single element resources. It will also stimulate innovation in moving us as far as possible away from scare resources.
This will again set China behind everyone else in the long term. And they will be making investors in new technologies piles of cash.
California Has Enough a Neodynmium (Score:3, Interesting)
California Has Enough a Neodynmium at the Mountain Pass Mine to supply all US needs for the foreseeable future. Though the environmental movement has shut down the mine, it can be opened back up in very little time to provide these materials to the US.
Deficits can *not* be tamed (Score:3, Interesting)
You need to take a look at how money is created and destroyed. Running a deficit is how the US government creates money (it is borrowed into existence). If you destroy money, you get a recession, so under the current monetary system (i.e. the fed), the US government is pretty much guaranteed to run a deficit, leading to exponentially increasing national debt.
hth.
we're not set up for this battle (Score:3, Interesting)
We mostly don't have a command economy, while China mostly does. China is able to have long-term coherent planning that we can only dream of.
Here in the USA, who would buy up the supplies? Maybe a few speculators with no real use for the metals would do that, but they'll sell to the higest bidder whenever they please. They won't work together to control supplies for the good of the nation.
Suppose the government took control of the supplies. OK, how do we use the supplies? We'd auction them off! Even if we did limit the auction participants to US citizens, we wouldn't stop those people from selling to China or even acting as agents for China.
Re:Proof free trade is a failure. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Democrats and the Republicans are both equally guilty on free trade. Looks like you fell for the trade
Believe it or not, the parties are doing a long and slow flip on the issue. Republicans used to be staunch protectionists and it was the Democrats that were huge into free trade. Indeed, Republican protectionism was one of the underlying causes of the civil war and Republicans remained protectionists until the 1930s. It was then that Democrats ran with blaming Republican Tariffs for the great depression, when ironically, Republican Tariffs actually helped the whole USA become a superpower from 1870-1920.
Re:and why not ? (Score:4, Interesting)
America hasn't done anything wrong, it's just that everyone else has caught up. The US being the sole economic and military superpower was just a temporary blip in history. China is just returning to where it was centuries ago, and the US is returning to being just another first-world nation.
Bear in mind that the US only achieved its superpower status by default after the rest of the world was destroyed by two world wars. Unless there's a third, I can't see the current trends changing.
Re:and why not ? (Score:4, Interesting)
In a sense, China is not cornering the Neodymium market using their mineral reserves, but rather with their willingness to sacrifice their environment along with bumping up the cancer rate of the populace by the few percentiles.
Re:and why not ? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the economy I think. The cost of the equipment and supplies needed for us to manufacture our PC boards in house has decreased enough because the equipment and tools are cheap on the surplus market. We bought equipment less than two years old for something like 2 percent of new. There are added benefits that when broken out means we can finely tune production to our needs. I am guessing this but it seems the most important factor is management does not have to deal with the Chinese in that supply chain.