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."
and why not ? (Score:4, Insightful)
They have fought to secure those same elements and done their homework. it gives them an economic advantage with both manufacturing and raw mining/refining done in the same place. most western countries in the same position would do the same as would any corporate entity in the western hemisphere. they can export the finished products at a huge markup compared to what they would get for raw minerals.
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: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:4, Insightful)
Funny side note- I thought one of the big points of "green" tech was to cut down on Americas dependence on other countries when it comes to energy.
Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Funny)
Shhh! What the hell are you trying to do? Crap on the next economic bubble before it even gets started? Just shut the fuck up and be glad Big Brother gives you an energy ration at all!!!
Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Informative)
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 d
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Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm thinking... wind turbines, WTF? Wind power is fundamentally old technology; why is the new supposedly-greener generation dependent on stuff the old generation wasn't??
Yes, I keep hearing this claim lately and my first reaction was the same as yours, surely non-green electrical generators and motors require good magnets?
Also TFA is complete bullshit, China cannot corner the Neodymium market [wikipedia.org]:- "The main mining areas are China, United States, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka and Australia; and reserves of neodymium are estimated at about 8 million tonnes. Although it belongs to "rare earth metals," neodymium is not rare at all - its abundance in the Earth crust is about 38 mg/kg,, which is the second among rare-earth elements after cerium. The world production of neodymium is about 7,000 tonnes per year."
Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Informative)
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:5, Insightful)
"Also TFA is complete bullshit, China cannot corner the Neodymium market:"
While that statement is true, you are distracting from the real issue. China is indeed striving to corner strategic mineral markets, and it's not "news".
http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/3124.html [asianresearch.org] 2008 article which points out China's growing presence in the African mineral trade market.
http://www.chinamining.org/Companies/2009-03-26/1238054106d22981.html [chinamining.org] March 2009 article about China's growing presence in the common metals market, with passing reference to strategic metals.
http://www.domain-b.com/industry/Mining/20090327_australia_rejects.html [domain-b.com] March 2009 story about China making a bid to take over Australian mining.
http://english.cri.cn/7146/2009/01/08/1481s441134.htm [english.cri.cn] January 2009 More to the point of this thread on slashdot, China is regulating the mining and export of strategic metals.
And, of course, this all goes back to their 10-year plans, and their bid to dominate the world, economically, politically, and militarily - the "Assassin's Mace". People with the slightest clue are worried about neodymium - but they are still missing the "big picture". That damned Assassin's Mace is a working plan, that is moving ahead, while the rest of the world sleeps.
The world economy won't improve, so long as China is waging an economic war, and we don't even realize it.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Informative)
Likewise, Canada wouldn't create a wood shortage if they announced that they will no longer sell logs but instead sell only kiln-dried boards.
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Likewise, Canada wouldn't create a wood shortage if they announced that they will no longer sell logs but instead sell only kiln-dried boards.
And we (Canada) are wasting our economy with such a high proportion of our exports being raw materials (I think it's something like 90%), instead of refining/processing them within our borders before export, thus creating jobs (and higher-level ones to boot).
China might have fewer restraints than Canada (Free Trade agreements and so on), but in terms of economic growth, they're doing it right.
- RG>
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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
Re:and why not ? (Score:4, Insightful)
In a free trade system U.S. buyers could negotiate with various Chinese suppliers. It sounds to me like the Chinese government is creating a defacto monopoly where there shouldn't be one.
We buy far too much chinese stuff as it is and it's largely due to the false economy of the chinese currency. Another factor in the trade deficit is their willingness to simply rip off Western IP. Most of their products are very low quality anyway and end up costing more in the long run.
Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Another factor in the trade deficit is their willingness to simply rip off Western IP
And the fault for that lies where, exactly? With the countries dumb enough to shift their economy to make trivially copied virtual products? Or the one smart enough to create actual goods which other people want to buy?
Yep, I thought so. One side is being an idiot. The other is being smart. News flash! Smart eventually wins.
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For all the wailing about such trajectories, Western industrial economies still produce 4 to 5 times as much as China's.
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Have you looked at your furnature? The cloth, nails, foam, and porbably all the shaped wood excluding the frame itself was probably made in China. Even the major brands get the majority of the raw parts from the cheapest distribution methods out there, and that's China. Mexico really for the local labor of assembly. Even La-Z-Boy relocated their assembly shops down there last year.
Cost wise, the computer parts and kitchen equipment components in your house all count as parts from over seas manufacturing pla
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?
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Exactly , this is a global economy now , no more isolation , this means in order for us to evolve the rest of the world needs to come to our level , or we need to evolve to the standards of another country.
The us needs to figure out how to bring production and industry back within our borders , or we suffer the fate of becoming the 3rd world countries we currently abuse. The Brazilians are building an alternative fuel future , to power south america soon. The russians are buying up "profitalbe" companies, w
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I'm unclear on your final statement.
If you mean, without damaging the planet like china inflicts damage the planet, then okay.
If you mean to learn to not damage the planet the way china does not avoid the planet, you are seriously mistaken about china. They are like Russia in that they do enormous damage.
Illusion (Score:5, Insightful)
The global economy is an illusion. China controls its exchange rate. If they let it float, chinese products would double
triple or maybe even 10X in price almost overnight. China controls imports thru numerous techniques (as do we and everyone else).
They just recently clamped down on even what web sites will be visible. China is a tightly controlled economy which plans on being number 1 in 5 to 10 years. They think long term and are willing to abuse its citizens in the process. My big worry is once they get those subs they are bulding up & running, the west is screwed. They will now be able to offer the one "product" that up until now, only we could offer. Security. Imagine if you are the Arab nations with all that oil and you can either trade with the US and collect "dollars in an account" and a guarantee of protection or you can get "computers, cars, boats, appliances, furniture, pillows, blankets, screws, bolts, steel, aluminum, pipe, tools, and pretty much anything you want" AND protection from the chinese, who would you sell your oil to? For that matter, ANY raw material producing country will do biz with the chinese, not us. China has played the capitalists over the past couple of decades very well.
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Ever been to a foreign country ? As I sit in Colombia at the moment , every local store has rip offs from china , in every form , they are cheap enough that they can use them here for low cost and not worry about it for a year.
This sentiment is being drilled into the american consumers head as well. It's really disappointing. I see so many pirated products it's scary. We need to start developing a world money very soon or we will face countries like China falsely inflating and under inflating values.
It took
Re:and why not ? (Score:4, Insightful)
The rule you're looking for is "If it works, it isn't stupid."
And for China, the current economy works wonders of almost biblical proportions. Millions have now decent homes, electricity, food, water and clothing who previously had none. Billions in the world now have cheap commodities and consumer goods. They will not stop any time soon and frankly I can't hold it against them, because currently it works extremely well.
While we spend our energy battling ecological strawmen and Islam, China will begin to top out the US in terms of power and wealth.
I would rather ask what we did wrong so it could come to this, what our faults were concerning the trade balance, national debts, tax, regulations, protective tariffs and all that.
You left off copyrights and patents. (Score:3, Informative)
It's a competition and lately we've been hobbling ourselves trying to protect the income of existing corporations by killing new businesses.
Software / business model patents are not helping us compete. They're crippling our new businesses.
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, Informative)
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So you propose lowing our standards to those of China?
That's not fighting back. That's capitulation.
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Also,
Are you seriously proposing that the rich (who pay more taxes) have more votes than ordinary people?
Are you out of your blasted mind? Concentration of power in the hands of a monied few is the root cause of our present political disease.
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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 cer
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Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Informative)
No, China is a signatory to the WTO and curbing raw materials exports is a violation. The WTO is looking into the issue: http://www.purchasing.com/article/441486-WTO_to_study_China_s_raw_material_export_curbs.php [purchasing.com]
No Western country could get away with limiting raw materials exports for secondary and tertiary onshore processing, though some have tried.
Re:and why not ? (Score:5, Insightful)
China is in the drivers seat here , do you really think they will stop abusing the power they have ? China is not going to give in easily , more then likely they will agree to some agreement that allows them to do what they want , and then cut production to fall under the line and keep doing what they want.
Everything is made in China , they can be penalized and they won't care. They will keep doing it until we bar all Chinese products , good luck doing that.
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.
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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.
Re:and why not ? (Score:4, Informative)
No economist in the world will deny that China needs the US a lot more than the US needs China.
Everything is NOT made in China. China remains the #3 economy, a very large margin behind the US and Japan. The US remains the #1 manufacture in the world... almost double that of #2.
You think China makes "everything" because you see the little "Made in China" label on every $2 item you buy, and assume that's all there is to the world. You don't buy turbines, heavy construction machinery, commercial jets, etc. There are lots of Chinese business owners bemoaning the fact that "Everything is made in the USA and Japan."
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When the WTO issues a huge fine, will we send the Marines to Beijing to collect it? Will we settle it against the national debt?
Our forces are overextended enough as it is. Within five years, we have Iran or Israel burning and in desperate need of democratization and/or support. Within fifteen years, we will probably have an open insurgency somewhere in the Greater London, Brussels or Paris when their Muslim reaches the size of a small Arab state like Lebanon and Syria. And neither Afghanistan or Iraq will
Re:and why not ? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Our forces are overextended enough as it is. Within five years, we have Iran or Israel burning and in desperate need of democratization and/or support. Within fifteen years, we will probably have an open insurgency somewhere in the Greater London, Brussels or Paris when their Muslim reaches the size of a small Arab state like Lebanon and Syria. And neither Afghanistan or Iraq will be a stable democracy by then and will collapse as soon as we leave or already did."
If Israel wants to fend off its neighbors in the next war, it has tactical nukes. We don't need to mess with Iran, because it will remain Jihadist and no outcome we could influence will change that. Unless they have some wonderful equivalent of the French Revolution where they slaughter the Mullah, it will be "same shit, different day". T
he Iranian protestors aren't rejecting Islam, they chant "God is great!". Don't ever forget that.
Like the Cultural Revolution in China, not our problem and the more violent things get in an _enemy_ country the better.
"If the national deficit spending continues, China could buy back all of Taiwan simply by relieving some percent of our national debt and we will still be thankful to have some room in our budgets again."
Works for me. Taiwan is in Chinas sphere of influence, which it why it is full of Chinese. The cult of Suicide for Taiwan doesn't benefit the US.
How many dead G.I.s is Taiwan worth? None by my metrics. Go enlist in their Army if you like.
"We will never recover from our debts and we cannot survive without China giving us more loans every year, so they can practically demand whatever they want. In our world, politically correct may trump factually correct, but in the real world, all lunches must be paid for."
China is the natural master of Asia, NOT the US! Such neocolonial nostalgia is disgusting and no wonder the ChiComs are pissed when it is expressed!
China is tough enough to help fight radical Islam. China is progressing at an amazing pace, so the old idea of preparing for confrontation is silly.
We should be cooperating to carve out influence instead of competing. We have mutual cultural enemies in the Jihadists.
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All the points you mentioned are factually correct and I'm not politically correct enough to disagree with that.
It will however mean a huge loss of influence, leading to an equal reduction in trade and wealth influx and also require the forfeit of several of our ideals of humanity, civilization, freedom, democracy and all that.
I don't know if we're ready to sacrifice our holy cows just yet. Ironically, the refusal to deny or cut back on any of our holy ideas is what brought us the wealth in the first place
Re:and why not ? (Score:4, Insightful)
The WTO doesn't levy fines, it authorizes retaliatory tariffs. You know what that sort of thing does to an export-based economy?
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.
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Exactly , what happens when OPEC decides they want more ? They cut production. And the WTO just begs for them to produce more. Any of these organizations are a waste of money and barely ever serve a purpose.
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Well said.
Especially, since China has sold out almost everything in pursuit of money: their labor, their en
at least 3 solutions (Score:2)
Right, we're pretty well pwned in this case. Even if we ("we" being the nation as a whole) were smart enough to deal with this, it's probably too late.
In theory though, your "and why not?" attitude suggests at least three solutions.
1. One obvious and somewhat suicidal solution is war.
2. Another solution in keistering. Keistering is what you do when you realize that these metals are already so expensive that it's no big deal to pay somebody to hide it up their butt.
3. Another solution is neodymium gold clubs
Re:and why not ? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think about it, it's allowing China to profit twice on the same resource. They get mark-up on the material, and then if you have to process it in-country, they get markup a second time in processing. They'd be fools to do it any other way, since there's approximately zero chance of anyone bringing rare earths INTO China and providing them with processing business for ore other than that produced in-country. Processing their own ore is the only way they make business on it, may as well demand all you can.
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That's funny, the Western Country I live in, the USA, purposefully let it's manufacturing advantage wither on the vine so that the investor class could get richer.
Unobtainium! (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously (Score:2)
Re:Obviously (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like the WTO could have a bit of leverage considering how much comes out of China right now that could be gradually restricted...
And replaced with what? And what if the Chinese decide to retaliate and simply shut down exports for a couple of months? Who do you think will cry uncle first?
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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.
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No kidding. The chinese are stupid if they haven't realized we're going to inflate our way out of this mess at some point. I wonder what their contingency plan is for that.
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In this economy, I think the Chinese would suffer more.
Exactly which Chinese would suffer and why do you think they would not blame the West? Or do you think the Chinese leadership would be voted out by their suffering electorate?
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And what if the Chinese decide to retaliate and simply shut down exports for a couple of months?
In this economy, I think the Chinese would suffer more.
The West needs to stop shipping their dollars to China for finished goods. If China were to help with the weaning off process, it would be excellent.
In this economy? "This economy" doesn't hit China nearly as much as US, because their base industries are all self-sufficient.
And another thing to consider is that they're pretty much the only supply. You either buy what they offer or be without.
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Well if that's not a case for invasion (Score:2)
I don't know what is.
After all, last time, all the Chinese did to warrant invasion by Britain was cut off the opium supply. (google it if doubtful.)
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you're forgetting something: china has 1.3 billion people, and a millenia-long tradition of practicing tai ji martial arts. oh. and you've also forgotten the fact that they're a nuclear superpower. so the days of war-mongering are over. get used to it.
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But amazingly enough, they're also a developing nation and deserve favorable trade and carbon treatment. Go figure.
Re:Well if that's not a case for invasion (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, the Chinese did not cut off the supply of Opium. They cut off the demand for opium. The British were illegally smuggling opium from India into China, then the Chinese enforced their laws, leading to war.
Proof free trade is a failure. (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of free trade was to unlink, fundamentally, resources from national ownership. Now that the Chinese have crossed the rubicon on the basic issue of access to materials on open markets, what is really the point of pretending that they are genuinely interested in free trade? Do we still want to pretend that they are interested in moving towards western liberalism. As much as Republicans called liberals Chamberlins on other issues, conservatives still ignoring the growing failure of free trade with the east are really, fundamentally, the genuine Chamberlins of our day. I hope they choke on their Walmart stock.
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I think you're confusing Corporatists with Conservatives.
And Corporatists come in all political flavors. Did you think the left wing of that particular ugly flapping bird won't be choking on their Target stock?
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And Corporatists come in all political flavors. Did you think the left wing of that particular ugly flapping bird won't be choking on their Target stock?
Good point. Really, the entire health care bill the Democrats are building could be renamed:
"The National Walmart Has to Buy Health Insurance for Its Employees Act".
They aren't fundamentally changing the balance of things, just throwing a little sugar on it for the masses.
Re:Proof free trade is a failure. (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, and the comparison is apt. Fundamentally, China is practicing mercantilism, but we've hamstrung ourselves by making it politically impossible to fight back.
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The whole point of free trade was to unlink, fundamentally, resources from national ownership
I think you are wrong. Ownership doesn't enter into the question at all - free trade is simply a matter of making it easier to conduct business; there is nothing to say that national governments or state-owned enterprises can't take part in that.
I think your attitude is bizarre; it seems that you think that anything done or provided by society is by definition evil. I guess this is the sad result of the Cold-War conditioning that afflicts so many Americans - you have learned that government is a sort of Com
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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 depres
Maybe Not! (Score:2)
With the world economy falling downward China may well soon be willing to sell their sisters' socks with their sisters still in them.
Rare Earths Not Necessarily Rare (Score:5, Informative)
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This really isn't that big of a deal.
And it might even be a good thing for the United States long term. Relying on one country for an important mineral is almost always a bad thing. Doubly for a country like China that's we've not always been on the friendliest terms with.
Re:Rare Earths Not Necessarily Rare (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the current Chinese monopoly on current production for many of the elements is just because they've undercut all other producers, so rare earths are too cheap to be worth mining outside of China. There was quite a lot of rare-earth mining in the U.S. in the 1980s and 90s, and many of those mines are still waiting to be restarted when the price gets high enough to be worth it. Here's [molycorp.com] a timeline from the largest U.S. miner (currently not mining, but sitting around processing some existing stocks of ore).
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what's to stop the Chinese from flooding the market with metals for a year or two, collapsing the price and bankrupting the mines?
This is the same sort of argument that people make in support of restrictions against "predatory pricing" but there has not been a single documented case, at least not that I am aware of, in economic history where a firm has been able to successfully drive all firms out of a market by undercutting prices and then come out the other end with any durable pricing or monopoly power. The argument sounds compelling in theory, but in practice it doesn't work. As soon as prices are raised again to take advantage of
Time to explore for new deposits (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to explore for new deposits. If the price of rare earth elements increases enough, it'll be worthwhile. Australia, the American west, and Africa still have vast unexploited mineral wealth.
More detail on this topic. (Score:5, Informative)
The following link is ESSENTIAL reading
http://seekingalpha.com/article/178225-on-the-rare-earth-crisis-of-2009 [seekingalpha.com]
Dupe (Score:5, Funny)
If you hurry up and copy/paste a few comments from there, you may be able to get a cheap +5 Informative.
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
This is what happens... (Score:2)
...when we rely so heavily on China for its exports. If they want to play this, levy tariffs on products coming from China (if they aren't going to ship anyway might as well show them how expensive their strong arming can be), and while we're at it, restrict their students coming to the US for education so they can't go back and show their countrymen how to process mined quantities or engineer mining safety equipment or safe mines.
Hold them to higher standards also when it comes to mine safety. There a
Not that dire (Score:2)
All it really means is that products which currently require large amounts of rare earths will continue to evolve and require less of the stuff over time. This has in fact already happened to some degree with mature technologies such as catalytic converters. The same thing will happen with newer technologies. An increase in the cost of rare earth materials will also push nanotech development over time, in particular nano-featured surfaces.
So it is hardly a catastrophe.
-Matt
SO? (Score:2)
What do you suppose the total use of "raw materials" in the US was in the last couple of years? Likely as not, nearly zero. Manufacturing of anything in the US has nearly ended and what manufacturing there is consists of putting parts together that were made in other countries.
So I guess you could say that Dell "manufactures" computers by taking the parts made in other countries and putting them together. Does Dell make any of these parts? No.
Most of the parts in cars which are assembled in the US come
Always turning a blind eye (Score:2)
Only one mine on earth? (Score:2)
The article says
I can't believe it would be a big problem to find those are earths somewhere else.
Green? (Score:2)
Just how green is an energy that relies on a non-renewable resource?
Or are these rare metals, once used in green tech, easily recycled?
Monopoly? (Score:2)
There are w
Lithium as well I believe.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Japan had better mend relations quickly... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks for catching that, I'm much better able to participate in this and future discussions having read your post. I'm glad someone with your insight and expertise on China is watching Obama so that we don't miss these crucial turning points in history.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Subsistence style living is not an option ... large scale commercial style farming is the only way to feed the number of people we have (and it isn't enough, really). So if we're headed down the path of subsistence living ... well ... buy a lot of guns and bullets, because there isn't enough to go around.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
What the...?
People don't say that China has a bad human rights record because of the One Child Policy. They say that for, among other things, the One China Policy. Did you hear about the unrest of the Tibetans and the slaughter they endured as a result? Did you hear about the Uyghur towns in XinJiang Province wherein the government went in one day saying that everyone needs to be in their homes tomorrow or be shot and then coming through the next day and killing everyone on the streets?
You seem like a relat
Re:not so green, huh? (Score:5, Informative)
The Chinese "communist" dictatorship - the most murderous in human history - has obviously a long list of crimes to their "credit" (modern corporate speak), but in this context it might also be relevant to mention that part of that regime's near total control over the rare earth elements is due to China's invasion and ongoing genocidal occupation of Tibet since 1950.
Mao Zedong may have "only" wanted pre-one-child-policy era lebensraum for the Chinese masses (from 1950 to 1970 the Chinese population doubled from 500 million to 1 billion), geopolitical and military control over the Central Asian highlands of Tibet and incomprehensible (in communist terms anyway) validation of China's fairytale-like feudal imperial claims over the absolutely non-Chinese Tibetan people when he sent his Communist Party's then-idle wardogs to invade and occupy Tibet, but it turned out that the subsequent Chinese national-socialist (read: Chinazi) leaders and their affiliated business "princelings" have found it incredibly lucrative to ransack Tibet of its natural resources.
Nearly all historically invaluable precious metal artifacts and statues were melted for Mao's foreign currency purchases (while the invaluable Buddhist scriptures and almost all of the more than 6000 monasteries were simply burned down or bombed. Tibet's forests have been hacked down and shipped off to China (leaving only erosion behind). Uranium, gas and oil are extracted by Party-affiliated cronies and the Chinese regime only leaving behind severe pollution. All profitable industrial metals, including the rare earth metals, are being excavated while protesting native Tibetans get the old Gestapo treatment. Et cetera and et cetera.
Did I mention that the Chinese dictatorship is hard at work damming and diverting the major Asian rivers originating in Tibet and providing lifeline to over a billion South-Asians (incl. India) downstream, in order to generate electric power and to provide water for the occupying Chinese state and the newly settled Chinese instead? United Nations' conventions be damned in every case.
So what if the Chinese regime now wants to restrict the supply of crucial industrial metals? Don't say you didn't see it coming. Consider sending a distress signal to your democratic representative, that is if the "western" corporations don't already have him or her in their pocket.
The Western and democratic peoples need to either shut up and live with the consequences, or do something before it's too late for all of us.
Re:not so green, huh? (Score:4, Informative)
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".
According to wikipedia [wikipedia.org], this entire article is just silly. Neodymium is not rare, nor only occurring in China.
Re:not so green, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
a return to subsistence-style living and community-driven societies
We have over 6bn people on this planet. If we all went back to subsistence farming, 3/4 or the world will begin to starve in very short order. Starving people tend to do weird things, like start wars, skirmishes, riots and things like that - over suddenly scarce resources (oh like, I dunno... food supplies , arable land, things like that?)
...with countries like Poland, who have just absolutely amazing self-reliant and vibrant communities...
It's not a question of being lazy - it's a simple question of logistics that don't fit the paradigm, no matter how utopian and pretty it seems on the surface. There's also the the fact that a subsistence population tends to have astronomically higher birthrates, which tends to increase the pressures instead of alleviating them (but then with the return of disease and a higher child mortality rate, coupled with a lower life expectancy, who knows?)
...are you ready for that change...
I suggest extra ammunition and a rather large stockpile of MRE's until the excess population either dies of starvation or kills each other off. Defensible modifications to your house would help as well. May want to move to a sparsely-populated area as well and ride it out there.
-OR-
I suggest that you've spent way too many evenings watching Life After People [history.com] re-runs, and fantasizing about some sort of post-armageddon future where you get to re-populate a shattered Earth with a gaggle of cute chicks who look to you as some sort of leader... or similar. May not want to close on that farmhouse in Idaho just yet, though.
It is my contention that:
1) The whole "Peak Oil" thing is somewhat of a sham, given that technology is emerging beyond a dependence on petroleum (we should be there completely within a couple of decades under normal market conditions, and if oil does start to become scarce, I'm certain that we'll get there even sooner due to simple market pressures). That said, it does have its uses in getting people to move to cleaner tech sooner (and no, you don't necessarily need Chinese rare earth metals to do it - see also hydroelectricity, monocrystal photovoltaics, etc).
2) China isn't the one and only repository of rare earth metals on this planet - if sufficiently motivated, I suspect that other sources will be found and/or synthesized if need be. Also, there are alternate means of creating clean tech w/o using rare metals to do it - it's all a question of economics and need.
3) People have been constructing and selling apocalyptic vision ever since St. John wrote his version on the Isle of Patmos. May not want to hold your breath just yet.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Is it true that I could take $10,000 from the US and go to China and have x10 the shopping spree than I could in the States?
No, you can't.
WalMart and practically every other retailer can, but you must spend your money with them. If you try to take $10,000 out, you'll be put on some list for suspicious financial transactions (at least), or have it confiscated if your paperwork isn't exactly up to snuff. And when you bring that 'stuff' back, the nice people at customs will want a cut of it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Future wars will be fought not about oil but rare earth materials."
Nonsense. The model for getting those already exists in Africa, where one pays the locals what the market will bear and they handle the light work,
War disrupts mining, while unconventional logistics route around inconvenient situations.