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China

China Retaliates Over New US Chip Restrictions (yahoo.com) 117

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
China banned exports of minerals and metals used in semiconductor manufacturing and military applications to the United States on Tuesday, escalating tensions in the growing technology trade war between the world's two largest economies.

The commerce ministry halted shipments of gallium, germanium, antimony and related compounds, citing national security concerns. These materials are crucial components in advanced electronics and military hardware, with China controlling 98% of global gallium production and 60% of germanium output, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. The move comes in direct response to Washington's new restrictions on semiconductor exports to China, including controls on high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI systems and limits on manufacturing equipment sales.

China Retaliates Over New US Chip Restrictions More | Reply

China Retaliates Over New US Chip Restrictions

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  • ... with China controlling ...

    The US had years to do this, why now? To be precise, what prompted this stupidity? The US doesn't have any leverage, which is why China is a problem in the first place. This trade war was always going to end badly ... for the USA.

    The US can't bully the UN into a police-action invading China. What did the US think was going to happen?

    • Re:US stupidity (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2024 @07:07AM (#64987371)

      China has leverage temporarily. The only reason it has "cornered" the market on some rare earth minerals is because many are very "dirty" to refine. So we watched as production shifted to a country that doesn't care and isn't accountable to its people for significantly polluting their own environment to export those metals for profit.

      I suspect this is going to be very temporary. There isn't sufficient domestic demand to soak up the output of China's production. Without this export machine, their economy will collapse. The aftermath of that will make Tiananmen Square in 1989 look like a picnic. When China has sudden political change thrust on it by its own people, the aftermath doesn't just strip their ruling elite of their wealth...their heads often follow. They'll blink.

      • China doesn't need to export rare minerals to the US to keep their economy going though, that's a very small part of the Chinese economy. Also the trump administration *probably?* isn't immunine to drastic changes in the US economy, although saying trump can do stupid things and suffer consequences for it hasn't worked out very often. Of course you love trump and don't undestand the last sentence I just wrote, so I'm sure in your mind his tarriff ideas are pure genius.

        • No, but they sure need to export the rest of the stuff, you think this will end here?

          • Why. in this hypothetical trade war that causes china to collapse, does the US not collapse too? Are we less dependent on the international economy?

              Actually nobody will collapse, we'll just be a less wealthy country when its all over and so will china. Horay?

      • Rare earths: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/n... [japantimes.co.jp]

      • LOL you live in a fantasy of just how big a tiny portion of China's economic output really is. No their economy won't collapse because they aren't selling gallium et al. to other countries. And no you can't pop up a refinery in a day, this stuff takes several years of planning.

        The reason this trade war tactics are used is because they work and they apply pain beyond a threshold for replacement. Your comment is just as valid for every other trade restriction China has imposed in retaliation for the last few

        • The problem is that other countries are willing to go through a bit of pain if that's what it takes to diversify the supply chains and manufacturing. https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor... [nikkei.com]

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by HBI ( 10338492 )

            The problem for the US is that we have lost the ability to actually *do* anything in a timely fashion. We have rare earths here in the US, but we don't extract them because of NIMBY stuff. When that changes, i'll pay attention, otherwise we're going to be anally rogered by the likes of China.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 1s44c ( 552956 )

        Really? They have surplus of something the US needs and can't get from elsewhere. They can up they price and the US will pay. Or they can not sell and their biggest competitor gets weaker. Nothing here will cause China's economy to collapse.

        • "They have surplus of something the US needs and can't get from elsewhere."

          We don't have to get it from elsewhere, we have it HERE.

          We don't have the production running now, but nothing precludes us restoring it.

          How come people can believe that US tariffs on Chinese goods won't harm China and will only promote their internal economy, but then can't believe that Chinese tariffs won't harm the US and will only promote our internal economy? You know we are still a manufacturing center for the planet, right? We

        • Stupidity abounds for many reasons. Selfish short term thinking among the common drivers. Collaboration including compromise difficult so sink to brinkmanship. Trust hard to gain and vanishes quick. Another way to vote is with your wallet. Spend and invest where it makes sense for your values.

      • You're wrong about China. It's a People's Democratic Dictatorship.

        Just because they don't have *general* elections, doesn't mean they're not accountable.

      • it helps Trump bring back jerbs to America - now your child can inherit a low paid jerb walking in an a toxic enviroment when you due of black lung in your 40's - It's the american way baby!

      • Re:US stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2024 @08:47AM (#64987565) Homepage Journal

        China has massive domestic demand from manufacturers who use things like gallium in semiconductors. There is no restriction on the export of finished components, only the raw materials.

        The US is about to see a big spike in prices for domestic components using those materials, and then self-imposed tariffs on top for other things.

      • The restrictions are only for the USA, and don't underestimate local usage. It'll take longer probably to start new mines in other countries and get production up to speed than it will take China to develop their own highend chip manufacturing machines.
    • I am waiting for someone to blame this on Donald.

      • Easy: the USA - China economic war started in Trump's first term and only escalated since then

        • Yup, and likely China will begin responding to the incoming administration before January. Why not do some pre-emptive tarrifs now and potentially cut them in later negotiations, which trump will claim he won hugely no matter what their actual outcome is? Any international thing that happens from the election to the inaguration is about the incoming administration, it would be silly to think otherwise.

        • Fake news.

          https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

          Note the date, 2013. The Chinese implemented a 57% tariff on solar grade polysilicon.

      • Well, considering how badly he botched C19 and supply chains they could in some ways.

        That being said this realignment has been a long time coming, and China dang well knows it as well. Why do you think they've been spending ridiculous sums of money on their belt and road initiative as well as in Africa trying to secure mineral rights? Did you even know about the second? They've been doing it for over a decade with the US and EU doing the same thing, but on a slightly more polite level, and the deals from

        • I wouldn't want to be a farmer if

          If you think the damage will stop in the agriculture sector, you're just not thinking on it enough.

          • No but this was limited to integrated circuits... and if people think it's just that segment then holy crap are those voters going to be surprised.

      • I'm waiting for you to understand that export controls of sensitive technology with military applications have been a thing since the Export Control Act of 1949.

    • The US is has been drinking it's own Kool-Aid for far too long now. The indispensible greatest country in the world can do no wrong and will emerge victorious from everything it undertakes. No brains needed. Results, accordingly, galore.

      Another way to approach this - something has to be done about China, this is something, something has been done. Great success! Except.... not. The ascent of China cannot be viewed separately from the descent of the West in general, and the US in particular. Any policy that

      • ...The US, being nothing but a big Boeing of corruption, incompetence and lies by now, is going down. There is nothing but a complete wipe of all leadership theory, practice, institutions, law, and personell that could change the course. But none of those will give up their position in the nation without a fight, the only thing to take them out is a complete crash.

        I agree with this, and pretty much everything you said above it as well. I'd like to see more, and more explicit, condemnation in your argument of the way in which corporate culture has spread like a cancer through the body politic to cause and exacerbate these problems, but to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to...

        All China has to do to surpass is stay afloat, and watch the show.

        True, but I'm not sure they can do that. They're doing fairly well in the early part of the contest, but I'm not convinced they'll manage to stave off the serious consequences of demographic collapse for very much

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        The Chinese people have endured a major economic and/or social shakeup every generation or two for 5,000 years. They'll wait this one out, adjust their society and their economy, and continue on. The West doesn't have that sort of history, our last one was almost a century ago and I don't see a new FDR on the horizon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cob666 ( 656740 )
      Is anybody really surprised that there's at least some external pushback to the opening vollies in the upcoming trade wars? We've already heard from Mexico, and even Canada might fight back. The country that will be the most effected by this is very likely going to be the US.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      ROTFL. The trade war is a creation of Wall Street, that is pressure for profits drove American manufacturing and mining to China because it increased profits. The Clinton, George W and Obama administrations stood by and let it all happen. Now we're reaping what Wall Street and 3 presidents sewed and tariffs by Trump and kept in place by Biden are starting to at least make an attempt at fixing our problems. The working class in this country has been undermined by trade with China and illegal immigration beca

    • That doesn't seem like the right question. It seems like the right question is: why did the US sit on its butt and not take steps to ensure access to the semiconductor supply chain (including materials).

      The answer is: this isn't something that followed from a long-term plan. The alleged rationale was technology leakage, and there's plenty of evidence that is actually going on in major ways. But it also is a response to a long-term Chinese industrial espionage and industrial sabotage campaign. In the US, res

    • It is not an issue.

      Rare earth materials are not rare, they are just not found in large concentrations of high purity veins which can be easily mined. The USA has plenty of domestic supply available. Before China undercut the market, the USA produced significant amounts -but the refining process is dirty, and in the USA environmental impact means expensive.

      It was cheaper to buy from China than to make our own, but we can still make our own: we have the raw materials and we have the technology to process it.

    • Any real war with China is likely to end with Nuclear weapons, and since the US isn't a one-party state, we're likely to be the target.
      So escalation of a trade war that might turn into a real war is really not what we want.

  • Not just minerals China is cutting off (Score:4, Interesting)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2024 @06:52AM (#64987347)

    Chinese banks are cutting banking services for Russian banks [newsweek.com] due to U.S. sanctions. Not a good look when your next door neighbor won't launder your money for you.

  • Gallium... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Temkin ( 112574 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2024 @09:15AM (#64987665)

    Since everyone is pontificating about their personal politics, etc... on a tech site...

    Gallium is a notable dopant in semiconductor manufacturing. But it's just that, a dopant. It's properties are critical, but the amount used is kind of trivial. Worldwide I think we're up to maybe 700 - 900 tons of production a year, and only roughly 300 tons of that gets highly refined for semiconductor manufacturing.

    Gallium has no primary ore. None of the crustal forces or geochemistry on Earth result in concentration. It's primarily extracted as a waste byproduct from aluminum & zinc smelting. Idle production from existing aluminum smelting is estimated at 2600 tons/yr.

    So gallium is not a problem...

  • We used to produce all of these minerals.

    We can do it again.

    We stopped because environmental regulations in this country made it cheaper to get them from somewhere else.

    Those environmental regulations are going away, which is a damned shame for multiple reasons, but does make this a non-issue.

    The prices of these minerals will go up, but they are mostly used in scarce quantities so that will not have a huge effect on prices for most goods which use them.

    The only people this is going to be a big problem for a

    • I would think that I was being penalized by Chinese mods, but there are comments in this thread which look down on China much more, so I conclude that it's just one of the coward trolls whose head I live in at all times.

    • You're preaching to the choir, or at least I'm in the choir. I had a good paying job mining job with a bright future until Clinton, Gore, and Babbitt decided the West should be preserved for high quality low cost vacations for the urban elite.

      After my own personal lost decade I did get a job at a chemical plant that made polysilicon for the solar market. Then the next Democrat, O-blah-blah, got into a trade war with China and they retaliated with a 57% tariff on polysilicon. The company held on until I reti

    • Can we order rare earth refineries on Amazon, with 2-day Prime delivery?

      No?

      Then it's still going to be a problem. We don't have a local source for this stuff because we just stopped mining it and mothballed a bunch of production facilities. Those facilities don't exist. They have to be built. And that takes time.

      China knows that, which is why they're blocking export to constrain the US market rather than just slapping on an export tariff. They want to constrain supply knowing that we can't just increas

      • "we just stopped mining it and mothballed a bunch of production facilities. Those facilities don't exist. They have to be built. And that takes time."

        Did we mothball the factories or do we have to build them? Pick one.

        • As the shutdown time increases, the time and cost to reactivate mothballed facilities approaches that of just building new. Sometimes it's cheaper to just remove what was there previously and build new.

          As time goes on, not only are parts of the facilities still degrading and need replacement to reactivate, it isn't keeping up with industry improvements and such. So an "ideal" production facility changes over time.

          I remember being told about a silver mine in college where they were still extracting metals

    • Well said.

      I would mod-up to counter the down-mod, but I already commented in the thread.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Do you have any idea what is entailed in a major new refining startup? You're talking years just for the construction of the site and purchasing and installation of equipment. Depending on the economic situation the financing of the project will take months to years more before the project can even be started. Sure, we can do it, but do we have the stockpiles of material to wait that long?

    • Environmental regulations are a joke anyway when all you do is send it to another country, making any regulation a net zero in terms of cleaning up anything.

  • China has stated they plan on taking Taiwan by end of 2027... is the US supposed to wait until they are in a hot war with China and respond to them cutting off the supply then, all the while keep feeding the dragon more advanced tech? Only reason China has dominance in the rare earth market is they spent the last 30+ years undercutting prices, flooding the markets and buying up competition. Which had the benefit of cheaper minerals for the world, but also a single supplier dominance that can cut you off w

    • You do know it'll take years to start up new mines and get it up to the capacity needed. And those mines can almost ask as much as they want to, so the rare earth minerals they mine will be MUCH more expensive as now, which will result in much higher prices for all these chips (which already are freaking expensive).
      • Vietnam has been ramping up for years, for example.

      • yeah.. i do... it was literally the last sentence i wrote that said it. And it's also why countries have national strategic reserves for rare earth metals. For these very eventualities.

        And how is a group of companies mining a resource and selling it on the market, setting the price not having the same risk as China having the very same capacity to set the price?

        Except, you know... multiple producers... one sets price lower, gets more sales... which prevents the others from charging too much... they can o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Why do you think the US should have any say over what people in Taiwan or China do? Are you willing to go die to keep Taiwan within the US Empire?

      • I don't think the US has a say on what people do IN their own countries... unless you know, the people don't have the power to protect themselves, and are abused by their "leaders". I do believe that the strong have a moral responsibility to protect the weak from those that wish them harm. I was fortunate, and managed to live outside of that hellscape... my parents were not, and they fought to rid their country of oppression.

        My biggest issues are when someone tries to exert their own wants on someone else

  • Knee jerk, emotional nonsense is not a style of governance..except in China! Everything they do either isn't enforced or backfires spectacularly. This will just make the US find a new source for those minerals and then export them to other Chinese customers if they're found domestically. Maybe China should stop worrying about chips and start worrying about real estate and the birth rate.
    • Which other sellers? You can't just start a mine and be up to the quantities needed, that'll take years. And those sellers will ask much higher prices because they can.

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