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China Considering Cuts In Rare-Earth Metal Exports
SillySnake sends in a report from the Telegraph on draft plans in China to restrict exports of rare earths. "Beijing is drawing up plans to prohibit or restrict exports of rare earth metals that are produced only in China and play a vital role in cutting edge technology, from hybrid cars and catalytic converters, to superconductors, and precision-guided weapons. A draft report by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs."
Just what the world economy needs. A single-country "cartel" that will cause prices to greatly rise. This should be interesting to watch.
I guess rare-earth metals are the new "oil".
Some key points you may have missed from the article:
Mr Stephens said China had put global competitors out of business in the early 1990s by flooding the market, leading to the closure of the biggest US rare earth mine at Mountain Pass in California - now being revived by Molycorp Minerals.
So, if this goes through, we merely open the mine in California. I'll feel better about paying a higher price for something if it is created under tighter environmental regulations than what they have in China. Cheap labor and lack of an EPA and potential corrupted officials? Of course they can undercut California!
Secondly a rare metals dealer in Australia said
This isn't about the China holding the world to ransom. They are saying we need these resources to develop our own economy and achieve energy efficiency, so go find your own supplies.
So your analogy is lacking in many ways. We can refine the metals here and China needs them for their own growing demand.
My work here is dung.
I don't think anyone really has to. There isn't enough food between China and Alaska, or between Alaska and CONUS, to feed 300 million people. So if the Chinese decided to do something like this, we could reasonably expect the one survivor to be completely unnoticed in the trail of 300,000,000 corpses along the way.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It does not even make sense! China restricts exports and you propose retaliation by restricting imports?!
I assume you live in US (who else always talked about reviving local industries?), do you even know how many export restrictions there are in the US? Crypto, high-tech stuff, whatever vaguely related to "national security", you name it.
All countries (except those that have already became a vassal state of the US) restricts exports of critical resources, and this is allowed in WTO treaties. Examples from countries all over the world include restricting natural resources, science & technology, and even critical infrastructure (you do know that US blocked a company from buying the operations of the Panama Canal for "national security" reasons?).
Only in /. would this non-news story becomes news worthy to make the front page.
Oliver.
Maybe they're getting tired of exchanging their wealth for our paper. I admire the way China is focused like a laser on their infrastructure and the acquisition of raw materials, while we're busy making up new problems to solve as a way of avoiding the very serious ones we already have. Perhaps if we focused on production, rather than consumption, we might have a little extra wealth to spend on our own decaying infrastructure.
True. And actually this isn't just the case in the USA; there are virtually no new refineries anywhere in the world.
But actually the main hurdle isn't the NIMBY syndrome or over-regulation - it's a simple matter of return on investment. No-one wants to build a refinery because they take a long time to build, and a long time to recoup your investment, and the world's oil supply is known to be running out. Globally, oil-fields are now considered to be at peak production levels; that's to say, it's unlikely that there will ever be more oil being pumped than there is today. So building new refining capacity is a poor investment. Instead, people are just making do with what there is. That's why Iran is now importing refined petroleum from Venezuela.
Do you really expect a country that at least used to charge families for the bullets used to execute family members to act in a humanitarian way?
Uuum, what have the Chinese nationals to do with their asshole government? They are not their government. It's like punishing you for the murderings by the US Army in in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wouldn't you feel unfairly treated?
Perhaps they even go to American schools to *avoid* "their" government.
It's people with your mindset that create hatred against a whole nation for the fault of a few.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This is typical protectionist crap. Sorry, but you may be right about businesses thinking short term, but if America starts banning foreign nationals from its schools, and slapping tariffs on foreign imports, how does that make America any better than China?
And for the record, America DOES still slap tariffs on foreign imports into this country. Usually at the behest of the powerful lobbies. Ever look at things like sugar and wheat imports? Both have either rather large tariffs, or just subsidies for the domestic industry. Why? Because the industry lobbies for those products demanded it. And it has caused a lot of friction with America's trading partners.
Hell, I remember a 'free trade' agreement a few years ago with Australia where not only did America put tariffs on Australian wheat imports (because of pressure from the US wheat lobby), they also insisted as part of their free trade deal that Australia adopt something similar to the DMCA as part of the deal - at the behest of the RIAA/MPAA. So if you really believe America has been doing other countries a favor in it's trading practices (Food for Oil anyone? Or how about withholding aid money, which is supposed to be completely unrelated to trade), then you're deluded.
In short, protectionism is bad no matter what. Now whether China is banning these exports because it truly doesn't have enough to satisfy domestic demand, and thus can't afford to supply foreign demand, or they're trying to use this threat to gain more concessions from the international community is irrelevant. Instituting protectionist policies won't help Sino-American relations, and considering, as you have said, America relies so heavily on China for it's manufacturing of almost everything we buy, America just can't afford to ruin it's relationship with yet another country, especially one it relies so heavily on.
America used to be able to take the high moral ground, and used to be viewed in a generally favorable light in the world. It's America's own greed and arrogance (not to mention going around the world like a bull in a china shop sticking it's nose in everyone else's business) that has tarnished this reputation. The election of Obama has actually started to repair this a little, but only when America starts playing fair with the rest of the world again (ie. treating other countries as equals, as opposed to approaching each trade deal as a "we want this, give it to us or else you're not our friend anymore!" deal) will it actually gain respect again. You seem quick to cry 'foul!' when another country starts using the same tactics America has been using for decades against America. You (ie. America) wrote these new trading rules, don't be surprised when someone else plays by them.
Revenge? It's not revenge. It's their resources, they can CHOOSE to sell it to us, or they can CHOOSE to hoard it for their own use, or they can CHOOSE to turn it into a life sized replica of the pyramids just because they can. That's the nature of it being THEIRS.
Looking at the history of things like rubber, tea, diamonds and oil, it would seem that we are not aware that we have no God given right to the resources of others, no matter how much we tell ourselves we need it for our survival. Has UK/US historical foreign policy gotten that far into the public mindset that we now get all angsty and self-righteous whenever some country decides that they need their resources more than we need their resources? Seriously people, if we're going to think this way and then acquiesce to the military being used to go fetch those resources and destroy the other country in the process, then lets at least not act all surprised when they get fed up and fly planes into our buildings.
I hate printers.