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China Now Halting Shipments of Rare Earth Minerals To US
blackraven14250 writes with news that China, after putting at least a temporary stop to rare earth exports to Japan, is now doing the same with exports to the US; according to the linked article, this is in response to recent US promises to investigate certain Chinese trade practices.
From TFA, emphasis mine:
Close our markets to all of China's exports.
Really? I thought they were due to assassinations of archdukes and such.
This really causes me to question our Afghanistan policy even more. We, the US Geo Survey(?), found these mass deposits of rare earth metals/minerals and, at last read I believe, the Chinese are getting the rights to actually mine and produce the metals/minerals (cit: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all ) and (for those that like more of a "story" with your "news" cit: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06/14/discovers-t-minerals-afghanistan/ ).
Am I way off here or should we not be keeping these rights? Not being a geologist, "IANAG", maybe these are completely different metals/minerals. If they are the same I believe we have every right to mine them ourselves. We have invested more than enough into Afghanistan to justify producing these reserves.
However it now becomes very interesting with China. I think most Americans forget how close to China our military is in Afghanistan.
Can anyone enlighten me if I am missing something since IANAG.
Member of American Sarcasm Society - Motto: "Like we need your help!"
. The writer pretty much argues that the last trade war wasn't really won at all,
and even that limited success was more a factor of specific global issues and not because of American industry. Give it a read, it makes an interesting argument.
China's rare earth supply should be boycotted anyway, because of the massive pollution caused by their unregulated mining practice.
You're right, but I question whether it's worth it at this stage. I think a better solution right now would be to just cut off some of the trade benefits that make it so beneficial for Mainland China to continue their rapid-growth export-driven economic policies, which was a possible end state of this increased Congressional irritation about their currency manipulation.
Right now, it's not worth causing heavy damage to our economy just to hurt them more.The US is perfectly capable of pissing the CPC off just by switching recognition to the ROC government, which wouldn't break our economy and would send a nice, strong political message.
I think the idea of the piece was more that people mis-remember the Japanese problem and believe that it was solved through the ascention of American industry out-competing once challenged. The author points out that that's not what happened, that there were a lot of legislative and diplomatic stategies that were deployed to out-maneuver Japan on a world stage, and that even using this wide range of techniques the eventually victory itself is largely questionable.
Considering that the US needs China to buy its public debt, more than China needs the US to buy its goods, there isn't much the US can do.
Unless the US can get a collation of country blocks (like NAFTA, EU, OPEC, etc.), perhaps with a ruling by the WTO, to joint together in trade sanctions against China. Countries like Canada, Australia, and others that provide a lot of mineral and energy resources to China would have a lot more influence.
Remember that China does not produce sufficient mineral and energy resources, not to mention food, for its economy and to feed its population.
As a Canadian, I hope that our government demands guarantees that China not to restrict rare-earth shipments to Canada, or Canada will block all resource and food shipments to China.
Have you ever played Settlers of Catan? I remember this one game when one player in particular got a monopoly on sheep. Everyone else was diversifying their economy. This guy wanted to control the world's supply of sheep.
Since you really do need sheep to do anything, long story short, he won the game.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was the spark, but pressure had been building for awhile. High school teacher explained with the acronym MAIN:
Militarism - Tools and the desire to use them. 'Beliefs' category.
Alliances - Webs of alliance treaties would widen a small conflict into a larger one as other countries got behind their allies.
Imperialism - this one about resources, but also beliefs ("white man's burden", et cetera)
Nationalism - this one squarely 'beliefs'.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
But this doesn't mean that the US will make the right moves and invest into itself, in fact I think they'll do the opposite. There's only so many times you can throw money out and expect Corporations to develop good busniess state-side(see automakers, see banks) As TFA points out, it would take the US quite a bit of time to catch up in terms of production and refinement, and we don't have any refineries, let alone good clean ones that would be required. Other Countries only make up 3% of of the current output, and it is still China who refines it. We have a problem in Canada where we allow other countries to dig out and own the resources and the only penny seen is in the blue collar work, which isn't much. If we developed and hired we'd have a lot more money floating around, instead our Oil money goes to Holland and our natural gas to the US. Canadian's loose on everything but the cheapest labour.
Although the products China ships with these materials are not being stopped, so don't worry about your iPhone 4's or Acer netbooks not arriving. There are a few big companies who use these materials to build their own chips here in NA will suffer (Intel/IBM come to mind).
[J]
first models predicted peak oil between 1965 and 1970 http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf
...in the US. And that's when it peaked.
I like to think that the parent was not referring to people who work for the gov't, but rather people who let employers direct most or all of their professional lives. A self-employed person is a rarity these days, and I think that's behind many/most U.S. problems (WARNING: RANT FOLLOWS)
An example: Let's say you're a senior computer programmer at a Fortune 500 corp. You get interesting work, reasonable vacation time, your co-workers and boss are friendly, and the pay is great. The problem here is that you're still working for someone else's (the owner's, the board of directors', whatever) dream, not your own. That means someone else is profiting more from your work than you, that someone else is deciding what projects to begin and what projects to cancel, and that someone else is free to delegate whatever duties they don't find enjoyable. I think that the employee's role as a stone in a corporate pyramid is to be avoided, unless servile habits can somehow be considered virtuous. I've noticed a couple tendencies among employee friends of mine, tendencies that become more noticeable the more heavily said employee invests in his career. They're unhappy, and their personal lives are fixed in humdrum routine. They spend so much time ignoring their own instincts and goals in lieu of company orders that they become listless and unable to motivate themselves to do anything new or bold in their personal lives.
Back in the 18th and early 19th centuries, most Americans had their own livelihoods, often organized as family businesses where each worker was involved or at least consulted in most every other aspect of the business. People generally did what they wanted and found a way to monetize it enough to get by. Massive, rigid corporate hierarchies only really emerged after the mid-19th century, when sweatshops and compulsory schooling started to indoctrinate everyone into obediently following the commands of the elite "experts".
Nowhere is this more evident than the way most people participate in elections. They are astoundingly passive, focusing almost entirely on voting, the least important step in the electoral cycle. On average, they don't work for political campaigns, they don't participate in primaries, and they tend to vote for whatever football team ^W^W party they've always voted for (if they vote at all; voter turnout sucks). The really politically active ones usually don't do much more wait until the candidates are narrowed down before voting against someone. Every November, people brag about how they did their civic duty by voting, content to ignore the much larger difference they could have made earlier in the process. With a population as politically apathetic as ours, it's no wonder that those in power treat our wishes with such contempt. They are sure in their ivy-league belief that the electorate is composed of adult-age children who need to be closely managed as wards of the state ("liberals") and/or rallied to the cause of our fearless leader's foreign adventures ("conservatives").
In short, a reluctance or outright refusal to think for onesself is the root cause of many of the U.S.'s failings. This problem could probably stop within a single generation if we got our children out of state schools and into countless work apprenticeships and charities with people of different social classes instead. Just think of the kind of well-rounded, genuinely worthwhile people such a liberal education would produce.
Let's connect the dots..... ... and this is not distant future. This is 60,000 presold vehicles in Israel today, and retail rollout in the upcoming 4 months....
China wants to drive.
They're adding more cars on the road a year than the US and Europe combined (~2-3mil/year national car parc growth)
Chery, their biggest independent car maker, has signed a deal with Better Place. They're almost completely leapfrogging the Internal Combustion Engine altogether. Beijin's mayor deputy has visited Better Place in Israel multiple times.
Right now, anyone who ignores what the hybrid-entrenched car companies (Read: Toyota, Chevrolet, Honda) are saying and has his ear to the ground knows one thing:
Once an electric car stops being a greenie status symbol 10K$ more expensive than an ICE car, and starts being 10K$ cheaper than an ICE car (which is what the Better Place model does), Multi-Trillion-Dollar-Industry (Oil and Automotive combined) undergoes BIG disruption happens. All hell breaks loose.
Priuses have moved in production from 10,000car/anum to 100,000car/anum.
Renault, on the other hand, the boldest pure-EV company (and Better Place's biggest partner), just geared up for a 1,000,000car/anum production in Turkey. They know one thing: When Better Place starts running cross-subsidy ("Free iPhone on a 3-year-plan") on a car that's 10K$ car cheaper (batteries not included), subsidized by government to the tune of another 5K$-10K$, and is 5K$ cheaper than hybrid/ice because there is no ICE, and starts giving away cars for free...
Then Renault doesn't have a demand problem like Toyota do. They have a supply problem. It becomes a question of how many cars you can hand out for free.
All the big players - namely countries - know this. It's no secret, and Shai Agassi is all over YouTube like a rash. Everyone is watching Israel, Denmark and Australia very closely.
This is why Japan, China, Europe and the US have dumped 4 BIL$ into car battery production, when nobody is actually producing anywhere near this many cars yet.
By 2015-2016, there will be more electric cars sold than ICE ones.
And in the middle of it is the one technology pretty much all the big car players have agreed on - Lithium Ion. Afghanistan and Bolivia, large as their stash may be, is not happening anytime soon.
It'll be Argentina & Chile's salt flats, slightly more expensive Lithium from spodumene ore in Australia, China (and to lesser extent North America and some other locations in the world), and for countries that are willing to pay premium for national security and divorcing workforce driving to work from import dependence like Korea - production from ocean seawater.
China is concerned wants to make sure it's lithium needs are served before everything else.
This development is anything but surprising.
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Food subsidies (most, not all) are war proofing, because you don't want to be dependent for your daily bread on some third world tinpot dictator who can employ slave labour. Its more of a strategic consideration than anything else. Dumping is inexcusable though.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Hear, hear! In the long term, I think it will be a good thing that China's regime is finally showing its true colors as a childish mannequin of a government, too brittle to accept even the mildest criticism due to having no legitimacy. They were never elected, and the Heavens aren't smiling like they used to in the olden days when claiming a Heavenly mandate was all that was needed.
This will force the U.S. and the West in general to get smarter about what materials are necessary for modern life and find substitutes for the ones China controls. It will have the effect of shifting the West's economy further away from China's.