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China Now Halting Shipments of Rare Earth Minerals To US

Posted by timothy on from the not-the-band-rare-earth dept.

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.

21 of 738 comments (clear)

  1. Way to prove their point! by russotto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From TFA, emphasis mine:

    The United Steelworkers, in a September petition to the Obama administration, argue that China is unfairly subsidizing exports to encourage companies in the country to send their clean energy products around the world. At the same time, the union accuses China of limiting the exports of certain rare-earth minerals necessary to produce solar panels so that foreign companies will settle in the country.

    1. Re:Way to prove their point! by WindBourne · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do you subsidize your local business, or do you dump? What is happening in China is that they are doing BOTH. Keep in mind that China belongs to IMF and WTO. They have promised to do allow their money to float, to not subsidize general trade (though apparently key tech can be), and to not dump on the open market. China breaks all of those rules. Does Sweden? Nope.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    2. Re:Way to prove their point! by Luckyo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Essentially what they are doing is what we we (as in West) have been doing to China and still doing to many other developing countries for about a century. We're still doing it in most agricultural products, dumping so that local farmers in Africa can't really compete unless they play ball.

      The issue isn't protectionism. It's that this is really the first time that West actually got the taste of same medicine, and same arguments to back the medicine, as it was giving to developing countries for centuries. Chinese have watched what we did, learned, and simply copied our actions. And now, we're finding that in the raw, brutal, jungle-law "only strongest and most ruthless survives" style of globalisation we created, we may not be the only top dogs. And that realisation is so shocking to many of the elite, they're clearly in denial. Mostly because they simply believe in the system they created on religious level, and when the system is turned against them, they are unable to see the bigger picture. So we get the "oh noes, China is being protectionist" tears from top leaders. Never mind that we did the same thing for centuries, when China does it, it's deeply wrong. Not because system is deeply flawed, but because it's not the West that is the party in control.

      It's not even that it's somehow irreplaceable. There is a centuries-worth of rare earths across both Northern American and Europe. It's just that we're so used to being the ones using globalisation as a hammer to beat the nail of competition into the ground, we are simply stumped as to what we are supposed to do when we become the nail that is getting hammered instead. A hundred years of being the hammer makes us a pretty bad nail.

    3. Re:Way to prove their point! by copponex · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is america bitch.

      We'll build a fucking nailgun.

      In what factory, you jingoist ignorant fuck?!

      Thanks for perfectly illustrating why we are in this situation. "This is America!" is a meaningless phrase. You didn't do shit when they busted the unions. You didn't do shit when the easier jobs were shipped over there. You didn't do shit while the Congress continued to cut taxes for corporations so they could sell us out. You just sat there, with that smug look on your face, saying "Yeah boy! This is America! We believe in the Market, not in that damn Government interference. Why pay more for TV set? That's stupid, when we can all just put it on a credit card for half the price."

      Do me a fucking solid favor. Go find the largest object you can imagine shoving up your ass, and then sit on it. Because it's a good primer on what the next thirty years is going to be like for you.

    4. Re:Way to prove their point! by 228e2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd like to nominate this for the Best Reply of the Year award.

      --
      Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
    5. Re:Way to prove their point! by ktappe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is america bitch.

      "This is America!" is a meaningless phrase. You didn't do shit when they busted the unions. You didn't do shit when the easier jobs were shipped over there. You didn't do shit while the Congress continued to cut taxes for corporations so they could sell us out. You just sat there, with that smug look on your face, saying "Yeah boy! This is America! We believe in the Market, not in that damn Government interference. Why pay more for TV set? That's stupid, when we can all just put it on a credit card for half the price."

      Best. Post. Ever.

      --
      "We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
    6. Re:Way to prove their point! by iamhassi · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Thanks for perfectly illustrating why we are in this situation. "This is America!" is a meaningless phrase."

      Acutally according to the article he might be on to something: "U.S. rare earth companies have begun looking to reopen old mines and search for new deposits, but industry experts say that relaunching an independent U.S. supply chain could take 15 years."

      I know it says 15 years, but I have a feeling that if China really decided to withhold rare earth minerals for an extended time we'd find a supply a bit faster.

      The only reason we use China's rare earth minerals is because they mine it and ship it to the US cheaper than we can mine it ourselves: "many U.S. companies have not jumped into the market because China's state-owned mines keep rare earth prices artificially low."

      But we have plenty to mine: "the U.S. holds rare earth ore reserves of up to 13 million metric tons. By contrast, the entire world produced just 124,000 metric tons in 2009". That means we have roughly 104 years worth of rare earth ore reserves, I think we'll be just fine.

      China's kind of like the neighbor kid that knocks on my door and offers to mow the lawn for $20. It's not that I can't mow myself, but when it's so cheap to pay someone else why do it myself? If he ever didn't show up for a couple weeks I'd just do it myself, but as long as he's offering I'll keep paying him.

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    7. Re:Way to prove their point! by lbschenkel · · Score: 5, Informative

      Exactly, and as a Brazilian I can emphasize that the US subsidies on sugar cane and corn have been affecting us for decades. Brazil has been complaining to the WTO since a long time ago and recently we started getting some victories there. It is the same thing with a lot of countries in Europe. I know there is no saint in this fight, but it seems very hypocritical to me to see Americans complaining about China practices when they have been doing the same thing to others for years and years.

    8. Re:Way to prove their point! by copponex · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If anything you just said is true, why is Germany the #2 exporter in the world, and kicking our ass in exports per capita? ($12,000 vs $3,000)

      Your bullshit diversions are meaningless.

    9. Re:Way to prove their point! by mrogers · · Score: 5, Funny

      China's kind of like the neighbor kid that knocks on my door and offers to mow the lawn for $20. It's not that I can't mow myself, but when it's so cheap to pay someone else why do it myself? If he ever didn't show up for a couple weeks I'd just do it myself, but as long as he's offering I'll keep paying him.

      So you keep paying the kid to mow your lawn for a couple of years. One day he shows up with his own lawnmower. No point having your own mower when it's not being used, so you put your mower on eBay. A few years later you lose your job at the lawnmower factory and find yourself mowing lawns for $20 a time, of which $5 goes to the kid for borrowing his mower.

      Oh, also the kid is exerting increasingly firm control over the South China Sea, but I'm not sure how to work that into the analogy. ;-)

    10. Re:Way to prove their point! by Devout_IPUite · · Score: 5, Insightful

      1) Don't allow imports from anyone who doesn't have a certain standard for environmental and labor laws.
      2) Wow, that was easy.
      3) By the way... We have less stuff now. But we have more wildlife. It was a tradeoff, but I'd support making it.

  2. a trade war? good by brxndxn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nothing gets the American economy going like a good challenge..

    Foreign companies invest in China. Then, China creates a Chinese alternative.. state-run.. state-subsidized.. copying the foreign model. Only.. China manipulates their currency for an export advantage. China keeps their middle class underpaid (while the government hordes money). And safety? Safety costs money.. Harming an American worker is more expensive than keeping him safe.. In China, harm a Chinese worker.. and replace him with one of the horde.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-LLsODnuHI

    As American consumers, we pay less for cheap plastic crap now.. at the expense of our jobs and quality..

    And Walmart leads the way.. fastest from store shelves to landfills.

    --
    --- We need more Ron Paul!
    1. Re:a trade war? good by copponex · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ultimately, American consumers caused this problem.

      No.

      Look at corporate profits and income for the top 1% of income earners from 1980 to the present. See how both of those numbers skyrocketed? Yes, the top 1% of income tripled from 1980 to 2006 when adjusted for inflation. See how the middle class stopped growing, and barely kept pace with inflation?

      Now go look at the data for Germany. See how their strong unions kept their manufacturing sector competitive, and how they remain competitive with China for raw exports, and blow them out of the water on a per capita basis? All while having a stellar environmental record?

      The business community dismantled unions and regulations, the government allowed the wealthy to change the rules to enrich themselves and destroy the middle class, all while telling us we were being liberated by the market. Well, guess what: the market apparently decided to sell all of our debt and manufacturing capacity and raw materials processing to China, and send the check to a few thousand already wealthy douchebags. It seems some needs were "peculiarly attended to" and others were forgotten. Ain't that a bitch.

      (And yeah, some of us saw it coming.)

      It cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers, we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interests has been so carefully attended to; and among this later class our merchants and manufactures have been by far the principal architects. In the mercantile regulations, which have been taken notice of in this chapter, the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of some other sets of producers, has been sacrificed to it.
      Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
      Book IV, Chapter VIII, pg.721

  3. Re:Easy solution by drgould · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Close our markets to all of China's exports.

    You don't have to close our markets, just impose a 10% to 20% across the board import tariff on all manufactured goods.

    Actually, we should take away their MFN (most favored nation) trading status. They never deserved it in the first place.

  4. Re:Easy solution by Jeremi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The US and the rest of the world can not be held hostage by economic terrorism from China.

    Really, must everything the US doesn't like be called terrorism? China refusing to sell us every product we want may be many things, but terrorism it isn't.

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  5. Re:Already found them... location, location, locat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Am I way off here or should we not be keeping these rights?

    ...

    Can anyone enlighten me if I am missing something since IANAG.

    Yes. You are way off. The mineral rights reside with the Afghan people and their government.

  6. Re:Easy solution by Jeremi · · Score: 5, Informative

    When they are a sole supplier, it is terrorism.

    Sigh....

    terrorism-noun
    1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
    2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
    3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

    By your reasoning, if Apple decided they didn't want to sell me an iPhone, Apple would be engaging in terrorism.

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  7. Re:Tit for tat by ThatCanadianGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey now... no need to be sexist. (north) American men have large, pendulous breasts too, although I can't speak for the Chinese or Japanese, but I'm sure the same holds true.

  8. Re:Easy solution by Rorschach1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do you have ANY idea what this would mean? It's not just the Walmarts of the world that deal with China.

    I run a very small company - just a couple of geeks in a little office/warehouse. We do enough business for both of us to pay the rent and put food on the table, with the occasional mention in Make or hackaday as a side benefit. We take pride in doing as much of our work domestically as we can and sourcing locally whenever possible, but I can tell you we wouldn't last 3 months without trade with China.

    Global supply chains are far too interconnected for something so drastic. When the economy tanked in 2008, despite the fact that we still had plenty of orders coming in we almost went under when we couldn't get the parts we needed. Even when *our* suppliers were OK, if one of *their* suppliers was in trouble we felt it.

    People seem to have this weird idea that there's some sort of China, Inc. that just sits over there on the other side of the Pacific building plastic widgets to cram down our throats via Walmart. That's not how it works. China's far from blameless, but "close our markets to Chinese exports" is right up there with "nuke Baghdad" for brilliant foreign policy.

  9. rescued from wolves by epine · · Score: 5, Funny

    War between America and China? It must be cool to grow up in an isolated wood cabin reading dusty tomes about world history from the 1950s then suddenly the satellite dish arrives and you can post on the internet.

    Sorry, I missed which country is invading the other.

    China could stamp out a billion machetes in just a few weeks. Rwanda was barely an hours worth of China's productive capacity. 18,000 Japanese soldiers cut off from their supply chain defended Iwo Jima for 35 days. You'd face 18 million Chinese just landing on the beach. Some would have weapons.

    Or how about the Chinese invading Los Angeles. I don't think they'd survive the first commute. By the first number that came up, there are 65 million handguns in America. Imagine that these were not all pointed at fellow Americans for a few hours. It would make Mogadishu look like a mild celebration of Chinese new year. The bullets would be flying thicker than rice at a Mafia wedding.

    Or maybe the Americans could hatch a plot to pump sulphur dioxides into the atmosphere and reverse global warming while secretly stock-piling a million M1A1 tanks to cross the newly exposed land bridge to China. Hey, it almost worked for the Germans.

    A final possibility is that both sides would follow "A Taste of Armageddon" and China agrees to manufacture a few million suicide booths at an unbeatable low, low price with Walmart branding. This would be good for Texas, but might strain the agreement as the Chinese complain "do we really have to make them so large?" Meanwhile the Japanese embargo the entire deal in an effort to collect royalties on the bundled BluRay player and the Cell chips sourced from IBM overheat running the provably-fair thermonuclear simulation. It would be a fiasco all around.

  10. Re:In this case I really doubt it by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is a massive ocean in the way and China has no blue water navy.

    Which is exactly why China is working on a blue water navy.

    They cannot project the force necessary, and cannot deal with the US intelligence abilities (like recon satellites and IUSS).

    What do you think the satellite kill was for that China performed?

    It's almost as if the Chinese leadership is aware of what its deficiencies are, and has long-term plans to remedy them. And yet, I hear the same comments about China I heard about Japan in the 70s and early 80s: they just copy, they don't innovate, and have a mediocre directed economy. And then they ate our lunch. I expect the same to happen with China. They will eat our lunch, because we're only looking at where they are, not where they're going.

    --
    Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.