You Don't Bring a Praseodymium Knife to a Gunfight

China thinks it can withhold its exports of obscure but important minerals to get its way with its neighbors. Why it picked the wrong weapon.

Last week, the New York Times published a stunning story: China, amid a nasty territorial spat with Japan, had quietly halted shipments of rare-earth minerals to its East Asian neighbor, threatening to escalate a skirmish into a full-blown trade war. China swiftly denied the story, while other journalists rushed to confirm it. The Times reported on Sept. 28 that China, while still not admitting the existence of the ban, may be tacitly lifting it -- but the damage to the country's image as a reliable supplier has been done.

Interesting article. But it seems to me that this is one area where the government has a legitimate role to play—but of course doesn’t.

Our government used to stockpile critical raw materials and ensure that our military hardware was made in the U.S.A., so a potential enemy could not suddenly cut off our ability to defend ourselves.

That is no longer the case.

What’s needed here, it seems to me, is a reasonable tariff on rare earths, so it is affordable to mine them here. And we might make a deal with Canada, exempting them from all or part of the tariff.

But we are probably too hooked on cheap Chinese goods to do that, thanks to Clinton, Bush, and the Chamber of Commerce.

Swimming in cerium, dearth of dysprosium. Rare earths future mixed.

As the West struggles to mine new, or resurrect old, rare earths deposits critical shortages are looming for some rare earths elements while others are not in such short supply.

“In a very interesting assessment of the rare earths sector, Great Western Minerals Executive Chairman, Gary Billingsley told the audience at the Global Mining Investment Conference in London that although there could be major short term problems in rare earths supplies, some rare earth elements (REEs) could be in a substantial surplus position within the next few years.

With China both the biggest consumer, and by far the biggest producer, of rare earths the market has been severely affected by that country’s policy of retaining ever higher amounts of rare earths for its own usage, and this has seen prices for some rare earths - notably at the heavy end of the rare earth spectrum - rise dramatically over the past year. There is little doubt that China’s rare earths policy will lead to a severe shortage of some rare earths over the next two to three years before any new, or resurrected, Western mining operations can be brought into production.

Thus all rare earths are not created equal in supply, or demand. With a limited number of known REE deposits which could relatively quickly be brought into production in the next three to five years - three in Australia, one in Vietnam, one in South Africa and one in the USA, critical shortages are likely in some heavy REEs such as dysprosium, tritium and neodymium, while, as Billingsley pointed out others at the lighter end of the rare earths scale such as cerium and lanthanum could move to a strong over-supply position which makes the economics of new rare earth mining operations problematical. Longer term he sees another eight significant deposits which could be brought on stream later in the decade.”

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page72102?oid=112031&sn=Detail&pid=102055

But, if you do anything....the Liberal Free Trade Globalists will come out of the woodwork and whine “isolationism and protectionism” whenever the US needs to challenge Communist China. The Communist Chinese have been in a trade war with the US ever since we first shipped factories over there.

Guarantee you, you will have posters like rudeboy, toddsterpatriot, and others running to the defense of Communist China if the US answered the tariffs and trade barriers the Communist Chinese place on the US.

The only way you stop Communist China is to slap a tariff on everything coming out of there. They need to free trade more than the US does, because their people have no money to purchase their own products. Eventually, the US will end Free Trade with Communist China....it cannot sustain the huge deficits and the wealth redistribution

If you still support Free Trade with Communist China....you are a Communist. Plain and simple.

Interesting article. But it seems to me that this is one area where the government has a legitimate role to play—but of course doesn’t.

Our government used to stockpile critical raw materials and ensure that our military hardware was made in the U.S.A., so a potential enemy could not suddenly cut off our ability to defend ourselves.

That is no longer the case.

But we are probably too hooked on cheap Chinese goods to do that, thanks to Clinton, Bush, and the Chamber of Commerce.

Actually...good ideas. We need to start putting tariffs on Communist Chinese goods to counter their tariffs and trade barriers.

Even though we have so much stuff coming in from Communist China...we still have an upper hand. Commie China has no domestic market...and the US is the largest market on the planet. What will the Commie Chines do? Sell to the EU? Good luck with that.

If we hasd real leadership, and not Liberal Globalists in both parties, we can hold the upper hand with Communist China

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