[sickoflibs]

RE :”C&EN Senior Editor Mitch Jacoby and Contributing Editor Jessie Jiang explain that the situation involves a family of chemical elements that may soon start to live up to their name, the “rare earths.” China has virtually cornered the global market on them, and produces most of the world's supply. Since 2005, China has been raising prices and restricting exports, most recently in 2010, fostering a potential supply crisis in the U.S. “

Why do we need natural resources when we have Obama-care and unemployment compensation? A better investment than natural resources like energy, metals, is stimulating the economy with food stamps.

[Silentgypsy]

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! I knew this would happen. We have to appropriate China.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Yup... it’s a REAL problem.

China is doing whatever they can to force hi-tech manufacturing to re-locate within the country... to provide more jobs.. and, to make it easier for them to steal the technology.

The sad part is... companies are already falling all over themselves to do just that.

[count-your-change]

“....computer hard disc drives, hybrid-electric cars, military weapons, and other key products”

Why...no problem....just buy these items from China!

[9YearLurker]

What will we do without our electric cars!?!

[epithermal]

“World Resources: Rare earths are relatively abundant in the Earth’s crust, but discovered minable concentrations are less common than for most other ores. U.S. and world resources are contained primarily in bastnäsite and monazite. Bastnäsite deposits in China and the United States constitute the largest percentage of the world’s rare-earth economic resources, while monazite deposits in Australia, Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the United States constitute the second largest segment. Apatite, cheralite, eudialyte, loparite, phosphorites, rare-earth-bearing (ion adsorption) clays, secondary monazite, spent uranium solutions, and xenotime make up most of the remaining resources. Undiscovered resources are thought to be very large relative to expected demand.”

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/mcs-2010-raree.pdf

There is no exploration for these deposits in the USA because we depend on China. Of course if China cuts us off the envirowackos won’t let us explore and mine our own resources. Note that the USGS (above) considers undiscovered resources to be “very large”.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

China's monopoly on the global supply of elements critical for production of computer hard disc drives, hybrid-electric cars, military weapons, and other key products — and its increasingly strict limits on exports — is setting the stage for a crisis in the United States.

It should be setting the stage for renewed mining in the US. It's not like every industrially desirable mineral can only be found in the magic land of China - they're simply willing to go mine it, while we buy ours on the international market because our environmentalists and their lawyers get the vapors every time we try to exploit our own natural resources.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon. Africa (here and there) also has supplies of certain rare-earth elements that are necessary in small quantities for electronics. No surprise that the Chinese have been working on influence in Africa at least since they backed the FNLA in Angola’s civil war. Nowadays they’re getting ready to industrialize certain countries, mainly to build stuff cheap enough to make money selling into the Chinese market. Chinese consumers have money to spend, and like the Japanese, the local capacity builds for export.

One run-of-the-mill metal-rich big asteroid can contain more metals than have ever been mined in Earth’s history. Gosh, what to do, what to do. And Obama is killing the space program as well, gosh, what’s *that* about?

[AdmSmith]

BEIJING—China on Saturday rejected a request from the Japanese government not to cut exports of rare-earth metals that are vital to the production of a wide range of electrical products, such as hybrid vehicles and liquid crystal displays.

Japanese industry minister Masayuki Naoshima asked Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Li Yizhong and Commerce Minister Chen Deming for reductions to this year's export quota to be reversed in a meeting at the “Japan-China high-level economic dialogue” of economic ministers in Beijing.

Naoshima told the Chinese ministers: “In the second half of this year alone, the export quota is being reduced by 70 percent. The reduction is too sharp.”

The Japanese side repeated the request at the main session of the conference, with all economy-related ministers from both countries present.

But China, which produces more than 90 percent of the world's rare-earth metals, refused to budge on its policy of limiting access.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201008290151.html