Posted on 09/30/2020 9:59:07 PM PDT by blueplum
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered his Cabinet secretaries to look into the country’s reliance on rare earths in his latest bid to end China’s dominance of the industry.
The move could lead to tariffs, quotas or other possible import restrictions, according to an executive order released on Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at oann.com ...
Trump signed this latest EO prior to the Duluth rally.
Below are three links. One a bloomberg article that recaps Chinese involvement in a California mine. The other two are maps showing possible rare earth mining locations in the US.
sorry I misspoke, not bloomberg article, a Defense News article about the California mine:
https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/11/12/the-collapse-of-american-rare-earth-mining-and-lessons-learned/
Map 1:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2010/5220/
Map 2:
https://mrdata.usgs.gov/ree/map-us.html
And where where are those links? :)
Ok, you just posted them.
haha. I’m a slow cut and paster :)
More WINNING!
Back in the Day the DOD used to try to manage Strategic Commodities sourcing wrt the US’s military production needs.
They had reports and processes and funding.
Very interesting Defense News article (from last year). One of the comments said "Somebody should let President Trump know. Seriously."
It looks like somebody did. :)
Cerium is popular these days
This is another thing that Trump is doing because his idiot predecessors failed to do it.
I just hope we open up lead mines again. Bullets are too high.
Praseodymium, Hallelujah.
Didn’t Biden just say in the debate last night that Executive Orders are meaningless? My thought at the time was, if they’re meaningless, why did Obama sign so many of them.
Good! The 0bama administration did zip about this issue. It has been a concern for a few decades.
A good read. China has been buying mining assets in other countries unabated. I remember Molycorp and a few others. the last administration was out to lunch on this issue.
Good. Between the mine/processing plant we have reopened and the moved our allies (Australia, Canada, Japan) have made to ramp up their capacity, we are addressing this key vulnerability. China had 90% of the market a few years ago. It’s down to 70% now.
Molycorp
China pulled a standard oil and sold REEs below market to make certain companies like Molycorp could not compete in the U.S., Some-ting you can do when you are a command economy protecting your monopoly. (That, coupled with Hostility to any mining in Liberal states like CA discouraged REE mining.)
Note that a lot of the managment in Molycorp (which is now partly owned by China) are attempting to open a Mine targeting Niobium and Scandium in Elk Creek NE. (Niocorp, Niobf). Because China has no Scandium mines They can’t sell scandium below market. (Scandium can be somthing like $1500 to $2500 a kilogram. Used to create a weldable aluminum alloy with about 30% reduction in weight.)
Texas Mineral Recources, TMRC has an REE mining site in S/w Texas, Medallion REsources, MLLOF is attemting to process REES from Monzanite sands from the southern U.S., UCcore, UURAF, is trying to mine the Bokan Ridge (?) in Southeast Alaska.
I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t vote for Trump, then again there are stupid liberal Demorats.
Bkmk
IIRC, New Mexico has rare earth deposits.
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