Posted on 09/16/2023 4:21:16 AM PDT by FarCenter
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Public discussion about possible Chinese retaliation against additional US export controls has focused on a possible ban on the use of Apple handsets by Chinese government officials. However, American vulnerability is evident in the form of thousands of critical components used in critical infrastructure and the US defense industry.
The US imported US$33 billion in capital goods from China for electricity generation and distribution in 2022, items that are no longer manufactured in the US.
Substituting domestic production for these items would entail long lead times and exorbitant costs, industrial officials say. In the event of a full-scale trade war, a Chinese ban on critical components could cripple basic US infrastructure.
“The vulnerability of supply chains for critical infrastructure is acute and self-inflicted. The US and its allies have allowed themselves to become captive to Chinese cartels that control production of electronic components, high-powered magnets, printed circuit boards, computers, drones, rare earth metals, wind turbines, solar cells, cellular phones and lithium batteries… In fact, nearly every element of the technology-based digital smart grid is dependent on Chinese-made components,” Brien Sheahan, a former top US energy regulatory official, wrote in April.
US defense contractors also depend heavily on China. In a June 19 interview with the Financial Times, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes said his company had “several thousand suppliers in China and decoupling is impossible. We can de-risk but not decouple,” adding that he believed this to be the case “for everybody” in US manufacturing.
Hayes added, “Think about the $500 billion of trade that goes from China to the US every year. More than 95% of rare earth materials or metals come from, or are processed in, China. There is no alternative. If we had to pull out of China, it would take us many, many years to re-establish that capability either domestically or in other friendly countries.”
Raytheon makes Tomahawk cruise missiles, Maverick air-to-surface missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles and other mainstays of the American arsenal.
Meanwhile, American attempts at reducing dependence on foreign supply chains for critical goods have stalled. Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s top chip fabricator, accepted $15 billion in cash subsidies and tax credits from the Biden administration to build a fab in Arizona, but shortages of skilled labor have delayed the plant until 2025.
The same bottlenecks would hamper US efforts to replace Chinese components in critical infrastructure. The US faces an air pocket in skilled labor supply during the next two years.
“The fact is that 22% of existing skilled manufacturing workers will be retiring by the end of 2025. This could result in as many as 2 million to 3.5 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2025,” according to the consulting firm HBK.
America’s capital stock of manufacturing equipment has remained stagnant since 2000, according to Federal Reserve calculations.
One of the reasons that the “rare earths” are “rare” is because we ban mining them here. China’s puppet Biden is making that even more than before, while also making us more dependent on them than before.
Okay, no one said anything would be easy. But since China is at war with us because we exist, we have no choice but to prudently re-shore many of our sources, processes, and--one hopes--our brains. So that we can make our own freaking weapons.
We must act as if the future were here, because it is. From here, all I can foresee from the Chi-coms are embargoes, blockades, and missiles strikes.
I wish I could go back to the late 90s and early 2000s, when Gore was debating Perot on the benefits we would receive from outsourcing and Clinton/Bush were giving the Chicoms MFN status, and show everyone what these policies have done to our country.
We do mine some here, but unless production has started at Mountain Pass, we send the concentrate to China for processing and refining.
SPECIAL REPORT: U.S. Begins Forging Rare Earth Supply Chain
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/2/10/us-begins-forging-rare-earth-supply-chain
Rare earths are mined by digging vast open pits in the ground, which can contaminate the environment and disrupt ecosystems. When poorly regulated, mining can produce wastewater ponds filled with acids, heavy metals and radioactive material that might leak into groundwater. Processing the raw ore into a form useful to make magnets and other tech is a lengthy effort that takes large amounts of water and potentially toxic chemicals, and produces voluminous waste.
“We need rare earth elements … to help us with the transition to a climate-safe future,” says Michele Bustamante, a sustainability researcher at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. Yet “everything that we do when we’re mining is impactful environmentally,” Bustamante says.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/rare-earth-mining-renewable-energy-future
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See FRED - Total Construction Spending: Manufacturing in the United States
This is mostly catch up from years of neglect and won't be felt for quite a while.
Iconic U.S. Brand Products [just a small portion of all items] That Aren’t Made in America https://blog.cheapism.com/american-products-not-made-in-america-16404/#slide=34
More: List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor: https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/child_labor_reports/tda2021/2022-TVPRA-List-of-Goods-v3.pdf
And some FReepers criticize me buying cheap things on TEMU (via my desktop, not smartphone)
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