Posted on 06/03/2025 11:57:06 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Summary
June 3 (Reuters) - Alarm over China's stranglehold on critical minerals grew on Tuesday as global automakers joined their U.S. counterparts to complain that restrictions by China on exports of rare earth alloys, mixtures and magnets could cause production delays and outages without a quick solution.
China's decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets has upended the supply chains central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world.
Trump has sought to redefine the trading relationship with the U.S.' top economic rival China by imposing steep tariffs on billions of dollars of imported goods in hopes of narrowing a wide trade deficit and bringing back lost manufacturing. Trump imposed tariffs as high as 145% against China only to scale them back after stock, bond and currency markets revolted over the sweeping nature of the levies. China...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Why wouldn’t they? The US keeps export controls to slow their development in technology (which didn’t work) and now they are expected to deliver rare minerals to the US who has the stated intent on a military build up to take on China.
It is far more useful to use this as a notification of how Communist China operates, which appears to be lost on many in this country, as well as many around the world.
It is illustrative to see that they can do this with rare earth embargoes, but they can (and will) do it with any item or industry they have practiced their scorched earth tactics on.
They murdered 40-120 million of their own citizens, and they harvest organs from living dissidents. They will have no problem doing worse to us if the situation as they see it demands it.
As a nation, the sooner we recognize this the better off we will be. There will be pain associated with this, as there always is when a parasite is removed from a host.
Yeah they are out trying to lock up as many rare earths as they can. In a way it’s a race. Both countries need them to expand their technology and build their militarys.
People tend to pooh-pooh Trump’s “advances” towards Greenland, but strategic thinkers in his administration got his ear. Nothing may ever come of it. But the dialogue has been opened...:)
In some respects, things look grim for the future of our nation, but I feel some comfort that there are people who are paying attention to this kind of thing.
And to nuclear power. We have to tell the environmentalists to go pound sand.
We should be the world leader in building small, modular/expandable nuclear plants that are built in factories and shipped to sites for assembly, with a solid and profit-making isotope distribution/reclamation setups in place all wrapped in in 21st Century technology computer and AI systems, designed for better safety than could have been done in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. People will make scads of money building, running, and maintaining them. The cost of nuclear power will go down, and the wealth of our nation will increase.
I saw a video of a lecture from someone in the administration talking about nuclear power in those terms, and even though I have already consumed the kool-aid in the past, I grabbed another jug.
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