Posted on 05/20/2019 10:30:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
China is threatening to take the trade war to the next stage: cut off rare earth metal supplies to US technology and defense industries.
Thats according to a couple of Globaltimes editorials. US faces squeeze on rare earths, says one editorial. US need for rare earths an ace on Beijings hand, goes another.
Without a reliable domestic supply, the US must rely on rare earths from China to supply industries of strategic importance, acknowledges Hu Weijia, author of the second editorial.
Rare earths are vital to many modern technologies and a wide array of weapon systems used by the US military, but China controls the vast majority of the world's supply, adds Weijia.It will take many years if the US wants to rebuild its rare-earth industry and increase its domestic supply to reduce its dependence on China's minerals.
Thats a long time, long enough for China to win a trade war against the US, during which time China's monopoly on the production of rare earths will help Beijing control the lifeblood of the US high-technology sector.
Ted Bauman, Senior Research Analyst and Economist at Banyan Hill Publishing, agrees. If the Chinese implement an export ban and can ride out six months of U.S. tariffs, it could well force Trump to concede, he says.
Still, he thinks thats bad idea for China to throw this weapon into the arsenal of the trade war because China will be seen by the rest of the world as an unreliable trading partner for these critical minerals, leading to rapid development of alternative sources.
Meanwhile, America could search for new suppliers elsewhere.
Another potential effect could be the U.S. finding or creating another place to potential mine these minerals, says Jordan Awoye, Managing Partner at Awoye Capital.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Post 48 explains
Dumps of large amount of chemicals in water. Now cleaned up and ready to produce again.
Posts 10 and 11, 10 seconds apart. GMTA.
Process coal fly-ash for rare-earth content. West Virginia sourced coal seems to be the front-runner for valuable content.
Maybe we should re-open the mines that “environmental activists” closed one by one?
Looks like closing those mines was a boon to China.
I thought I had read that this was shut down.
“Theres closed mines all over the NC mountains. Lets get em cranked up again.”
The shrieking and howling of the envrio-green hiker crowd will be epic.
Read history section at 48. Too long to post entire section here. It was closed down. Reason given. Time tables given and the process that has been taken to open it up again. NOte the dates, state (reason why chi Fi gets paid by China!?). And who bought whom out.
Lesson one. Never single source something that is critical to your business.
You are right:
I was too lazy to type FORMER (production).
Sorry..!
“Yes, I have a hard time believing the leaders of our country have allowed the US to become dependent on anything. How long ago did these contract for strategic minerals become a reality?? and why??”
I think that the reasoning was/is that we will never have another WW2 situation, where the US is the Arsenal of Democracy in a multi-year war in which production is as much of a weapon as guns, planes and ships - because everything will quickly go nuclear, and we’ll have to fight with forces in place. Personally, I think that this is a very, very short-sighted policy. We need to rebuild these stocks, because we simply cannot know what will occur in the future - and, besides, if we do have large stocks of critical materials (and a very robust military production base of factories, equipment and skilled labor), then the odds of anyone starting up with us will drop - considerably.
So we have some here? Open the mines, we must be ever mindful to keep our independence, and not totally depend on another country for whatever. Look at Germany and oil, whenever Putin wants something from Germany and they balk, he turns off the oil. We cannot totally depend on any other country when it comes to our defense.
I imagine in this huge country of ours there are plenty of Rare Earth minerals but the EPA has made it too expensive tp mine them.
Afghanistan has large supplies of rare earth elements.
More than the Chicoms.
According to the CIA fact sheet. Fwiw.
5.56mm
Yes
Let China cut the sale of rare earths to the U.S.That will only encourage American prospectors to search for them here in the Conus.
China supplies the most because they do it the cheapest. Rare Earths are anything but rare.
Pebble Mine up in Alaska awaiting Fed. approvals. Some Rare Earths but one of the largest undeveloped Copper/Gold mines in the world. (As well as Quaterra-Groundhog undeveloped Copper/Gold mine just below Pebble):
https://www.northerndynastyminerals.com
Easily look-uppable @ Wikipedia or Google.
There are 17 rare earth elements, they are actually not all that crazy rare but they are hard to separate from each other and they only occur in certain geo locations.
There are two really large rare earth mines in the US. One in Mountain Pass, California, and one in Barringer Hill Texas, under a man made lake. But not all rare earth mines have the same rare earth minerals.
Rare Earth Elements and their Uses
https://geology.com/articles/rare-earth-elements/
The Mountain Pass Mine produces cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, and europium.
The Barringer Hill Mine, one of the greatest deposits of rare-earth minerals in the world, *could* produce fergusonite, gadolinite, polycrase, yttrialite, and cyrtolite. As well as several other very valuable minerals.
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