China Halts Shipments to U.S. of Tech-Crucial Minerals
From LiveScience by Jeremy Hsu
A nasty trade dispute appears to have prompted Chinese customs officials to block shipments of rare earth minerals to the U.S.
The move underscores a deepening U.S. vulnerability because of its dependence upon China for tech-crucial rare earth minerals (also known as rare earth elements). Small but significant amounts of the minerals go into creating everything from PCs and cellphones to wind turbines and hybrid cars, as well as U.S. military technologies such as missile guidance systems.
This latest news came from three rare earth industry officials cited by the New York Times. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of backlash from China.
China currently controls about 97 percent of rare earth production.
…
U.S. rare earth companies have begun looking to reopen old mines and search for new deposits, but industry experts say that relaunching an independent U.S. supply chain could take 15 years.
The latest Chinese action follows a similar move last month, when China halted shipments to Japan during a political dispute over Japan’s arrest of Chinese fishermen. Among the affected Japanese companies was Toyota, maker of the popular Prius hybrid cars which incorporate the rare earth element neodymium, among others.
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So the big green quandary is: Prius, or practice what you preach and do without?
Addendum – This license plate I photographed on California’s Interstate 5 back in 2008 may prove prescient:
Lol. The Yanks get screwed by way of their own self serving free enterprise dogmatism.
To get their precious minerals, will the US now invade China?
Raving says:
October 21, 2010 at 1:25 pm
“Lol. The Yanks get screwed by way of their own self serving free enterprise dogmatism.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It was anything but free enterprise that caused this mess. In fact, it is 100% traceable to a socialist enterprise in the forms of government subsidies.
Chi-commie ‘globalist’ Maurice Strong must be laughing his head off.
I’d say, west should make sure the rare earth metals don’t enter US or EU in any shape, form or mixture and stop all Chinese products containing rare earth elements.
The Chinese are totally devoid of any moral and we need to teach ourselves a lesson not to trust this dictatorship. If not, we risk loosing any industry worth having (well, except agriculture) due to subsidies and within less than two decades we will lack the industrial knowledge to get it back. It is possible that the Chinese will be nice and let our young ones to study at their universities, but then again, they may not. It will be at their discretion.
It would appear that uncle sam has shot himself in the proverbial foot.
Maybe he will be stupid enough to have a fight with the largest standing army on the planet.
Japan was hit by this first and started recycling old electronics. The predicted doom has thus far be avoided through the application of economics.
It is cheaper and faster than building new mines. If the price differential for the materials gets high enough, some company in China will find a way to smuggle the stuff into the states.
If the US wanted, they could have a vibrant RE mining industry in 12 months . . just get rid of all the environmental lawyers, the Tides Foundation funded astroturfing “community” groups and tell the EPA to go take a hike.
Just takes political will. If Obozo wants to show he actually has a pair, he’ll seize this opportunity and go totally rogue.
Leave it to the liberals to cast the most negative spin on this. I think this is wonderful news. Now the economic incentive will exist to mine for these and other minerals in allied western countries. Having been smacked on the nose once, we’ll not go back to buying them cheaply from China just because they deign to lift their embargo. Maybe we’ll learn (like South Africa has, in regards to their coal liquifaction) not to depend on the capricious whims of those who have clearly made themselves our enemies.
Oh dear – looks like China is going to be toast! The next few weeks should prove interesting.
An immediate boycott of Chinese goods by NATO countries would bring the burgeoning economy of China to its knees in just a few months. When politicians start to interfere with trade trouble always follows.
I feel very sorry for the Chinese people, who are going to suffer from their rulers arrogance.
Would it be bad form to say “Told you so!” to all of the wingnuts blathering about energy independence. Now, if you don’t mind, stay out of the way, the grown-ups have some oil they need to drill, here! If you want to do something useful, build some refineries.
Now, after we take a moment to think, either some dolts didn’t realize where we got these rare earth minerals from or some one purposefully misled a bunch of people.
Actually Raving, its not just the US that’s in for a shock over the China scheme. Japan noted in the article that its inventory would run our in March.
Looks like its time to eliminate the need for the minerals?
NY Times:
Germany to Raise Alarm Over China Rare Earths Restrictions at G-20
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/business/energy-environment/22iht-rare.html?src=busln
German companies say they are being pressed by Chinese officials to increase their investments in China if they want to be assured of access to rare earth minerals and two other obscure elements, tungsten and antimony. China dominates the mining of these metals.”
Its all about capitalist extremism, outsource those skills and resources for profit while people sit and watch American Idol. When do we begin to put a little pride in ourselves rather than prostitute jobs, resources and skills for the almighty buck.
Let’s not be too hard on China. They warned ahead of time that this was coming to avoid shortfalls in their own domestic use. Also, many of the rare earth devices that we use in the west are made in China, so, no problem with the embargo unless they extend it to Chinese manufactured goods.
Also, this is *great* news for mining and manufacturing in the U.S. The U.S. was once a leading supplier and can be again. I heard we shut down because the Chinese prices were too good to compete with. Now that those days are over, back to the same old.
Good luck producing any REE from future mines here in the US–I quit the mining business largely because of the difficulty in getting signoff from the vast number of competing jurisdictions–often complying with one put you out of compliance with another. It will probably take a literal Act of Congress to get sufficient supply of these minerals here domestically.
Bob Parker says on October 21, 2010 at 1:44 pm
To inject a little reality and context into this, that standing army did not prove very effective against Vietnam in 1979.
War would be an extraordinarily bad idea but it is not clear at the moment that the size of the Chinese military would win the day for them.
I’d say, west should make sure the rare earth metals don’t enter US or EU in any shape, form or mixture and stop all Chinese products containing rare earth elements.
Yep. Including all those magnetic components – liker in the motors that run all those gadgets? And the electronic chips that run the motors?
We can do without them way longer than they can do without our trade.
Poor China. Embargoed themselves in the foot, did they? Don’tcha hate it when that happens?
My guess is this is as a result of what Geithner said in Palo Alto, about the Chinese manipulating their currency, which they are.
If they pursue this, they will end up shooting themselves in the foot, because with a net trade surplus of $200billion visavis America, they need the American market as much, if not more, than America needs those rare earth elements.
The major way they manipulated their currency was by buying American T-Bonds (they hold $750billion according to
this site) from the proceeds of their exports to America, which had the effect of lifting the US Dollar vs the Yuan.
That policy is now coming home to roost. They can’t dump their holdings, and every time they revalue the yuan (it’s at about 6.65 vs 6.83 a few months ago), they take a haircut on their foreign reserves. Tough, they should have known that nobody can buck the market.
I well remember in the eighties, when everybody thought that Japan would become the leading economy, an article in the Economist that said if American companies in Japan re-patriated back to the States, Japan would not have had the trade surplus they had with the US. My guess is that the exact same thing applies to China now. So they’ll be shooting off both feet if they continue to play hardball.
Better to suck it up, carry on raising the standard of life for their citizens, and stop with the pissing contest, because although everybody will lose, they’ll lose more.
Some of the above posters should read a little. The biggest. reason this is an issue is due to Environmental regulations imposed. Such as "sufficient data to complete a NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate, suitable for a Preliminary Assessment Report and move toward a feasibility study. It is expected that if this project continues to move forward, then the feasibility study will require three phases of drilling, permitting, and extensive metallurgical testing, over a period of 2-4 years."
Blah blah………………………..
Hopefully, this move by the Chinese will stick. Then the Obama admin. will be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Should they build wind turbines and Prius, or continue to deny mining permits. I say they would push the mining forward and then we'll have our own resource.
In Utah:
As an example, the Upper Bench , which averages approximately two miles wide by ten miles long (within the Property)—includes an area of approximately 12,800 acres (20 Sections each 640 acres)—this area alone, taken to an average depth of 100 feet, could contain in the order of 223,000,000 tons of material per Section, or a gross of about 4.5 billion tons of material. If we include the Middle and Lower Benches, which appear to be 150 feet thick, and possibly equally as extensive, the potential resource could reach 15 billion tons (15BT)." with 0.80% Trace Rare Earth Oxides.
Some of your readers might find this of interest:
China’s Rare-Earth Monopoly
The rest of the world is trying to find alternatives to these crucial materials.
By Adam Aston, MIT Technology Review, Friday, October 15, 2010
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/26538/?p1=Headlines
It’s not as if this stuff can’t be mined elsewhere or recycled. It’s just that no-one has been interested because supplies from China have been plentiful and therefore cheap. I can’t believe the Chinese will be dumb enough to throw their weight around too much. If they do, and it looks as if the supply will become irregular or expensive for an extended period, people will find new sources. There’s no evidence that China is the only place these minerals can be found…
Molycorp in Co maintains that it will have a fair amount of capacity on line by 2012. We will see. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304011604575563933859892678.html?KEYWORDS=rare+earth
One of the largest consumers of REE are wind turbines for their powerful permanent magnets. We can simply tear down all those useless windmills and use the REE for something useful instead.
The world is full of rare earth elements. Alternative supplies will eventually be secured.
In the interim ,the traveling AGW soap opera will be portrayed in the context it justly deserves. That being to peddle the environmental AGW lifestyle choice in the guise of dogmatism pertinent to ‘natural law and universal truth’
Greenie hubris justifies the use of fear and emotional blackmail to coerce the stupid selfish environmentally disinterested to adopt the true religion.
The uncaring Chinese go and spoil the ‘environmental’ fairy tale. The Chinese lifestyle choice is to ensure the Chicom ruling party remains in power by keeping the masses preoccupied with the party dictated multi year plan and decreed lifestyle choice of “industrialize and consume”.
The Chinese citizen doesn’t wish to make the ‘environment’ their lifestyle choice. They prefer to follow their leaders and enjoy the good rewarding life of assured employment and reward for work done.
This is only a ‘miaow’ from a Chinese pussycat; if the Chinese tiger growls by calling on their loans to the West, that would be than something to be concerned about.