China Said to Widen Its Embargo of Minerals

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times

China, which has been blocking shipments of crucial minerals to Japan for the last month, has now quietly halted shipments of those materials to the United States and Europe, three industry officials said on Tuesday.

The Chinese action, involving rare earth minerals that are crucial to manufacturing many advanced products, seems certain to further intensify already rising trade and currency tensions with the West. Until recently, China typically sought quick and quiet accommodations on trade issues. But the interruption in rare earth supplies is the latest sign from Beijing that Chinese leaders are willing to use their growing economic muscle.

“The embargo is expanding” beyond Japan, said one of the three rare earth industry officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity for fear of business retaliation by Chinese authorities.

... China mines 95 percent of the world’s rare earth elements, which have broad commercial and military applications, and are vital to the manufacture of products as diverse as cellphones, large wind turbines and guided missiles. Any curtailment of Chinese supplies of rare earths is likely to be greeted with alarm in Western capitals, particularly because Western companies are believed to keep much smaller stockpiles of rare earths than Japanese companies.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/business/global/20rare.html?hp

[Angry Dragon]

1. And the balance of power shifts again

[PeterPan4]

4. Bad for US Green Jobs

[madrchsod]

2. i bet the red chinese army controls these resources...

this is another reason china is making a push into africa.

[TheMadMonk]

5. China is making a push into Africa, because it believes Europe and the US...

...can't stop it. Australian and US mines are being brought online to meet demands for rare earth minerals and can do so far sooner than African sources can be found and exploited. What this is going to do, is move yet more high tech manufacturing capacity to China, and once there a lot of it will remain there forevermore, turning our mined minerals, into products we will then buy back.

The resources aren't all that uncommon. What was uncommon was the sense to see that leaving 95% of the supply of a material with a very high forecast demand, in the hands of a nation with an established history of price fixing and predatory dumping. China simply kept the price down to a point where smart capitalists saw no immediate profit in investing in alternate sources of supply. And now when their internal demand is approaching their total production they've cut off the spigot.

And now the profit takers in capitalist world will take advantage of the price spike we're about to see, to attract funding for the new mines and make a killing. And you can bet a lot of Chinese money will be in there making a killing as well. You can also bet that Chinese manufacturing capacity will be there ready and waiting for the output of those mines, and enough Western investors will be shortsighted enough to take the quick profit and vote with the Chinese block to sell processed ore to chinese factories, and buy back cheaper goods for resale, rather than putting money into domestic manufacturing.


Africa is an ivestment in the future. One that will pay off very well for China I think.

[JDPriestly]

7. We should recycle electronic equipment here and extract the

rare metals from old electronic things. I believe that China now accepts all that old electronic gear.

I still have some old stuff that could be recycled. It would be tedious work but environmentally more friendly than mining although it could not replace reopening our mines.

Does anyone know whether rare earth metals are toxic?

[TheMadMonk]

8. T'would be nice, except the materials in question are not a major part...

...of the recycling stream. Up until recently they've been niche market or used in miniature electronics. Now we need mass quantities of metals that were never produced in large amounts.


They're as toxic as any other metals. Some moreso than others.

[KT2000]

3. "smaller supplies"

is part of the business plan that creates a better bottom line and gets managers promoted for saving money and thereby making their stock more valuable - Lean and mean.

Something tells me this is just the beginning as China has been creating partnerships in areas that the US has always assumed they could get needed resources. Corporate greed does not pay off in the end.

[Ikonoklast]

6. Afghanistan.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-06/us-geologists-uncover-staggering-1-trillion-cache-unmined-mineral-resources-afghanistan

[bemildred]

9. And Bolivia, and California, and other places too.

This is about money, not about "peak rare earth metals".

[PassingFair]

10. I have a Chinese exchange student living with us for a month....

Last night I took her to JC Penny's ....she
wandered around for a LONG time and then
called me over to show me a shirt...

The only one she'd found with a "made in America"
tag.

One shirt out of all of the clothes she looked at.

Every item made in China or Vietnam.

[Doremus]

11. And that one was probably made in a sweat shop in the Marianas.

Investing in Mariana Islands sweat shops was one of Tom DeLay's gigs. Third world working conditions complete with indentured servants and company store on a rock flying the American flag. A neopuke's wet dream.

[n2doc]

12. Time for Obama to announce a crash program in reopening our mines

And use some of our Military money to keep them open. We need a strategic reserve of these metals.

[niceypoo]

13. Anything that is in the common good

Is to be privatized by the GOP

[slackmaster]

14. This strategy will ultimately backfire on China

You read it here first.