China has halted rare earth shipments to USA now.

[dixiegrrrrl]

First they halted the shipments to Japan, now to US.

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.

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

Earlier this week, I posted the problem with "peak" rare earth supplies, and China's control of the elements.
China, controller of more than 90 percent of production of the materials used in cell phones and radar, cut its export quotas by 72 percent for the second half and reduced output, spurring a trade dispute with the U.S. The country may not be able to meet growing global demand as the government continues to curb output, Lynas Corp. said in March.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9336394

[Duchess]

1. This is probably just a publicity stunt for the new Red Dawn movie

http://reddawn2010.com/

[xchrom]

2. Recommend - look at off shoring tax regs even closer. Nt

[ixion]

3. lol...oops

that's gonna leave a mark...

[Barack_America]

4. Then how will we celebrate??

[corkhead]

6. great minds think alike... I was thinking of O'Donnel and her secret info about the Chinese...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Z8NU5ImK0

[jaxx]

5. What kind of minerals is Afghanistan supposed to have?

Seems like they're sitting on a bunch, if I can remember what I've read.

[leftstreet]

8. !!

:wow:

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. USA minerals, I think they are called now.

[leftstreet]

12. oh snap!

You are so quick!

:-)

[kristopher]

7. Let them.

Rare Earth elements are not rare, the only reason China has any leverage on this at all is because the value of them heretofore has been so low that the only place anyone could extract them profitably was in low wage markets like China.

If they try to choke off the supply other operations will in short order be signing contracts guaranteeing future deliveries at only a slightly higher price.

People just love playing on the word "rare" being part of the name.

[TheMadMonk]

19. This is true. However, IIRC 2012 is the soonest that new Aussie and US...

...mines start producing.

Thats up to two years for China to take a solid position in supplying electric motors for the EV market and generators for wind turbines.

Odds are that when other mines do finally come online, a fair bloody proportion of the production will be put straight onto ships to Chinese factories, because they will have been expanding capacity the whole time, while elsewhere others stagnate and shut down without even the raw materials to meet their existing needs.


As to value. RE elements have always had a certain value, but up until recently that has been a low volume, relatively high value market and when China started producing, with their admittedly cheaper methods, the rest of the world shut down in much the same way that gold mines are opened and closed according to market prices and trends.

The mass market for big (tens of KW) Permanent magnet motors and megawatt scale generators, just didn't exist when the rest of the world shut down their mines. Then as the market slowly emerged China has quietly been meeting demand while the rest of the world did all the development work, but left their mines closed.

Western interests did as they have done for far to long now, waited for a demand driven spike in prices, to cover the expense of capitalising new developments.

[Phoonzang]

9. Then we'll just have to go in and take them

REMEMBER ANCHORAGE!!!

[Poll_Blind]

13. LOL! "Communism is a LIE!" n/t

PB

[Confusious]

11. There is no "peak"

Just a worthless scare tactic.

The US has enough, the rest of the world has enough, it's just not developed, or was shut down because the rare earths coming out of china were so cheap. They'll be started up right quick after this.

[MadHound]

14. Perhaps,

But the fact of the matter is that the US is not going to have a rare earth mining operation up and going until 2014, and 95% of the rare earth sold and used comes out of China. There are deposits in the US, Australia, Canada and elsewhere, but the hitch is that only China is doing the serious mining. So, if China shuts off rare metals to the rest of the world, or severely limits them, we're in for a bit more of a hurt.

Now one interesting path to take in the meantime is recycling, going through those mountains of cell phones, computers, etc. that have been tossed and extract the rare earth metals from them.

[littlewolf]

15. good point ...

However this is going to put a hurting on the green energy program .....
lots of this rare earth is used ....

[kristopher]

20. I question your dates - this has been hovering around for a couple of years

I'll guarantee there are companies prepared to step into the void in short notice. There are lots of things to criticize in the use of market systems, but a slow response to predictable and solvable materials shortages isn't one of them.

[MadHound]

22. Yes, it's been hovering around for a couple of years,

But opening up a mine, especially in rare earth metals, isn't simply a matter of stick a shovel in the ground and digging. There are lots of intermediate steps in opening a mine, from actually locating the material you want to dig for to planning the mine design to getting government approvals.

[FarCenter]

16. The only reason that we are in this fix is that the EPA closed down our mine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine

[CBGLuthier]

25. The only reason we are in this fix is because

the fucking mine owners (w)could not run it safely.

Fromyour article

Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water carrying radioactive waste spilled into and around Ivanpah Dry Lake

[Johonny]

17. wouldn't a smart country aggressively recycling that stuff

and put a huge tariff on things with it coming from China until China starts exporting again. They aren't that rare but like gold why throw them away when they have real value on the open market. Start aggressive recycling the same as other scrap metals.

[kiranon]

18. Slow the shipment of food to China. n/t

[Octafish]

21. Wait till the Pentagon hears about this!

I'm sure Mr. Robert Gates will do something about it: "Buy! Buy! Buy!"

Outsourcing US Missile Technology to China - The Saga of Magnequench

I mean: "Sell! Sell! Sell!"

Out.

[pgodbold]

23. We’ve moved manufacturing off shore. Why would we need raw materials? We don't make anything. nt

[piratefish08]

24. no sweat. there's plenty in Afghanistan.