
US steps up efforts to limit China’s control of critical minerals - jonbaer
https://www.mining.com/us-steps-up-efforts-to-limit-chinas-control-of-critical-minerals/
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myrandomcomment
It is reasonable to have a second source for everything you need. Also if this
takes off and the trade war ends at some point it will drive down prices which
is always good. This will also drive the tech needed to mine and refine the
materials. An example would be the shale gas production in the US. When it
stated the tech said you had to be at $80-100 per barrel and now it is as low
at $30 (for good or bad).

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onetimemanytime
They should also set up a national reserve of that stuff. It's practically the
new oil, your econ halts.

If they exist in friendly countries, and they do, then it's just a matter of
setting up the infrastructure. So what it costs, say, $1.8, more per
smartphone?

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kabouseng
A strategic cache is typically set up not to support normal economic
activities or consumer manufacturing, but war time supplies of military
equipment.

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killjoywashere
As I recall, the US strategic oil reserve was tapped by Clinton, Bush, and
Obama and various times, specifically to support normal economic activities.

~~~
himlion
Which they would probably not have done if they had expected a (conventional)
war any time soon.

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Animats
The US has a huge rare earths mine in California.[1] Great technology. Non-
polluting. Even the Sierra Club signed off. Bankrupted by cheap rare earths
from China. Then, when rare earth prices went back up, hurt by Trump's
tariffs. The current management hopes to be self-sufficient by next year, not
needing to ship to or from China.

[1]
[https://www.scmp.com/business/commodities/article/3011687/ca...](https://www.scmp.com/business/commodities/article/3011687/caught-
between-trump-and-its-biggest-market-americas-sole-rare)

~~~
Excel_Wizard
Wouldn't tariffs help a U.S. domestic rare earth mine? Unless the assumption
is that China imports the majority of global rare earth production, even after
being a huge rare earth producer.

~~~
Animats
In response to Trump's tariffs, China imposed tariffs. So they can't export.
Mountain Pass only does basic processing right now; further refining requires
a plant that's still being built. So they were exporting to China.

Tariffs only motivate big, long-term projects if you're sure the tariffs will
be around for a while. If they're just a temporary bargaining point, building
giant plants isn't a safe bet.

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m0zg
And after the trade wars are over, the new motto will be Reaganesque "trust
but diversify". And everyone (with the possible exception of China) will be
better off because of that.

~~~
joshuaissac
Depending on how far "trust but diversify" goes, some countries could be worse
off (OPEC would be harmed by a serious effort at energy source
diversification, US by currency diversification, Netherlands by diamond supply
chain diversification, China by manufacturing diversification, etc.). Whether
they will be better or worse off in the end depends on how much external near-
monopolies hurt them, versus how much their own cornering of a market helps
them. China would likely lose out because manufacturing is such a large
component of the Chinese economy, but it is not obvious that all other
countries would gain.

~~~
m0zg
By "everyone" I meant "everyone involved in the current trade war", e.g. US
government, businesses and China (there's no differentiation there between
government and businesses at the moment). I don't see why the US should care
about not hurting the Netherlands or OPEC countries at its own expense. I was
under impression the Netherlands have a functioning government and can stand
for themselves. Same with OPEC countries.

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pinkfoot
A major problem with mining rare earth minerals in the USA is the 1983
legislation to manage the Thorium that comes along with the RE ores.

So, just as important is Senator Rubio's legislation to set up a "Thorium
Bank" as a cooperative to transfer the liability from the miners to the bank
who will store it for a wee fee and make it available at cost to the co-op.

This will also create a "guaranteed stream" of rare earth minerals to all
involved.

Apparently, foreign governments and companies will do all the funding. Which
is nice.

(Although given Hauwei's recent problems with US suppliers, I think foreign
government might not put much stock in the 'guaranteed' bit)

[http://efn-usa.org/2013-11-06-07-29-01/item/2033-summary-for...](http://efn-
usa.org/2013-11-06-07-29-01/item/2033-summary-for-thorium-and-rare-earths-
james-kennedy-john-kutsch-usofa)

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AceJohnny2
The USGS maintains information on the source and risks for various resources
we use, at their National Mineral Information Center:

[https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic](https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic)

I attended a public talk in 2017 at USGS where someone from the NMIC explained
the kind of information they gathered:

[https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/2017-oct-public-lecture-
gl...](https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/2017-oct-public-lecture-global-
trends-mineral-commodity-supplies)

Indeed, many of our strategic minerals come from unreliable partners. The US
doesn't produce much of that stuff internally for economic and ecological
reasons. However, potential internal sources for some (not all) are kept
mothballed in case we need to switch to them.

It was really interesting watching how geopolitics influences local industrial
decisions.

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bigpumpkin
Plenty in Australia, drill baby drill!

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mogadsheu
Southern California too. I wouldn't worry too much about it medium/long term.
The conditions in Inner Mongolia make for cheap prices because they come from
loose clay.

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Fjolsvith
Probably also from cheap labor too.

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jdkee
Good. China is anti-democratic and a persistent threat to Western Democracies.

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dang
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here, especially not
ones that take threads further into political or national flamewars.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
mclightning
Interesting to see where YCombinator stands on this. I assume you are an
official moderator on HN?

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toxik
Correct, dang is a HN moderator. This is a tech news website, and obviously
politics and technology do intermingle, but let's not make a sensitive
situation worse by encouraging tribal thinking.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Being clear about and resistance against totalitarianism and isn't making it
worse. That's old chestnut that gets trotted out a lot -- it just isn't true.

