Cool - Tit for Tat now we can stop buying all their cheap, sub-standard crap that falls apart.

Maybe stop all the sweetheart duty-free deals that allow them to undermine our own industries and put so many US companies out of business .

Hey! Maybe we can even have our own industries back and use our own resources.

Now here is a novel idea - BUY AMERICAN!

There will be trade-offs - with some of this processing (like all our untapped oil) they claim it is the environmentalists that are preventing us from doing a number of things on our own soil.

We all know environmentalism is critically important, however, if we are literally 'between a rock and a hard place' (pun intended lol) we have to give it up one way or the other.

I wonder if in the interim while we drag our feet as usual and do million dollar studies if we can't buy the materials from some other country that China still does biz with?

China is holding the world hostage with their rare earth resource, what else can be said?

[DELETED]

We can still be both self-reliant and have something to trade for RE Minerals.

USGS Release: 3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate— (4/10/2008 2:25:36 PM)


."The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A "continuous" oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest "continuous" oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil."

Actually, it's Bolivia, not Chile or Argentina:

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

I don't know how accurate this is, but I read (somewhere) that China
did this because of an investigation prompted by complaints of a US
labor union over something about unfair labor practices related to China.

So, OB announced an investigation about it. China did their thing.

I've also read in several places (don't remember lol) that a number of
US resources are very quickly turning their attention to address measures
for alleviating the dependence on China for RE minerals. Some response
is better than nothing. And it's not just in the US, the whole world is
witnessing this and other countries are doing the same.

I think China kinda stepped in it between the fisherman and RE exports
and now this over probably a legitimate grievance about unfair labor
practices.

All in all, I do think this will escalate before it gets better. Speak
Mandarin? Naw... more like the opposite if push comes to shove.

NASA is saying they discovered Gold and water on the moon. I guess
there wouldn't be RE minerals there, though. Unless there are and then
they'll be RM minerals.

I'll take a tour on the Moon to work maintenance in a rare moon plant.
As long as there's hi speed internet. No dial-up please.


Ken

Actually China had officially denied stopping shipments to the US, Germany and the rest of Europe. It is completely possible that they did it unofficially to warn the US over investigation of their Green technology industry (which relies a lot of rare earths). However, it is difficult to see how Germany and other European countries comes into this.

Morover, they have been cutting exports openly for the past few years. The export quota was this year had been reduced by 40%. Much of this is due to a genuine cut back in production as they closed hundreds of mines for safe and environmental reasons as well as poor profitability. The aim was to consolidate the whole industry under a single state owned company that can control production and prices better. So basically they wanted to push up the prices as well as improve their mining industry at the same time.

China's own needs for rare metals will exceed current production in a few years. So they don't need or actually want to export anything. Moroever since this had been going on for a few years quite openly, they don't really see what the fuss is about. There was ample notice for other countries to look elsewhere but the truth is they haven't really done so. It is not as if US, Europe and Japan do not have monopolies of their own. For example Intel and AMD chips, as well as Boeing and Airbus. So basically I think this is just overblown. Rare earth metals are not as important today as people think, it is just many tomorrow technologies will rely on them. If the rest of world are concerned, they should have started doing something a few years ago. After all, 65% of reserves are found outside China.


Derek

I think we're all aware that the US should have begun preparing for
this many years ago.

For some, it may not be about the halting of shipments, it just makes
China look a little less than glowing when it appears to happen over
issues that the Chinese govt is not known for caring about such as
the fate of a single fisherman, or an investigation.

Many countries have their monopolies, Derek, we know.


Ken

Ken, there may be issues with Japan and the US, but again I don't see how Germany and others are involved and subject to an unofficical embargo as well. In any case, it is near the end of the year when the export quotas are nearly used up.

The main issue with the US now is the Chinese currency. The US and other countries wants it to appreciate rapidly by up to 40% but there is no way they will accept it. There is a real chance that a very damaging trade war may arise as a result. Basically, everything with China is negotiable but not their trade interests.

Derek

There are many areas of conflict @ US vs China = North Korea, Japan, Taiwan, trade imbalance, human rights, US debt, currency, and now rare earth minerals.

I really pray that relations will improve as it is in both countries' best interests of course -

I hope as we always have so far, we will all get through it with the least pain - together.

Yeah - China and RE -- We should just shut down Walmarts and see how the rest of their industry goes if the US isn't buying their poison laced crap products for awhile.

We only need processors - we have the rest of it down. We were mining lithium. There was a questionable incident of some sort (can't remember what) that later turned out to be nothing to do with the mine - but 29 agencies converged and they couldn't get things straight, messed up everything, and the mine ended up being shut down - there's already a ready mine, means of transport. All we need is the processor.

Idaho just quit outsourcing silver production and has a sweet deal for anyone or company that will build a processor (probably a done deal by now). If we do that with RE I would bet the processors are up and running in less than half the time than if we let our inept gov do it.

As far as Afghanistan - they are further along than we are being told. Those minerals have been known about for 2 decades. Gary Bowsersox has been over there for at least 3 decades. The media release that the minerals were just found is all propaganda bunk - we knew they were there before we went to war with them. At least the rockhound crowds did. (The emeralds are nice, too.)

There is also heavy research into replacement minerals and synthetics. I would think that China wouldn't want to get too cocky over their mineral supply. For one thing, those supplies can be stripped, for another - if someone discovers a way around them, their hold is done and if they start a cold war over something that someone finds a way around, that cold war is going to be much colder for them than for anyone else.

Here's a good article about RE minerals, uses in industry, and
new research being done to work around using RE.

The article is in MIT's Technology Review.

Smoke this Bob Marley, Beijing

"Working alongside the Nebraska researchers in the same ARPA-E program, researchers at the University of Delaware are advancing nanocomposites that use far less of the valuable rare-earth materials... "


Ken

From Molycorp's website:

"Fortunately, the U.S. has one of the world’s largest and richest Rare Earth deposits at Molycorp Minerals’ facility in Mountain Pass, California. At Mountain Pass we are producing certain Green Elements and plans are in place to bring the facility back into full production following an extensive modernization and expansion project. With appropriate federal assistance for research, development and capital costs, Molycorp Minerals is prepared to move forward to reestablish domestic manufacturing capacity on an expedited basis."

Molycorp Minerals - The Rare Earths Company

Molycorp on Twitter - Say hello

Considering the billions that our G has pissed away on bailouts,
wouldn't ya think they would throw something to these guys?

But, on page two of the MIT article it does mention some legislation
re the RE issue.


Ken

I didn't realize we had a processor there (Mountain Pass) - there are refineries in TN and TX for some of the minerals, too.

Yttrium may still present a problem, though - we've never mined that let alone refined or processed. I'm not even sure how much we HAVE to mine. There are around 15 to 17 RE minerals at M. Pass, so yttrium might be one of them. I don't know if we have it, and if we do if we can refine and process it. I'll have to check it out in the next day or two.

Way back in 76-77, I worked on a B52 base and specifically on
a video panaramic ECM receiver. It used YIG filters for RF filtering.
YIG = Yttrium-Iron-Garnet.

Secret squirrel stuff, back then.


Ken