China Raises Threat of Rare-Earths Cutoff to U.S. | Hacker News Reader

China Raises Threat of Rare-Earths Cutoff to U.S.

foreignpolicy.com

33 pointsjonbaer5 comments

This is kind of a good thing. China has shut down nearly every rare earth mine by price gauging. So if they cut the US off, well see these lines open up in other parts of the world. This will remove the Chinese monopoly on the metals.

Also cutting the US off does not mean refineries stop working. Their current supplies will still exist.

I expect US to go into a deep recession when that happens.

They're called rare-earth minerals, but they're in fact not rare at all [1].

China can cut off supplies and other nations will rise up to pick up the increased demand.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element

Despite their name, rare-earth elements are – with the exception of the radioactive promethium – relatively plentiful in Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million, more abundant than copper.

Although rare earths aren't rare, they are rarely found in high enough concentrations to be mined profitably.

It also isn't a simple supply-demand story-- it takes over a decade to set up rare earth mines and refineries [1]. As the article mentions:

"China so completely dominates one key stage of the manufacturing process — converting the oxides to metals"

If China cut off U.S. access to rare earth magnets (as suggested by the article) or rare earth metals at other stages in the refining process, other countries could try to pick up the slack, but it would likely be devastating for a lot of companies for many years. Even much of the knowledge about how to refine the metals has been lost in the U.S. [2], which is partly why MP Materials (the RE mine in California) needed to have a partner in China.

[1] "Rare metal mines (and supply chains) can take up to fifteen years from investment to production according to the U.S. government"

Abraham, David S.. The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age . Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

[2] "The lack of a knowledgeable workforce, even in countries with strong mining histories like Australia and Canada, will mean a slow development of local mines in Western countries and a growing reliance on mines developed in China, Russia, or Brazil, by Chinese, Russian, or Brazilian engineers. It also means that new young Western workers will have increasingly fewer mentors, crucial to these young scientists in developing their skills and providing them critical information."

Abraham, David S.. The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age . Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

It took 4 years for the US is plunge the oil market and it hasn't recovered since. I can see this being the next thing to do that

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