China has a weapon that could hurt America: rare-earth exports

economist.com

5 points·ViktorRay··6 comments

No it doesn't.

The US simply hasn't bothered with mining it's rare-earth minerals due to it being a very dirty process and China willing to sell theirs extremely cheap.

China will be on Mars by the time a single truckload of ore rolls out of a US mine.

Good for them if that actually happens.

China's problem is they have no real economy of there own outside of producing USA goods. They need to fix that issue as they are not a consumer based society and have no where else to sell the goods being shipped to the USA. Vietnam has figured that out and are dropping there tariffs to continue making Nike's and Levies.

China export just over 5% of there GDP to the USA while they import .05% of there GDP from the USA. Even what they do import is mostly just soybeans and bulk commodity items easily sold to any other country other than them.

I'm not in favor of long term tariffs outside of true terrorist states but they are needed to curb the very bad things the Chinese government is doing to undermine the country they desperately need short to mid term.

I can’t help but wonder what all this means for the environment. Reminds me of the book Brave New World. Where prosperity is directly tied to consumption.

Yes, and how long do you think it will take to build that mining and refining capacity (considering we haven't bothered in the last 15 years when we saw this as a problem)?

For a period of time. Which depends on depth of stockpile

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