7 ms·

US steps up efforts to limit China’s control of critical minerals

97 points by jonbaer 7y ago

myrandomcomment 7y ago
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).
jdkee 7y ago
Good. China is anti-democratic and a persistent threat to Western Democracies.
- dang 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    Interesting to see where YCombinator stands on this. I assume you are an official moderator on HN?
    - toxik 7y ago
      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 7y ago
        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.
    - dang 7y ago
      I am, but that comment says nothing about "where Y Combinator stands" on anything except whether HN users should follow the HN guidelines. We stand for yes.
devoply 7y ago
The US does not tolerate any competing power structures. The chances of China to fall in line with a billion people is not that high. This trade war is never going to end until China is reduced to such a level that it can no longer fight and gives up and joins the world order as a subordinate state. I don't think China's confidence is broken to such a level that it surrenders. So this is probably the only move to make going forward. Otherwise China could easily disable key industries rather quickly and without much recourse.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  This could be our generation's cold war. Even back to prosecuting Communist sympathizers (even though China is not Communist)
  - whiddershins 7y ago
    Ok let’s say China isn’t communist. what is communist? Is anything communist? A Kibbutz maybe? How about on the nation-state scale? Was China communist under Mao? Was the Soviet Union communist? Castro’s Cuba? Edit: Any Platonic ideal undergoes distortion when manifested in the material world.
    - ivanhoe 7y ago
      Communism is both the name of the ideology and of a form of society (well defined in theory), and you need to make a distinction between the two. These countries you mentioned above were (some still are) run by communists, but were never even near communism. Nor they ever claimed that they were, most of the Eastern block countries had socialism in the name in order to make the distinction clear. Socialism is considered a transition into the real communism - which is, from all that we know now, just unachievable utopia at any larger scale than a few hundreds people.
    - etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
      North Korea is a Democratic Republic. North Korea is a totalitarian nightmare. Democratic Republics are therefore bad. I actually think the No True Scotsman Fallacy, is itself, not a very good argument to make. We should just pay no attention to what any state calls itself. It's irrelevant.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
onetimemanytime 7y ago
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?
- snagglegaggle 7y ago
  There is a strategic cache. It does not seem large enough to sustain consumer production. In timescales where only consumer production matters I think the market is self correcting. I apologize, I can not find the source atm, but it is an Army report.
- xref 7y ago
  Not sure it would matter, since we wouldn’t have the infra to make 100mil iPhones a year to utilize the mineral reserve. Manufacturing is sooooo much bigger than the raw materials
- kabouseng 7y ago
  A strategic cache is typically set up not to support normal economic activities or consumer manufacturing, but war time supplies of military equipment.
  - killjoywashere 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      Which they would probably not have done if they had expected a (conventional) war any time soon.
bigpumpkin 7y ago
Plenty in Australia, drill baby drill!
- mogadsheu 7y ago
  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.
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago
    Probably also from cheap labor too.
pinkfoot 7y ago
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-thorium-and-rare-earths-james-kennedy-john-kutsch-usofa http://efn-usa.org/2013-11-06-07-29-01/item/2033-summary-for...
Animats 7y ago
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/caught-between-trump-and-its-biggest-market-americas-sole-rare https://www.scmp.com/business/commodities/article/3011687/ca...
- Excel_Wizard 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
- zajd 7y ago
  There is no such thing as a non-polluting mine
m0zg 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
AceJohnny2 7y ago
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-global-trends-mineral-commodity-supplies https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/2017-oct-public-lecture-gl... 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.

97 points by jonbaer 7y ago

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).

jdkee 7y ago

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

dang 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Interesting to see where YCombinator stands on this. I assume you are an official moderator on HN?
  - toxik 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.
  - dang 7y ago
    I am, but that comment says nothing about "where Y Combinator stands" on anything except whether HN users should follow the HN guidelines. We stand for yes.

devoply 7y ago

The US does not tolerate any competing power structures. The chances of China to fall in line with a billion people is not that high. This trade war is never going to end until China is reduced to such a level that it can no longer fight and gives up and joins the world order as a subordinate state. I don't think China's confidence is broken to such a level that it surrenders. So this is probably the only move to make going forward. Otherwise China could easily disable key industries rather quickly and without much recourse.

soulofmischief 7y ago
This could be our generation's cold war. Even back to prosecuting Communist sympathizers (even though China is not Communist)
- whiddershins 7y ago
  Ok let’s say China isn’t communist. what is communist? Is anything communist? A Kibbutz maybe? How about on the nation-state scale? Was China communist under Mao? Was the Soviet Union communist? Castro’s Cuba? Edit: Any Platonic ideal undergoes distortion when manifested in the material world.
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    Communism is both the name of the ideology and of a form of society (well defined in theory), and you need to make a distinction between the two. These countries you mentioned above were (some still are) run by communists, but were never even near communism. Nor they ever claimed that they were, most of the Eastern block countries had socialism in the name in order to make the distinction clear. Socialism is considered a transition into the real communism - which is, from all that we know now, just unachievable utopia at any larger scale than a few hundreds people.
  - etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
    North Korea is a Democratic Republic. North Korea is a totalitarian nightmare. Democratic Republics are therefore bad. I actually think the No True Scotsman Fallacy, is itself, not a very good argument to make. We should just pay no attention to what any state calls itself. It's irrelevant.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

onetimemanytime 7y ago

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?

snagglegaggle 7y ago
There is a strategic cache. It does not seem large enough to sustain consumer production. In timescales where only consumer production matters I think the market is self correcting. I apologize, I can not find the source atm, but it is an Army report.
xref 7y ago
Not sure it would matter, since we wouldn’t have the infra to make 100mil iPhones a year to utilize the mineral reserve. Manufacturing is sooooo much bigger than the raw materials
kabouseng 7y ago
A strategic cache is typically set up not to support normal economic activities or consumer manufacturing, but war time supplies of military equipment.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    Which they would probably not have done if they had expected a (conventional) war any time soon.

bigpumpkin 7y ago

Plenty in Australia, drill baby drill!

mogadsheu 7y ago
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.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  Probably also from cheap labor too.

pinkfoot 7y ago

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

Animats 7y ago

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

Excel_Wizard 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
zajd 7y ago
There is no such thing as a non-polluting mine

m0zg 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.

AceJohnny2 7y ago

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