Posted on 05/26/2019 7:39:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
While we have plenty in the ground, the facilities to mine and refine the raw materials are lacking. AND, the EPA will fight tooth and nail any program to actually produce industrially useful materials in the US.
We are our own worst enemy.
Look for a 5 year supply disruption if China cuts us off. The economy can go very far downhill in 5 years...
We nee a ‘security reserve’ of these elements. In a time of war our defense industry would be damaged by a lack of these elements...
We have these same rare earth minerals in the west and other nations. We buy them from China due to the fact they can produce them cheaper due to their labor costs. Impose huge tariffs on these and we will be competitive. The Chinese impose huge tariffs on our goods mostly agricultural that they are not competitive with.
There is absolutely no issue with finding more reserves of these metals.
We just need to encourage or allow more mining exploration. More “rare earth” minerals are out there, everywhere.
Or “social justice.”
However, the problem of the regulations, lawsuits and permitting will have to be cleared or companies will simply move out of the US because cranking up all those mines, mills, etc., will take most of a decade to get set back up and US companies cannot afford the gap in time. Congress could have cleared hurdles to speed things up in the last two years but they chose not to. Now good luck doing that with the Dems holding the House.
Article from the USNI from May 15th that cited comments from retired Navy Captain James Fanell confirms your post in regards too the Chicoms Navy.
This is why the Chinese have been swiftly moving to nuclear and hydro power and pushing domestic production. They will hurt for a while, but it will be short term.
As the world’s largest producer, the Middle Kingdom has a vice-like grip on rare earths supply.
The question is how long it would take to bring new supplies online, and whether we have stockpiles to bridge that interval. If the U.S. government were responsible and competent, this would have been assured many years ago. My confidence level is not high.
Re: national will. The American left is anti-American. It would see such a crisis as an opportunity to severely cripple the evil U.S. economy, extort maximum political blackmail on tangentially related subjects, and exploit the crisis to drive U.S. living standards down and government control of the economy up.
The left would rather see the U.S. defense industrial base collapse and the U.S. edge in high tech industries disappear than to permit a single new mine on federal lands in the west. The left is at best indifferent -- and among its "advanced" thinkers, is actively hostile -- to economic growth. Economic decline would increase political pressure for increased redistribution. That ultimately is why the left is so enamored of policies that are economically counterproductive. Leftists don't see a downside.
Afghanistan has more rare earth elements than China.
CIA fact sheet 2010.
Then again, fwiw.
5.56mm
Is American Manganese publicly traded?
Look! The troll is back!
Necessity is the mother of invention, and U.S. materials R&D is continually researching replacements for many rare earth minerals, and if ever push comes to shove, that R&D will be greatly boosted. Replacing rare earth minerals with more plentiful earth materials, and their combinations, is going to become a very big industry.
China just doesn’t get it with their earth metals.....they can’t eat them. So all the wealth in the world really all comes down to food and shelter. The United States exports more food than any other country in the world. Want some, China. It’ll cost you earth metals you seem to thing is so important. And no matter how many earth metals you have, you can’t feed your people as it is. In the world of supply and demand, which one is more important, earth metals or food? Supply and demand....
rwood
I just read where we tried “reopening” a mine (in Nevada as I recall) so the Chinese dropped prices on their stuff, made it uneconomical for us to operate, bought it when it was forced to close and now run it and ship the raw material to China for processing. We need to be way smarter if we’re going to beat this ba$tards. We do have the hole card in the trade war. At the end of the day, if we cut them off, we can ruin them economically. It’s time to start that process. I am guessing that Trump wants to get past the election, so it’s not a campaign issue, then drop the hammer on them.
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