Great, thanks for breaking the ice China. Now 30% tariff on imports from China to deal with their currency manipulation.
what is interesting is the lack of response. perhaps in itself it is not of great importance but in conjunction with the temporary export embargo on rare metals by the chinese there may be more than meets the eye.
What are we going to do? We piss them off and they'll cash in their treasury chips. They've got us by the short hairs.
In China, any official responsible for an area must insure that the part of the economy he oversees grows by 8% or so every year. An official who fails to reach the target may face harsh punishment. Any graph one reviews, even graphs by those who claim there is no impending shortage of REEs, clearly shows demand growing extremely quickly. So, Chinese officials are trying to force western companies to move to China to access REEs in order to boost growth in their particular region. To add to this, I recently read that China plans to internally produce about 330 Gigawatts worth of wind turbines. This project will require every ounce of Neodymium that China produces to make magnets for the turbines. So, there will definitely be a shortage of this element in the years to come. In terms of a trade war, China simply has to say they need all of this element to make "Green" energy products to cut CO2. No one can argue against that.