This is one of the biggest stories of the year for the economy. China is not content to only have a manufacturing monopoly of just toys, baubles, and trinkets. Seems like the high-tech Green revival of our economy will instead happen half a world away. Keep your friends close, but your metal mining stocks closer http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...are-earth-controls-as-environmental-step.html
"China cut its export quotas for rare earth by 72 percent for the second half of this year, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce on July 8. Shipments will be capped at 7,976 metric tons, down from 28,417 tons for the same period a year ago...." "The U.S. was self-sufficient in the materials until the mid- 1980s, when lower labor and regulatory costs helped Chinaâs climb to dominance" All this says to me is that the chinese are idiots. This is good news for us, because now that they are shipping 75% less rare earth materials, the prices will rise(simple supply & demand) which will make it profitable for us to supply ourselves and create jobs here in the US. Thanks China!
All true. The question, of course, is whether our mines can make up this huge deficit. Remember in the 80's no one had cell phones, high tech TVs, hybrid cars, etc. The demand for these minerals in USA was probably much lower. Tens of thousands of tons seems like a huge shortfall. I'll see if I can find a number for 80's annual production.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rare-earths.gif According to that chart USA's max production was about ~27,000 tons per year. China seems to be cutting ~50,000 tons. So US can make up around half of that. This still eaves a huge shortfall for the US and our allies who still do some manufacturing. Also consider it would take years for US to get to that level of production. China is clearly making a play here.
The article says China is cutting about 20,000 tons, not 50,000 so looks like we can pick it up, although I'm not sure how much we are producing now if our max is 27k tons per year. I guess as long as we are only producing 7k tons or less now, we should be ok to pick up the slack.
Reread the article. It says 20Ktons for the 2nd half of the year, Which is ~40kTons for the whole year. However, the article seems to imply that China could make more cuts.
Rare earths are a group of 17 chemically similar metallic elements, including lanthanum, cerium, neodymium and europium. The U.S. was self-sufficient in the materials until the mid- 1980s, when lower labor and regulatory costs helped Chinaâs climb to dominance, the U.S. Geological Survey said in a report. ________________________________________________________ China is not stupid. In fact, very caculated and smart. The EPA is looking to limit Fracking in Shale soon, so I couldn't possible believe the US would start mining the 17 Chemically simiar metallic Elements. For christsake, the GOV is trying to stop Coal from being harvest, and thats not on the Rare List. Wake up fools! Do you really believe that this country will jump start Manufacturing and Minning to compete with China and the rest of the world. Our country is heading in the opposit direction. So, really think about what this means. We have 70% of our GDP based on consumers buying things! We have a very small MINNING INDUSTRY overall! And they are loosing ground everday. There will be millions more unemployed in the future if we continue to sit back and believe that everything will be ok....and that this country will get back on track. ANTI INDUSTRY and ANTI WEALTH is the name of the game in this country now.
I checked and the Mountain Pass mine in Ca. has almost 20Million tons of this ore, which is enough to last us. I'm not sure if the ore was for all 17 elements. Also not sure how fast they can come online because of the environmental issues. Apparently, Mountain Pass had a pretty bad spill which sent a lot of radioactive water into a lake. And, being that it is in California...