He who controls the spice, controls the universeFollow

However,

Edited, Mar 14th 2012 8:40am by Aripyanfar

Uh... don't we debate the merits of all sorts of real world issues that then get decided by legal organisations of one stripe or another? Don't we feel it's useful to debate the merits of issues even when we have no immediate, direct say in the outcome? I mean, I don't mind if the individual Jophiel cares not one way or the other about China's export practises regarding rare earth, but I do. I think they have the right to choose in this matter.

Could someone kindly find me a list of banned Western exports to China in the past 3 decades. You know, like banning exports of Supercomputers to China, that quickly turned into bans of ANY modern desktop or laptop computer to China, as improving technology gave them the same specs as an old supercomputer. Anyone remember the Unequal Treaties (that included trade terms) issue with China and other East Asian nations, from history? I just think that objecting to China's export quotas of rare-earth is total hypocrisy on our part, and is already a Tat for our Tit.

You won't sell us any computers? Fine, we'll make our own, and won't sell you the raw materials to make them.

Edited, Mar 14th 2012 9:28am by Aripyanfar

Yeah, the U.S. actually has a large portion of the worlds known Rare earth Deposits. The mines were closed due to unfair competition from China, but also because environmental regulations at the time basically strangled them out of existiance. Rare earths are often found in the presence of heavy metals amongst other things. One of the rare earth mines in the U.S. will be back operational in about 8 months in Mountain Pass, California (http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=a9e8676e87fad805702b98564&id=aaec2518fe&e=%5BUNIQID%5D) and a second, much larger deposit was recently discovered in Nebraska. http://www.digitaltrends.com/gadgets/huge-rare-earth-minerals-depost-springs-from-tiny-nebraska-hamlet/ The seabed of much of the pacific ocean is also pretty much all rare earths. There are also significant deposits in Colorodo, etc. http://www.usrareearths.com/eco/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18&Itemid=55

China's landmas is thought to contain about 37% of the known rare earths on the planet. We've got probably another 35% or so, with other large deposits known of in Brazil, Greenland, Europe and Russia. Many of those will be producing again within the next 3 years. The timing of the china rare earth export cuts is particularily bad, because much of the HDD parts stock that was destroyed in the Thailand flooding was made out of rare earths, as well as most of the components required to make large monitor and TV panels. The economy melting has slowed down demand significantly, but if it hadn't, we would basically be screwed until sometime next year, and even then, this definitly IS effecting the rest of the world economy negativly. It's actually even been bad for China, because most of their domestic suppliers have far more inventory ready than they can sell internally. the whole thing was politically motivated, not due to any actual shortage on the part of China. In fact there is reportedly a thriving black market on the stuff at the moment out of South Korea.

At any rate, U.S. held rare earth stocks will likely be going up for a couple of years until china floods the market again once they remember how much the rest of us actually have of this stuff.

I was looking at some map the other day which showed deposits in Africa but, depending on where in the continent (I don't recall), it's probably not politically practical to mine there.

Africa too. China owns most of those particular mines though at the moment.

Rare Earth Elements are found all over. They're just no where concentrated enough to make mining them efficient. It's a messy work so it would be best not to do it in our collective backyard.

I found this National Geo article from last summer - it lacks the pretty pictures but it's only 2 pages long. In the 80's the US mined 60% of the worlds supply of rare earth elements.

I think we can mine our own stuff here - that's what I'd like to see, but it would require fighting lots of NIMBY wars.

In the meantime I think we'd have better luck using the carrot versus the stick in dealing with China. We need to barter with something they really want.

Sleestak slave labor?