I love the west🇺🇸📈😍

China doesn't have a monopoly, they're simply the cheapest source the past many decades.

[removed]

china's advantage is regulation arbitrage. their environmental law enforcement is low and allows those mines to pollute a lot, which can never happen in the west. therefore their cost of production of rare earth is, well, dirt cheap.

it's not that the west doesn't have rare earths, its just the cost of production is not even on the same order of magnitude, which makes most mines not financially feasible to operate

Isn't China mining a ton of them from Africa?

[deleted]

[deleted]

not really. imo the regulations in the west is way too strict and bascially kidnapped by the hysteria and paranoid of a small group of extremist.

china and soviet union bascially killed off most of the apex predators, like tigers (for soviets, the Caspian tigers), most leopards, bears, crocodiles (yangtze crocodiles). according to the western "ecologists" their eco system should have collapsed and everyone there living in hellscape now. the truth is different.

rare earth mining requires lots of acids. but those acids are organic and will dissolve in the natural environment, and runoff to river and eventually to the ocean, and eventually convert into other materials (they hardly exist in nature in pure form for a reason, coz they react with other mateirals which cause them to cease to exist).

so those acids used in mining, they actually dont do that much harm. but the environmentalists gonna have mental breakdown seeing all those colorful acid pools and miles and miles of barren land of mining and cry out its environmental catostrophy and the media will help them to stir up mass hysteria to shut or limit those mining.

meanwhile china can do it as what it wants and benefit. thats a massive advantage that the west might never catch up in our lifetime simply coz the west is too irrational when it comes to "pollution", even relatively harmless ones.

[removed]

We don't avoid killing animals just to protect the ecosystem. We do it because we have empathy and recognise they can't protect themselves from us.

Shame we share a planet with them.

This is good news. US and Canada need to partner with European countries to no longer be reliant on China for it's goods. It's important for the future of the world.

They don't have the cheapest source they just sell at the lowest price just to have control. Rare earth is perfectly profitable to mine else where in the world.

Yeah let’s just casually extinct whatever the fuck gets in the way. /s

3200 tons, from Madagascar, seems to be the only African source. Don't know who owns the mines or where they send it.

Note that the "Rare Earths" are different than technical metals like cobalt.

> They don't have the cheapest source they just sell at the lowest price just to have control.

That makes China the cheapest source.

Good luck to any country that think they can beat their prices without turning their own countryside into an hellscape

I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that had easiest access and lowest production cost.

[removed]

They were simply willing to cut the most corners, the way American industry operated before dumping toxic waste in the nearest stream was frowned upon.

The problem is the global value of rare earth imports was only $1.15 billion back in 2019. It's not a huge market, but it involves a lot of cost on the processing end. It's not just about mining.

Isn't Bolivia sitting right on top of one of the planet's largest lithium deposits?

[deleted]

Bolivia needs us to bring them freedom?

This is referring to Scandium, Yttrium, and the Lanthanides. Lithium and Cobalt, though highly valuable for renewables, are not technically rare earth metals though they are often included.

China manages the supply chains very well, partly because they can know most of what is going on within them. In America and Europe, corporations can conceal a great deal, which leaves governments with less control.

nothing a bit of hard working children or dispossessed indigenous can’t shave off on the margins amirite