It’s insane how little reporting there is on this. This is perhaps the biggest story of the week.
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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Trump is back to making us think in weeks rather than years.
Days. The on-off-on electronic/cell phone tariffs are an example
This is how a tariff war becomes a war war
As Warrwn Bufffet said, tarrifs are an act of war.
In the meantime, shipments of rare earths have been halted at many ports, with customs officials blocking exports to any country, including to the U.S. as well as Japan and Germany, sources told the Times. China’s Ministry of Commerce issued export restrictions alongside the General Administration of Customs, prohibiting Chinese businesses from any engagement with U.S. firms, especially defense contractors.
They're clearly calling Trump's bluff, but why include Japan and Germany in this? Worrying. The article doesn't explain.
BTW I don't buy into the narrative that China is the better world dominator. Their human rights record is abhorrent, and they clearly aren't a democracy. And I don't see that changing anytinme soon.
but why include Japan and Germany in this?
To stop US companies routing shipments through Germany and Japan.
Precisely this. You route a shipment to an un-tarriffed/un-embargoed country, usually to a shell company or something, and then ship it to wherever using THAT country as the country of origin. It's a pretty common way of avoiding arms embargoes.
Because these are all loopholes used to bypass any serious moves. Like everyone is still buying Russian oil even in Europe. The blockade is an ineffective joke. This move is China saying fuck your instability and stupidity, we are serious and can back it up. There are no back doors and no way out of this insanely stupid mess.
It is not so much that China is the better world dominator, it is more that the US is already dominating more than any one nation should and it is a good thing if politicians keep dependencies on nations like that in their minds as a concern.
the US is clearly not a republic
that change did happen recently
The US is a Republic, not just a democratic one. Republic means the power is in the hands of a few, which is exactly the case. It is not democratic at core, because votes mean shit.
An Oligarchic Republic, your wealth determines how many votes you get. In this system, the 99% of poor voters are shit.
We will need wealth floors and ceilings in a revised Constitution in order to get rid of this issue. Economics, politics, and violence, are just different faces of power. The great mistake of the Founding Fathers was failing to recognize that money needs checks and balances, else it runs out of control.
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I could imagine that what US has done has caused fear and a feeling of needing to hoard enough to get your country through a war. It's making me, a lowly in Australia feel like we should be able to survive on our own, and have more available resources. I'm going to guess they're more aware of threats than I am, more aware of where the next steps of this whole "mastermind" plan of Elon and Trumps enacting. This is not the only consequences of what they've done, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg, yet.
hoarding
The main issue with rare earths is extracting them. It's very polluting and labor intensive.
China sells them so cheap it doesn't make economic sense for most countries to extract them, but there are locations with high concentrations all over the world.
Yup, very few rare earth metals are actually rare in absolute terms. Most deposits simply aren't worth the trouble.
China knows what it has and isn't afraid to be the new big-dick-swinging-bully in town now that the USA has blown it's wad.
You know what, good for them. When you got it, flaunt it.
The way these Trumpian dipshits might put it is "They hold all the cards."
This is kind of interesting... China has been working on monopolizing sources of raw materials for awhile now, and putting them on the market cheap so that they become the de facto supplier, making it difficult or impossible for any other sources to be developed.
But... there are other sources of things like lithium and cobalt, it's just been cheaper to buy it from China so everyone does.
Cutting off the supply will cause some slow-downs and a bit of chaos in the short term but what will happen is local sources will suddenly become worth developing. What this does is effectively burn a big piece of China's economic power... I wonder what they're getting out of it right now? The impact won't last very long.
Neither lithium nor cobalt are rare earths, and China isn’t particularly dominating their production either. The leading producers are other countries. These are completely unrelated to the rare earths problem.
With rare earths the situation is that China isn’t only leading in production of the ores, but also in processing capacity, and the technology needed for it. The US already is the second largest producer of rare earth ores, but they still have to send them to China for processing because they can’t do all of it in the US. For the same reason, China produces ~90% of the world’s permanent magnets (these use rare earths like neodymium or samarium). Basically it’s not about developing sources for the ores. Rare earths are not that rare in the first place. It’s about the technology and capacity to do anything with them.
I do agree that the impact might not last long. They’re just forcing the competition to work faster. But maybe the explanation is that they think that making everybody speed up their rare earths development doesn’t change much in the long run anyway, while throwing a wrench into the US industry right now is a pretty good deal.
From research to large scale trials i would expect building the processing industry to take at the very least a few years. And once things are in place, China can just reopen the floodgates and give these new refiners a hard time, unless they are heavily protected by their government then.
So it requires a dedicated long term strategy to counteract, which will take some years. Also in the meantime all dependent industries are suffering big-time while China can still export the finished products and further strengthen their industries.
In terms of economical power this move is much stronger than Trumps tariffs and there is no rewards to be expected for countries who stick it out for the US. The US has already made it clear that it will just make you suffer more, the more you give in to them.
It's perfectly possible to do in the US, just costs a bit more. So, capitalism being what it is, that work got outsourced so the vultures could see higher numbers.
Is it possible to do in the US where most of the qualified people already do other jobs and a lot of the rest had the reading comprehension of a 6th grader before they had the brillant idea to abolish the department of education and remove funding from universities in other ways though?
All the brightest US minds to go McKinsey where they figure out how CEO's can buy even more yaghts*.
yaughts
Yachts.
Also fuck McKinsey.
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throwing a wrench into the US industry right now is a pretty good deal.
This is the part I don't really get - they've spent decades working to control these resources, and I can't really see what benefit they get from this that offsets that time and effort.
Manipulating the flow and the prices makes sense. Cutting it off entirely just to participate in a dick-measuring contest with the US really doesn't make any sense. Nations are already looking at moving their supply chains especially for electronics after all the COVID disruptions. Encouraging those nations to go looking elsewhere for the entire supply chain just loses you business and influence, no matter how much short-term cost you inflict.
Why are you assuming they would be logical? They're a dictatorship
That kind of infrastructure takes time to build. Nobody wants to invest in something that will take years to start producing if there's a 50/50 chance that tomorrow Trump rolls over and China starts selling again within a month. It's too risky with how unstable the world market is right now.
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I heard Ukraine has some. Europe has someone to buy it from then, after they freed them from Russian invaders. Which they should be doing anyways.
Thing is, they truly don't really have that much. The US has more and it's not actually rare, it just was at the time when it was discovered.
The US is trying to claim ownership of the Ukrainian stock as a condition of peace with Russia.
Now they'll just invade as well.
China is preparing for real war against Taiwan, hoping that restricting these minerals will prevent Taiwan backers from replenishing their militaries in a war of attrition within a meaningful timeftame after invasion.
So this seems...not good.
Could someone please map out a scale of best to worst next events that are most likely to occur as a result of this?
Best? Trump does that thing that certain people have done in bunkers when they recognize how badly they fucked up. You know, a painting or something.
Worst? Just about anything else.
They're called "rare earth elements", but they're extremely common. They're just in trace amounts...everywhere in the Earth's crust. China stopping exports just means everyone else will have a reason to extract them, when before China was just a path of least resistance. Will take a bit of time to re-establish industry though.
This makes me think they're going to move on Taiwan sooner rather than later.
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Pretty sure sea mud off the coast of Japan is one of the richest sources
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