I’m seeing this more and more in the news lately. I chose Open Forum because the news is sometimes political (countering China), sometimes technology related, etc.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical minerals agreement aimed at countering China on Monday at a meeting marked by Trump’s jab at Australia’s envoy to the United States over past criticism.
China loomed large at the first White House summit between Trump and Albanese, with the U.S. president also backing a strategic nuclear-powered submarine deal with Australia to bolster security in the Indo-Pacific.
Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday.
Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said.
Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to import the materials instead of mining them.
I’d say this is Australia attempting to shore up AUKUS and submarine deal. Rare earth minerals from Australia will be on the expensive side, especially if processed in Australia, the US must be desperate.
The US is most definitely desperate. But I think it would be wise for all nations to see the urgency of the situation. Nobody wants China to dominate a sector such as this one. Another thing I find interesting is that I think China acted too soon on this. They showed their hand (that they are willing to weaponize rare earths) much sooner than they should have. Now everybody knows what China had in mind, and so everybody is (rightly) scrambling to fix the situation.
To me it mirrors the US’s semiconductor controls. From my limited understanding, China is closer to semiconductor independence than the US is to rare earth mineral. Not sure how relevant that is but it might give China an upper hand in some ways.
China only has low end semi-conductor manufacturing. The US still has the most important cards. We could cut China off from oil if we wanted too and they are massive net importers of fuel.
I seem to recall the rare earth elements are often not really as rare as it was initially thought when naming them as such. It is the extraction that is costly in not just economical ways. But the level of pollution and toxicity to humans makes it the problem.
Meaning many countries could extract it, but the cost beyond the economics of it makes it desirable to get it from somewhere human lives don’t matter as much like China.
Not sure if this is accurate or I’m remembering incorrectly.
Yes, I believe that’s correct. There’s mention of that in the Taipei Times article above. It’s my understanding China does most of the processing in the world now, and that time is needed before other countries can get their processing going well and efficient.
Although rare earths, a group of 17 elements, are in fact more abundant than gold, the relatively high cost and environmental damage associated with their processing and refinement have placed China in a dominant position in their production worldwide.
Between 2020 and 2023, the US was dependent on China for 70% of its imports of all rare earths compounds and metals, according to a report by US Geological Survey, an agency under the interior department.
And in a note Monday, Goldman Sachs estimated that disruption to just 10% of production in industries dependent on these elements could wipe out $150 billion in US economic output.
“I don’t think that the rare earth supply issues can be solved in the short term, period. China is too far ahead of the world,” said John Mavrogenes, an economic geology professor at the Australian National University.
There has been little concrete progress in developing a rare earths supply chain in Australia, Mavrogenes added. Challenges like high energy costs, shortage of workers with necessary skills and the potential environmental impact pose significant hurdles, he said.
“I’d say we’re a decade away (from building up the required production capacity), even if we really got serious,” he said. “We’d have to make an industry from scratch. And that takes a lot of dedication and long-term planning, and a lot of effort.”
It’s kind of surprising, actually, because the US has never had an administration that would be more suited, as well as inclined, to launch RE extraction and refinement as the current batch of goblins.
We’re could do it, but the expense related to doing it safely is what tips it to China.
Yeah, just looking at their waste dumping operation in Baotou, I would imagine that would be a really big cost difference, a lot of which would have to be spent up front.
This is a very informative site for those who want to learn more about REE, the market, as well as up and coming tech. I mention the last because me guy says the US will build this kind of vertically integrated system, and either they will do it more cleanly in the US with stringent EPA regulations, use new technologies like certain bacteria that leeches out the REE from ore, which is being developed in China, or they’ll do it dirty in Canada or Mexico or some shithole country, making our supply chain no better than china’s in the latter case.
Canada has announced 25 critical minerals investments and partnerships with allies as it races to develop C$6.4bn (US$4.6bn) worth of projects to counter China’s dominance of the global trade.
