The US Effort to Break China's Rare-Earth Monopoly (msn.com)
- Reference: 0180510821
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/01/04/0515201/the-us-effort-to-break-chinas-rare-earth-monopoly
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/meet-a-us-startup-trying-to-break-china-s-rare-earth-monopoly/ar-AA1Tg7cD
> There is too little money to be made in rare earths for the elements to be of much interest to mining giants, so the challenge of reestablishing a domestic industry has fallen to small companies like Phoenix Tailings, a Boston-area startup that runs the metal-making plant in Exeter, New Hampshire. A handful of other companies in the United States are processing rare earths in small quantities, including MP Materials, which owns a mine in Mountain Pass, California, and recently began producing rare-earth metal in Fort Worth, Texas. Similar efforts are underway in Europe and Asia. "It's small volumes of low-value materials that are very expensive to process," said Elsa Olivetti, a materials science and engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Meaning it's hard to make money."
>
> Phoenix Tailings' New Hampshire operation is about 2 months old, housed in a converted medical device plant. The company buys metric-ton bags of powder — a mixture of neodymium and praseodymium bound with oxygen — from mining and refining companies in the United States, South America and Australia. It funnels that flour-like material into a drying oven and eventually into furnaces that heat it to the temperature of volcanic lava. This circuit takes up less than 15,000 square feet and is designed to generate no emissions other than those associated with the electricity Phoenix Tailings uses. The closed-loop design distinguishes this process from the more energy-intensive techniques used in China, where workers scoop up molten metal with ladles. That approach releases perfluorocarbons, potent greenhouse gases that do not break down easily.
In late 2024 the company was three weeks from bankruptcy — but it's recently been valued at $189 million.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/meet-a-us-startup-trying-to-break-china-s-rare-earth-monopoly/ar-AA1Tg7cD
pollution (Score:2, Redundant)
Perhaps this will lead to more sustainable processes for refining rare earth products. The reason that China is dominating the industry (other than a concerted effort by the government to buy up as many sources of raw materials as they can outside of China) is due to the absolute "dirtyness" of the refining process. It uses a lot of energy and produces noxious waste products that first world countries would rather not have to deal with. China is willing to take the environmental impact hit to corner the
jesus haploid christ (Score:1)
I know asking people to read the article is a meme as old as Slashdot, but is it asking too much for people to read the summary? They ALREADY invented cleaner processes. The issue simply is that it is uneconomical to make those metals outside of China because they aren't worth a lot for the amount of effort it takes to extract and refine them.
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And the cost of the energy involved (cleaner processes are very energy intensive).
US electricity cost - $0.18/kwh
China electricity cost - >$0.08/kwh
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It does not really make sense to compare "local costs" that way.
Especially if you do not even know if that is home consumer end price or an industrial price.
If you want to compare prices, you have to figure how much one for example can buy from a monthly wage.
Silly example, a good bottle of beer in Germany costs about 1EUR. Minimum wage per hour is ca. 1OEUR. After taxes let's say it is 5.
So for one hour working a simple job, you can buy 5 beers. Or a bit more than one gallon (3l) gasoline. Or 15kWh if elec
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> The reason that China is dominating the industry (other than a concerted effort by the government to buy up as many sources of raw materials as they can outside of China) is due to the absolute "dirtyness" of the refining process.
That, of course, is nonsense. The reason is greed. American oligarchs who ran companies which use rare earths figured out that it was more profitable to let China produce them with a lot of pollution in China, and ship them here producing more pollution, than to produce them with lower levels of pollution here.
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It is easy to put the blame on oligarchs, very soothing. But... we enthusiastically help by buying from the cheapest supplier. We are all in it together. It is human nature. Luckily we are the only creatures who can go against our nature. Not an easy process though. Very similar to the effort it takes to lose weight.
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> It is easy to put the blame on oligarchs, very soothing. But... we enthusiastically help by buying from the cheapest supplier.
1) We buy what we're offered
2) As they have exported the jobs we've made less money and have less choice about what we buy based on what we can afford
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Go fuck yourself, Ivan. Fuck yourself today, tomorrow, and every other day, and when you have fucked off, fuck off some more.
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> "Go fuck yourself, Ivan. Fuck yourself today, tomorrow, and every other day, and when you have fucked off, fuck off some more."
How is this productive? Although the poster made a personal attack, which is not good (and I do not condone), this type of response is even worse. You go nuclear and don't even address the issues.
Sinij actually made a valid point- in a free market, consumers *do* decide what products they want and are willing to pay for and companies *do* respond to consumer demand. It isn't
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>> "Go fuck yourself, Ivan. Fuck yourself today, tomorrow, and every other day, and when you have fucked off, fuck off some more."
> How is this productive? Although the poster made a personal attack, which is not good (and I do not condone), this type of response is even worse. You go nuclear and don't even address the issues.
> Sinij actually made a valid point- in a free market, consumers *do* decide what products they want and are willing to pay for and companies *do* respond to consumer demand. It isn't perfect, for sure. Especially when consumers and companies do not have full information. What is the alternative? To have the government decide what is sold and at what prices?
Knowledge is power. So I'll just reiterate what I posted elsewhere on this, as a valid response to Sinij.
Today we can put a nasty picture of a disease-riddled black lung on a pack of cigarettes to deter consumers from buying that product. In fact, those manufacturers are forced to do that.
If the supply chain reveals we should be putting a 10-year old sweatshop workers face on an brand-overpriced $40 T-shirt sales tag so consumers know exactly what they're overpaying for and how it was made, then ask your
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Because 10 year old sweat shop workers are difficult to find.
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Oh, gods, another Liber tard ian.
We can only buy what is available for sale, and if the mega-corps which own the country don't want to sell it we can't buy it. Is that simple enough for you to understand?
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> We can only buy what is available for sale, and if the mega-corps which own the country don't want to sell it we can't buy it. Is that simple enough for you to understand?
It just doesn't work that way. There isn't a single Evil Corp that decides everything, this is just restating old Bourgeoisie and Proletariat trope.
The way it work is that dozen of companies in a given market niche attempt to predict demand for a given good or service at a given price point, then provide it, then if they are somewhat correct in their predictions they make profit. Your theory, that people care about how rare earth are produced, would result in a business case where someone would offer such
Re: pollution (Score:1)
"businesses run the numbers, determined how much it would cost, and deducted that low demand at such price point would not result in sufficient sales to justify going ahead. That is, it is either too expensive and/or insufficient demand."
Why ignore subsidies? If Trump decided to subsidize recycling over mining, could he single-handedly change market preferences?
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> that people care about how rare earth are produced, would result in a business case where someone would offer such electronics at a higher price point.
[1]Don't make me tap the sign [wikipedia.org]
It's not about what any individual consumer will care it's the fact that the production of some things carries a diffuse cost that the producer does not pay so society has to pay that cost and thus the market is distorted.
There is a free-market solution to this and that is a tax on the cost borne to society. In this case rare earths should be taxed for their environmental damage thus putting cleaner options in a fair market.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
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While the loss of Maduro is a tactical defeat for Russia long term it is a validation of his sphere-of-influence style of geopolitics.
Russia is free to do what it wants to Ukraine because it's in their sphere, same as Venezuela is in the US sphere. Pete Hegseth just today is posting memes about the "Donroe Doctrine" so they're not hiding their intentions.
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>> We buy what we're offered
> Nonsense. This shows surprising level of economic illiteracy that should disqualify you from commenting on any economic and economic-adjacent stories. What is being offered and at what price point is determined by the demand outside of very rare cases of inelastic demand (e.g., healthcare, heating, etc.). If consumers on the whole cared about how electronics were produced over the price, then there would be manufacturers producing such 'clean' electronics. That is, market demand exposes BS, where people publicly complain about polluting electronic production but given privacy to shop would buy cheapest electronics from known slave-labor producers without any hesitation.
Start running sweatshop commercials like the drug pimps run TV ads in America, and then see how consumer sentiment changes.
If we can put a disease-riddled black lung on a pack of cigarettes to deter consumers from buying that product, I sure a shit should be able to find the 10-year old sweatshop workers face on a fucking $40 Nike T-shirt sales tag so I KNOW how much I'm overpaying when I don't choose the American made shirt.
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On how many occasions have you, as a consumer, be presented with the option of buying "domestically produced item A" versus "made in china item B", where "A" was not just a re-labeled or insignificantly modified "B"? I for one would gladly pay some more for a product if there was a domestic option that was well documented to not just be an amalgamation of Chinese parts, but in almost every case I do not see such being on offer. On the contrary, many domestic manufacturers even cannot be bothered to do any B
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I know of one case. Custom pcb's. JLCPCB is the leader. I did not know about them until a few years ago. I had been using oshpark. I try to buy US, but the price advantage JL offers is huge. Like 10X+ One board would have been 250 at osh and was 10 at JL. Even with shipping (pre-trump) the JL came to 24 total. And it was on my doorstep faster than osh turns. 7 days. A recent board even with the tariffs came in at 40 (with shipping/tariffs) instead of 200 at osh. Still 7 days to my door. For small boards I'l
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JLCPCB has an insanely well optimised process, this is why they are so fast with their manufacturing. And since they are the leader, they operate on such a large scale that they can easily squeeze the small stuff orders between their large orders so they don't waste anything.
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If she bought the necklace 99% complete and just added the clasp she could still slap the 'Made in America' label on it. The car companies ensured that was the case decades ago when they started building in maquilladoras in Mexico and then adding some trim pieces in Detroit or Alabama.
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It is not so much human nature as capitalism. China has basically figured out how to game capitalism and turn it to their advantage. They did so thru carefully managed production that is the antithesis of capitalism, well short term capitalism anyway. They succeeded. And they paid the price by enduring negative returns initially. I just don't see short term capitalism winning this one. US capitalism will cave to the price advantage China offers. I always go back to shark tank. A profitable company is presen
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Increasingly Chinese products are not only cheaper, but more reliable and better designed. I suppose that comes from having the best technical education system in the world and sufficient population to fill those schools.
Options Matter. (Score:2)
> It is easy to put the blame on oligarchs, very soothing. But... we enthusiastically help by buying from the cheapest supplier. We are all in it together. It is human nature. Luckily we are the only creatures who can go against our nature. Not an easy process though. Very similar to the effort it takes to lose weight.
I can easily choose whether or not I wish to support a Chinese sweat shop making sweatshirts for seven cents an hour, because I’ve been armed with that choice as a consumer.
Now tell me exactly how I get to choose my rare earth metal supplier. Because last I checked you need a HELL of a lot more than consumer power to even power a delusion of choice here.
Yes. This IS one of those moments when we can blame oligarchs. We the People didn’t choose the cheapest supplier. Greed N. Corruption, CEO d
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Why do people continue to misuse the word "oligarch"? People who wield power due to their wealth are plutocrats. Members of a politburo are oligarchs.
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A plutocracy is a type of oligarchy.
Have you ever been right about anything? Because today is not that day.
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>> The reason that China is dominating the industry (other than a concerted effort by the government to buy up as many sources of raw materials as they can outside of China) is due to the absolute "dirtyness" of the refining process.
> That, of course, is nonsense. The reason is greed. American oligarchs who ran companies which use rare earths figured out that it was more profitable to let China produce them with a lot of pollution in China, and ship them here producing more pollution, than to produce them with lower levels of pollution here.
100% this.
And none of that Vote With Your Wallet shit applies either. At no point in the last 30 years was a Democratic voting booth offering even the illusion of choice when it came to this particular aspect of manufacturing. These actions are decided on by Greed behind closed doors, with citizens ironically paying more in save-the-planet taxes created by MBAs who fly private, all for “choosing” to let China pollute and fill our rare earth orders.
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The "process breakthroughs" have already been developed.
In China.
And in our wonderful 'free trade' system we're not allowed to buy them.
We invaded Venezuela (Score:2)
That was about minerals. Oil too of course but they have lots of minerals for us to take.
Mexico and large parts of South America have those too. Cuba comes to mind. Which is why Trump is talking about invading them next.
Eventually we're going to have our hands in too many pots and with birth rates going down Trump is going to have to institute a draft.
If you're a hardcore Trumper guessing you probably don't care if your kids get drafted to die in wars for oil and lithium.
For everybody else
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and we'll invade Greenland so we can take their rare earth minerals.
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> and we'll invade Greenland so we can take their rare earth minerals.
Wait, I thought we wanted Greenland for the Strategic Ice Cube Reserve.
The Invisibke hand of the market (Score:2)
has spoken "There is too little money to be made in rare earths for the elements to be of much interest to mining giants".
Recycling might help (Score:2)
Are dumps are full of neodymium from old hard drives, and lithium from batteries. You can take the magnets out of an old hard drive by boiling it in water, and using a pair of pliers with a jaw pushing on edge of the magnet, and the other on the edge of steel plate. Industrially, lithium could probably be extracted from old batteries by grinding them and soaking them in water to react the lithium
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> Are dumps are full of neodymium from old hard drives, and lithium from batteries. You can take the magnets out of an old hard drive by boiling it in water, and using a pair of pliers with a jaw pushing on edge of the magnet, and the other on the edge of steel plate. Industrially, lithium could probably be extracted from old batteries by grinding them and soaking them in water to react the lithium
No doubt. The devil is in the details. I'm sure some bright sparks thought the same thing, ran the numbers, and concluded it's far cheaper to mine new neodymium than to try to recover it from e-waste. I'm pretty sure people are looking at recycling batteries. I'm guessing mining new lithium is actually quite cheap if it's easier to dig up new ore rather than melt down ad purify an existing battery.
That's been the dirty little secret of recycling for 40 years: many things you'd think would be economical to r
Tariffs Working? (Score:3)
Are tariffs having the desired effect? Specifically onshoring?
Seems like a good thing to me. But, I'm sure that this thread will be filled with outraged individuals who are totally not Chinese agents.
Re:Tariffs Working? (Score:4, Informative)
> Seems like a good thing to me. But, I'm sure that this thread will be filled with outraged individuals who are totally not Chinese agents.
Bringing rare earths production back to the US is a good thing. The right way to do it if you were going to do it with tariffs would have been to be consistent, with a well-established schedule phased in over several years so as not to fuck over your domestic industries which depended on the products. You would have to be a Chinese (or Russian) agent to think it was a good idea to do it all at once, and to be completely inconsistent about it and change the amounts repeatedly and chicken out on some of them and never actually institute some of them (I've been buying stuff from China all along and none of it has gotten any new tariffs) and generally waffle and whine, winding up looking stupid and weak.
Whether you're picking up your fifty cents at the door, or you're chained to a table in Moscow, either way you can fuck off for free.
Tariffs won't bring back rare Earth mining (Score:3)
The problem is we don't treat people poorly enough and we don't let companies make cancer villages so nobody is going to try to compete on that cost. If you opened up a mine with workers paid as well as america, environmental regulations and safety like America then the foreign competition could run you out of business overnight by slashing prices and there wouldn't be anything you could do about it.
If you want rare Earth mining in America you are going to have to subsidize it with the government. That'
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Written by an idiot who does not know how "rare earth mining" (or probably any kind of mining) works.
Hint: it is not done by little children with a pickaxe, or a hammer and a chisel under ground in bad air, with collapsing rocks behind you and the fumes of candles in your face.
USA outsourced rate earth mining/refining/trade to the world market, because they wanted to Dave a dollar on the ton of material.
As China happens to have mining options where "the stuff just lies around", they literally simply shovel
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You don't have to do it with the chip industry if you prosecute antitrust before it gets out of hand, and you don't have to do it with the rare earths industry because they existed here before. You only have to accept slightly less profit than if you export it to China.
Re:Tariffs Working? (Score:4, Informative)
>> Economists agree
> Economists agreed COVID inflation was... wait for it... "Transient."
Looks like they got that right. Inflation spiked to a high of 9.06% year-over-year in June, 2022. By September 2024, it had dropped back down to 2.24%, which is where it is today.
> Economists agreed Biden's $2E12 Build Back Better bill "won't be inflationary."
I don't recall economists having any consensus on that. I remember different economists having different opinions. But, remarkably, while there was the expected inflationary spike in 2022, it went away, and the economy restarted smoothly. The bill seems to have done its job.
> How'd that all work out?
Unexpectedly well. Back in 2021 and 2022, economists were worried that it would be nearly impossible to thread the needle between crashing the economy and triggering inflation, but in fact the economy came in for a soft landing, avoiding both extremes.
data here: [1]https://www.in2013dollars.com/... [in2013dollars.com]
[1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/current-inflation-rate
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The problem is that whatever production appears in the US is 1) tiny, and 2) exceedingly expensive. US aluminum producers noticed that there was a shortfall in production worldwide of aluminum, so vowed to reopen a couple of mothballed plants to produce an extra 80,000 tons/year. The problem with this "wonderful" outcome is that 1) the shortfall is 2 MILLION tons, and 2) creaking old US factories' production processes are so inefficient that the only place their aluminum can be sold is in the US to avoid
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I would also assume that given the choice between selling power to AI data centres at a huge profit and alu potlines at barely-break-even, approximately 100.0% of power companies will go for AI's mountains of money.
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I assume you're referring to the US? China's government can, and does, direct that energy where it believes the most long-term value lies. Unlike the US with it's quarterly bonuses for C-suite execs controlling corporate decisions as they play Executive Musical Chairs and shift from company to company Chinese corporations are required by banks to have long term plans and to stick with them.
Nope (Score:2)
Not in the slightest. No one is going to bring any capacity over here because Trump is too erratic and his health is too poor so there's no expectation of him getting a third term and continuing these policies. Vance is his successor and he's going to have an extremely hard time winning even with heavy duty voters suppression pushing six or seven percent.
On top of that we do still have state level environmental, safety and worker regulations. We haven't yet started using illegal immigrants as full on sl
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> Are tariffs having the desired effect? Specifically onshoring?
> Seems like a good thing to me. But, I'm sure that this thread will be filled with outraged individuals who are totally not Chinese agents.
The issue is "compared to what?"
The resources (that is, the people, money, and equipment, not the rare earth elements themselves) being spent creating barely profitable rare earth metals could otherwise be used to mine lithium, fabricate magnets from the raw elements, build solar panels, make chips, build data centers, or a million other things. Generally we use the market and price signals to discover what activities are the most valuable.
That these companies are barely making money is a good indication th