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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday September 02 2015, @09:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the use-common-earths-instead dept.

MOUNTAIN PASS >> The only rare earth mining and processing plant in the Western Hemisphere is closing and virtually all of its nearly 500 person workforce is expected to be let go. Officials from Greenwood Village, Colorado-basedMolycorp, said earlier this week they will transition their massive San Bernardino County facility to a "care and maintenance" mode while it plans to continue serving its rare earth oxide customers via its production facilities in Estonia and China.
...
Half a decade ago China produced some 97 per cent of the world's supply of rare earths. They thought it would be a cute idea to try and flex the monopolistic power they had. Not so much to try and get more for the raw materials: no, they wanted people to move rare earth-consuming businesses into China. There were export restrictions and high export tariffs on the raw materials but none at all on things that were made using them inside China and then exported.

So, for example, there's a subsidiary of Siemens out there that makes the lutetium crystals which power MRI machines. If you can't get that Lu (and that one factory consumes perhaps 90 per cent of global production) then you'd better move the factory to where you can, eh? Into China, that is. Certainly one company making the mercury vapour charges for light bulbs (which are doped with rare earths (REs) to change the spectrum of light from them), the world's largest producer of them by far, seriously considered restarting the factory inside China.

What happened then is the fun bit. The rise in the RE prices this caused meant that Molycorp and Lynas were able to gain financing to respectively reopen, and open for the first time, their mines. Not only that but they could do something vastly more expensive: set up the processing plants needed to do the complex separation of each RE from the others.

The point of the article is that China's attempt to abuse their monopoly power in rare earths has eroded their monopoly power. But the question of the strategic vulnerability that represents has not been answered...


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:00PM (#231462)

    Mining is shit work for fucking yellow people. Americans are on top, managing the whole wide world. Continue working, world. Your American managers will be busy attending very important meetings. Keep your Americans in the loop so Americans can continue to tell you what to do.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:16PM (#231467)

    If 97% of the supply and production is located within one country, the monopolistic fears are never baseless.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:12PM (#231480)

      You missed it. That was five years ago. The number now, after this closing, is 100%.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:32PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:32PM (#231485)

        Estonia is not China, so no.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:12AM

      by TheRaven (270) on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:12AM (#231637) Journal
      Monopolies are not intrinsically bad, the problem is the influence on the market that someone with a monopoly can exert. The other mines have not closed because they're empty, they're closed because the current low price makes it uneconomical to mine and sell the metals that they produce. The two dangers of China having a monopoly are that they can stop selling entirely (not likely, as it would do more harm to them than to anyone else) and that they can put the price up by a huge margin. If the latter happens, then the question is whether people have enough stockpiles to last until the mines are open again. Stockpiles also include futures trading (some traders would take a huge loss, but no one cares about them), so if you want to buy lutetium at $n, and you need it over the next two years, then you can buy lutetium futures at around that price. If China keeps the price low, then you'll lose a little bit. If China puts the price up, then you'll buy at that price, the person who bought the futures will lose money, and at the end of that time other mines will have opened and will be able to sell you lutetium at that price and make a nice profit.
      --
      sudo mod me up
      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 04 2015, @03:37PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Friday September 04 2015, @03:37PM (#232291)

        No, the biggest risk isn't that they'll push prices up ridiculously - as you say then the other mines will reopen and they get at most a few years of excess profits. The biggest risk is that they push the price up to just *slightly* less than what would make it profitable to reopen the competition, and soak the global market indefinitely.

        Of course the two aren't mutually exclusive - the longer a mine sits abandoned the more expensive it is to reopen it, and the higher the Chinese price can be inflated. And of course, knowing that China can drop the price at a moment's notice means that investors will be very hesitant to reopen the mine - even if it has only a few years projected payback on the up-front investement at current prices, China can immediately drop the price again when it reopens and drive them back out of business. Which lets them raise the price even further before a rational investor would reopen a competing mine.

        • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday September 05 2015, @06:24PM

          by TheRaven (270) on Saturday September 05 2015, @06:24PM (#232687) Journal

          Not necessarily. If you have enough capital, you could open a mine but not sell anything, then trickle the the output onto the market. If the Chinese start pushing the price up to an unacceptable point, then government subsidies elsewhere would likely be introduced to make this possible.

          The problem, as you say, is that it becomes more expensive to reopen a mine the longer it's been closed. It would be a good idea to keep some investment in some of the mines to ensure that they're maintained, even while not in operation. Unfortunately, the free market won't do this and governments are unlikely to be far-sighted enough to provide the needed subsidy to fix it.

          --
          sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:56PM

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:56PM (#231988) Journal

      If 97% in one country was a problem, The Market would have made new deposits to be mined elsewhere.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Dunbal on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:30PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:30PM (#231473)

    China is eroding their monopoly yet a western mine goes out of business? Nice argument totally disconnected from the reality. There will be no more RE mines in the West. How does this make the Chinese monopoly "weaker"? Pretty smart to get everyone to bring their plants into China. More local employment. More training and technological know-how as locals pick up expertise from the foreigners. Give it a few decades and suddenly China not only owns the deposits but also all the experts in the field.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by gman003 on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:40PM

      by gman003 (4155) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:40PM (#231475)

      China tried to use their monopoly to force rare-earth-product factories to move to China.

      The external market saw that it would be cheaper to develop rare-earth mines and refineries outside of China. Basic infrastructure was completed and was functional at small-scale, preparing to ramp up.

      China saw that their monopoly would soon be broken, and reversed policies and lowered prices so that foreign rare-earth mines and refineries would not be competitive.

      China defended their "monopoly", but was unable to exploit it. Their advantage was further weakened because much of the infrastructure needed for non-Chinese rare-earth production was completed. The marginal cost to switching from Chinese to American rare-earth metals is now even lower, and so the amount of economic gain that can be garnered from the near-monopoly is weaker.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:49PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:49PM (#231476)

        Yes, but TFA implies that the Western mines can be competitive for the low-end RE's, but not the high-end ones, even if China raises their prices. So China does have a defensible monopoly for high-end RE's:

        Amazingly, both Molycorp and Lynas have deposits that are very high in those cheapo REs and very light in the “heavies”, those rarer and more valuable ones. In any competition then, at any price level for REs in general, they are going to lose in the profitability stakes against Chinese producers who have better mixes in their ores.

        Why is that fact "amazing"? You'd expect single source raw materials to command much higher prices. But that's The Register.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:16AM

          by frojack (1554) on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:16AM (#231511) Journal

          You wouldn't expect to find all the rare earths in the same place.

          But by finding plenty of the REs that are in common usage, the west has proven reserves. They can continue to prospect for the "heavies" at their leisure, having driven successfully the Chinese prices down. Great head fake.

          Its still not an ideal position to be in, due to the lead time for building processing plants.

          This kind of reminds me of the tack taken on oil and gas imports. Continue to import foreign oil/gas until price starts going up, and the foreign reserves start showing signs of depletion. Then quietly start fracking and employing new technology and seemingly overnight the US is a net exporter of oil [aljazeera.com]. So maybe the plan is to use China's rare earths till they are depleted or too expensive, and only then use our own.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by moondoctor on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:20PM

      by moondoctor (2963) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:20PM (#231482)

      Word. All they have to do is close the borders (extreme case) or tie up all exports with quotas and red tape and they have total control. All the mines and processing located within a totalitarian state is a good thing? Got to disagree on that one.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:19AM

        by frojack (1554) on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:19AM (#231513) Journal

        And then the US mines re-open, and the US plants come out of mothballs and start processing again.
        The mere existence of these US mines have driven the Chinese prices so low, that it doesn't pay to run the plants and deplete the local resources.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @03:20AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @03:20AM (#231543)

          and the US plants come out of mothballs and start...

          ...offering the new workers a tiny fraction of what they had been paying before.
          The race to the bottom continues.
          The Free Market and Neoliberalism are so awesome!

          -- gewg_

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 03 2015, @04:54PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @04:54PM (#231852) Journal

            ...offering the new workers a tiny fraction of what they had been paying before.

            The race to the bottom continues.

            Here, the "bottom" is economically superior or you wouldn't be complaining.

            The Free Market and Neoliberalism are so awesome!

            They certainly have beaten the pants off anything else in the world today. Sure, it's nice that there's a few alternative business structures out there like Mondragon Corporation, but the fundamental problem here is that the developed world continues to refuse to adapt. That adaptation includes developed world workers taking a haircut (which for those who are paying attention has been going on for decades and shows no sign of stopping short of wage parity with the rest of the world). I'd say most of the developed world corporatism, for example, comes from misdirected or corrupted efforts to protect developed world workers.

            Instead of counterproductive efforts to protect developed world workers by harming them in various ways, how about we look to the future and the stuff we know that works? Like mostly free markets and encouraging business creation? Or not destroying businesses that somehow manage to be inconvenient, such as those which employ the poor? Instead of arguing that we didn't want Walmart anyway (to give a common example), how about we look for ways to encourage companies to compete for (by offering higher wages and other things) those people that Walmart employs?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @08:46PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @08:46PM (#231957)

              the "bottom" is economically superior

              The vast majority of USAians have lost a significant portion of their wealth in the last decade--with many having lost more than half.
              **Better than complete poverty** is just more Reactionary bullshit.
              Starting with FDR and ending with Reagan, USA had 5 decades of widespread increasing prosperity.
              THAT is the mark to shoot for--not your Reactionary race-to-the-bottom bullshit.

              a few [...] like Mondragon Corporation

              Clearly, you haven't seen all of my posts on the topic--or you are just being your usual disingenuous self (cheerleader for the elite class).

              Go to northern Italy and worker cooperatives are as common as sparrows.
              This region [wikimedia.org] has them by the thousands. [googleusercontent.com] (orig)[1] [wikipedia.org]

              [1] The magic number as of this posting is "8,100".
              That's about 30 percent of their economy.

              Here's another region with lots of worker co-ops [wikimedia.org] [wikimedia.org] (chiefly fruit producers, wineries, and dairies).

              One big reason co-ops are so big in Italy is that (decades ago) their politicians pulled their heads out of their asses.
              Professor of Economics Richard Wolff, PhD Discusses Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian Economic Theories (and Cooperatives) [googleusercontent.com] (orig)[2] [counterpunch.org]

              [2] You're looking for "the Marcora Law" near the bottom of the page.

              .
              There are over 11,000 worker-owned companies in the USA and there are already about 400 worker cooperatives. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [billmoyers.com]

              .
              stuff we know that works? Like mostly free markets

              Reactionary code words for "export more jobs" and "race to the bottom".

              Capitalism has been around for about 300 years and has failed repeatedly.
              It is fundamentally dishonest to say "Capitalism works" when it completely falls on its face about every 80 years and (in recent years) has to be bailed out by taxpayers (or it will go into the doldrums for decades as was already demonstrated in the 19th Century).

              Our species has gone through the slave economy notion and the feudal economy notion and now the Capitalist notion has run its course (a model that, once again, fails for the majority).

              It's time for a new notion:
              When a Capitalist says "I want to move overseas", we say "Fine--but your company stays here. Our municipal|county|state|federal gov't is going to buy it under eminent domain and we are going to turn it into a worker-owned cooperative. The taxes stay here, the jobs stay here, and WE get The Multiplier Effect."

              The important thing is for a worker to say "This in MY workplace" (Part1) [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [labornotes.org] and to OCCUPY that workplace. (Part2) [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [labornotes.org]

              That was in Mexico. Here it is again in the USA. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [libcom.org]

              Workers settling for an idle ownership class and pointy-haired bosses and other such relics of Capitalism is just archaic bullshit now.
              It's time to move forward and embrace the next (and final) economic model: Marxism.

              -- gewg_

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:59PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:59PM (#232022) Journal
                The obvious rebuttal to all this is that capitalism when it fails works far better than Marxism when it succeeds. And has a much lower body count too. I'd much rather have the Long Depression than the first twenty years of the Russian revolution.
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @11:31PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @11:31PM (#232032)

                  You've already acknowledged Mondragon.
                  Now you're just talking in circles.
                  The folks in the co-ops in Italy and the USA are doing just fine too, thank you very much.

                  the Russian revolution

                  The Soviets never had Marxism.
                  The workers never had a say in how things ran.
                  You've swallowed a whole lot of Cold War bullshit.
                  Leninism was not Communism|Socialism|Marxism.
                  Stalinism was not Communism|Socialism|Marxism.
                  Forced collectivism and dictatorships are the opposite of what Marx described.

                  USSR was always a Totalitarian gov't (top-down) and a State Capitalist economy (a tiny number of people--not selected by the workers--making the decisions).

                  If you don't have Democracy EVERYWHERE, what you have is not Communism|Socialism|Marxism.

                  -- gewg_

                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 04 2015, @12:21AM

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 04 2015, @12:21AM (#232048) Journal

                    The folks in the co-ops in Italy and the USA are doing just fine too, thank you very much.

                    And so do the folks in non-co-ops. Co-ops aren't better for the most part (banking being a notable exception I think due to the regulation on regular banks).

                    The Soviets never had Marxism.

                    The Soviets implemented Marxism hardcore. They set up piles of worker co-ops. They seized wealth from the capitalists and distributed it to the workers - all the classic cliches of the Marxist approach.

                    The workers never had a say in how things ran.

                    Sure, they did. Until those workers started making choices contrary to the wishes of the leaders. Then they became counter-revolutionaries (a one-size-fits-all derogatory term for anyone that the powers-that-be wanted to crush) and kulaks.

                    Forced collectivism and dictatorships are the opposite of what Marx described.

                    Nonsense, they are a natural consequence of an ill-thought ideology. People want many of the things that only capitalism provides, such as more reward for more effort or the ability to own your own things, including means of production. When they try for those things in a Marxist society, they break the society. Only way to keep that from happening is force.

                    If you don't have Democracy EVERYWHERE, what you have is not Communism|Socialism|Marxism.

                    Whatever. MY argument here is that if you want democracy, you have to have capitalism, due to the freedoms it implies and creates. If you don't have private ownership of capital, you don't have democracy.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 05 2015, @07:05PM

                      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 05 2015, @07:05PM (#232703)

                      MY argument here is that if you want democracy, you have to have capitalism, due to the freedoms it implies and creates. If you don't have private ownership of capital, you don't have democracy.

                      That doesn't follow. I don't see why capitalism is a necessary requirement for a democracy. Maybe you'd like to explain this point?

                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 05 2015, @11:44PM

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 05 2015, @11:44PM (#232797) Journal

                        I don't see why capitalism is a necessary requirement for a democracy.

                        A key precept of democracy is that one should be free to do whatever as long as it doesn't impose on the freedom of others. But this is a very nebulous concept which is highly dependent on how we interact with one another. In an impossible case of perfect detachment where none of us interact with each other in a way that could cause harm, namely, that we are worlds onto our own, then there would be no need for any restriction of our behavior whatsoever and no need for a democracy either.

                        But we are entangled and able to cause harm to each other. The question, which private property and ownership of capital helps resolve, is to how do we maintain our democracy in the light of these entanglements? My view here is that unnecessary creation of entanglement restricts our freedoms too much. A classic example of this is the tragedy of the commons (overconsumption of a resource due to the lack of incentives to preserve the resource), which is a very common failure mode for communal or public property. The entanglement here is that everyone uses the property, but no one bears the full cost of overuse (also called "dilution of responsibility"). There is always incentive to overconsume which can only be countered by restricting freedoms, usually via a combination of monitoring or behavior modification which makes using the resource more onerous.

                        Private ownership of the property cuts through that by making one party in charge of the property, concentrating the responsibility. In addition, entanglements are reduced because it is now decided that using that property for the benefit of the owner rather than the benefit of someone else unrelated to the property is no longer harm. Capital is a particularly valuable and productive form of property with two unusual properties. First, it is always created. Second, it requires considerable effort and competence to maintain, something which communal societies are notoriously bad at delivering.

                        If you eliminate most private ownership of capital, then you not only eliminate one of the most productive outlets for the ambitious, you create a vast sea of entanglements which will steadily encroach on those democratic freedoms and encourage people to break the rules of your society - they'll just manufacture and grow things on the side (like happened in the USSR). Then you'll either have to allow that, or force people not to do that. The latter choice leads to the end of democracy.

                        Then we have the capital market. This is the other component of a capitalist society - some sort of market for exchange of capital and other things of similar type. Markets are famous for reducing complexity of interactions. In addition, they provide a tremendous vehicle for enabling and expressing human freedom and are IMHO one of the defining characteristics of a modern society, democratic or not, due to their incredible utility.

    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:30PM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:30PM (#231717) Journal

      Actually if you think long term? This is a VERY smart move for America, why? Because China is selling THEIR minerals at pennies on the pound, but as we all know these are finite resources, those mines aren't gonna last. If they want to sell their resources for the equivalent of a handful of beads? Let 'em, when their mines run dry and the prices shoot up the American mines are gonna be worth their weight in gold. Its not like these things are gonna go bad sitting there in the ground folks.

      This is also why I was against tapping the oil reserves surrounding the USA and in states like SD, because once the Saudis and Russians have sold all their oil for $30 a barrel and their fields are as dry as the OKC wells? All that oil is gonna be worth a mint and the country sitting on the biggest pile is gonna make out like OPEC in the 70s. When you are dealing with finite resources if you have idiots willing to practically give theirs away? Let 'em, don't be a fool like they are being and give yours away, just sit on it and wait for their reserves to run dry.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:53PM

    by Gravis (4596) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:53PM (#231478)

    One thing that is clear is that RE metals are useful in anything that is electric and moves. What we should do is make recycling these metals a legal requirement. This way we don't need to dig up more of the Earth than we have to and profits stay in our own economy. If it costs more to recycle than to get new RE metals then all new RE metal shipments should be taxed to subsidize the recycling.

    The point isn't to put a burden on suppliers of RE metals, it's to work toward a closed loop system where we dont need to dig up more RE metals.

    • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:26PM (#231484)

      Not that I'm against this, but this idea gets really out of hand really quick. Here's just a small bucket list.

      • Who's going to pay to collect the e-waste for recycling? It's not going to get to the plant by itself.
      • Who's going to pay to sort it? It's not all going to contain materials we can recycle.
      • Who's going to pay to prep it? It's not all going to be in a state that can be recycled without removing what can't.
      • Who's going to deal with the recycling process' waste? The stuff you don't hear about when you buy that item made from recycled materials.
      • Who's going to use the recycled product anyway? No sense if what is produced is worthless for use.
      • (Score: 3, Touché) by Gravis on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:48AM

        by Gravis (4596) on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:48AM (#231517)

        illiterate AC? shocking!

        here's the part that went over your head!

        all new RE metal shipments should be taxed to subsidize the recycling.

        so there, it's the tax on new shipments of RE that provides the money for the recycling, you fucktard.

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:04PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:04PM (#231971)

          Uh... illiterate AC fucktard here...

          all new RE metal shipments should be taxed to subsidize the recycling.

          so there, it's the tax on new shipments of RE that provides the money for the recycling, you fucktard.

          Do you honestly think that further taxing the imports of materials will provide ample funding to fund the recycling effort? It wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket. Additional funding would be needed. I ducked a bad argument not let it fly over my head. All you did was reveal your autonomic subconscious reflex to be a rude jerk.

          And who really pays taxes anyway? Certainly not the companies that would be importing RE materials. They increase their prices and "pay" the taxes. Certainly not the companies that would be using RE materials. They increase the prices on their products to account for the increase in price of materials. The buyer has to buy the product marked up by the importer and the manufacturer and is truly paying the taxes.

    • (Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:09AM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:09AM (#231508)

      I'd settle for more people to recycle the common stuff: glass, metal, paper, and plastic.

      --
      SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Gravis on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:44AM

        by Gravis (4596) on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:44AM (#231515)

        people recycle a lot. the problem occurs with companies that accept the material to be recycled. instead of recycling it themselves, they pay another company to take it overseas to be recycled... but it never makes it there because it gets dumped in the ocean.

  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday September 03 2015, @05:42AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday September 03 2015, @05:42AM (#231585) Homepage Journal

    Just as a matter of info: "rare earths" aren't really rare [geology.com], in the sense of being hard to find. Instead, they are elements that tend to be more evenly distributed in the earth. Instead, you find areas where they are just marginally more concentrated, and then dig up huge masses of earth and rock to extract them. They aren't found in high concentrations, like iron ore or copper ore.

    So, of course, China's attempt at a monopoly didn't work. It was just a gamble that companies would have trouble finding places they could dig up square miles of land to get twiddly little amounts of these elements.

    Ultimately, I expect that sea water extraction will turn out to be the better alternative, and that you truly can do anywhere.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.