Long term, the West needs to diversify supplies. But that could take ten years or more. The main problem isn't the raw deposits. Lots of countries have rare earths. It is that China has spent many years developing the technology and infrastructure to refine them. Also, China seems happy to accept the huge environmental consequences of carrying out the refining. USA actually sends rare earths to China to be refined.
Yep, reported earlier. We've known for a while, or was it just a rumour?
Some REMs such as cerium actually aren't all that rare, but decent deposits are.
There's trouble at'mine in central Africa.
The US has been accelerating their processing capability recently, and only last week Trump announced there would be a national mountain of them built up.
He's also looking at the seaa floor. China restricted Gadolinium I think it was, months ago.
I think it's 60 odd percent of REM resources are in China but they process 90%.
Resources and reserves are very different things - check if you weren't aware.
Lithium was "rare" until there was a demand for it. Now it's being produced all over the world.
US farmers are fretting over Canadian restrictions on potash exports (fertilizer) of all things..
I wonder who Trump is blaming. There's Jerome Powell of course, he'll get pushed for inflation when it rises. Assuming T works out how he can do that.
WHen the prices shoot up for moaning Murricans, T will find an excuse for lowering the tariffs. and the prices will stay just where they were - so people can make up the money they didn't make. Then he'll fire Harold Lunatik.
Dysprosium - magnets - currently only produced in China thouigh there's a deposit in South Africa whom Vance insulted. He insults most peoples of the world.
www.bbc.co.uk
