China critical material export ban

[DooDiligence]

TBH, I've always wondered what it would be like to be a medieval peasant.

[Blake Hampton]

I'm starting to feel like this is about to absolutely murder the U.S. auto industry. It says the last time China halted exports of rare earths was with Japan for two months in 2010, and they started with us here on April 4; it's been two months now.

 

NYT: U.S. Dependence on China for Rare Earth Magnets Is Causing Shortages

NYT: What to Know About China’s Halt of Rare Earth Exports

 

"China’s dominance is greatest for seven rare earths that it has mostly stopped exporting since early April: dysprosium, gadolinium, lutetium, samarium, scandium, terbium and yttrium. These are mined almost exclusively in China and Myanmar and are among the hardest to separate chemically. For metals like dysprosium and terbium, so-called heavy rare earths that are used for heat-resistant magnets, China’s refineries produce up to 99.9 percent of the world’s supply."

[whiskybravo]

Today’s Doomberg is free.  The US is finally beginning to seriously address the Chinese dominance in rare earths processing.

 

https://open.substack.com/pub/doomberg/p/how-its-done?r=9iue0&utm_medium=ios

 

“The Defense Department will become the largest shareholder in rare-earth mining company MP Materials by buying $400 million of its stock and helping it build a new processing facility to sidestep the Chinese market, the company said Thursday. The deal underscores how far the Trump administration is willing to go to subsidize production of high-powered magnets, a field dominated by Chinese firms although the materials are critical for U.S. weapons systems.
Las Vegas-based MP Materials owns the only rare-earth mine in the United States, at Mountain Pass, California, near the Nevada border. MP Materials CEO Jim Litinsky said the company aims to restore the full rare-earth supply chain in the U.S. and eliminate a ‘single point of failure’ in the country’s military-industrial base.”

[Spekulatius]

Ge is not a rare earth but mostly produced in China (93% by some sources). Just got a shocker that our exiting supplier canceled our contracts and won’t deliver. I could point to some supplier who could deliver but paying through the nose. Prices are up 3 x from what they used to be just a short while ago. Some online sources (tradingeconomics )mentioned prices quoted in Yuan but you can’t buy from  Chinese sources, so the prices have decoupled from the Chinese market. Ouch.

 

This price chart  is about correct: