Bad news for China: Rare Earth elements are not rare

“The rare heavy Earth elements are added as a kind of spice, a doping agent, to keep the magnet magnet at high temperatures,” says Seaver Wang, director of the Climate and Energy Team at the Breakthrouge Institute, which is the intellectual tank based on Auckland.

Besides the magnet, these rare Earth elements can serve a set of purposes, such as making minerals stronger, improving radar systems, and even cancer treatment. Without it, in many cases, technological infrastructure and consumer tools will not be able to perform at the same level – but they will keep their basic functions. “Wind turbines will go out of service 10 years ago; electric cars will not last for a long time,” says Wang.

Lang agrees that the effect of loss of access to rare heavy terrestrial elements will be somewhat management for American companies. “One place where this rare land is in your car in the engines that are withdrawn up and down your window,” says Lang. “There are ways to deal with some things that are not enjoyable, such as rolling your windows by hand.”

Gaps and solutions

In the past, critical metal restrictions in China have not succeeded very well. One of the reasons is that American companies that want to buy rare land minerals can simply pass through a mediator country first. For example, Belgium has emerged as a potential re-export center that seems to pass a germanium-one of the minerals restricted for the first time in 2023-from China to the United States, According to trade data. Since the European Union has closer relations with Washington from Beijing, it is difficult for the Chinese government to effectively stop this trade flow.

Another sign that export controls in China were not very effective is that the price of critical metals has increased only slightly since the implementation of policies for the first time, indicating that the levels of display remained fixed. “All they did in 2023 did not really change the status quo,” Lang says.

But China’s latest restrictions are more expanding, and there is already some evidence that things may be different this time. Companies that need these elements have been forced to buy from other companies with current private stocks, which have become more valuable in recent weeks. “There is a highly declining price to reduce stocks at the present time,” Paskran says.

However, in the long run, companies may be able to find technological solutions to address a potential deficiency in rare Earth minerals. For example, Tesla announced in 2023 that it reduced its use in EV engines by 25 percent, and planned to completely get rid of it in the future. The car maker did not explain what he will use instead, however Experts speculation It can turn into other types of magnets that do not depend on rare Earth.

Where are the American mines?

While the rare land, or critical minerals in general, are often martyred along with semiconductors as the industries that the United States wants to repeat more than others, the challenges associated with each of them are completely different.

Unlike making semiconductors, which requires the use of sophisticated machines worth hundreds of millions of dollars and building very complex factories, critical minerals are not difficult to produce. The techniques concerned to extract and refine them are mature and have the United States and Canada is a great natural deposit for each other. But the mining industry was removed from the West because it does not generate great value as it is very polluted.