China has restricted the export of several crucial rare land minerals to the United States in response to the increases in the rate of President Donald Trump.
Restrictions do not have a total prohibition, but they probably decrease the delivery of minerals necessary by defense, energy and electronic partners.
The term “rare earth minerals” is sometimes widely used to refer to all valuable or unusual minerals, but in fact it refers to a Specific list or 17 metal elements. Fifteen of them are LantanidsWhich means that they occupy a specific region of the periodic table of the elements that begins with the Lantano (atomic number 57). All lanthanides share a similar atomic structure and chemical behavior, so the group is not arbitrary.
The other two rare earth minerals are the scandio and the ititrium. They know collectively as “strange lands” simply because the scientists who first discovered them believed that they should be strange in nature, since they dissipate to identify themselves. For example, the name of the Lantano comes from a Greek is that means “hidden”, and was discovered by a chemist who studied strange impurities in another mineral.
Explorers in the last 150 years discovered that some of the “rare earths” can be found in abundance by digging in the earth’s crust. Many of those abundant deposits are under the control of communist China: Chinese volunteering to Almost monopoly on processing and refining thesis.
China directly controls about 30 percent of the known rare land reserves of the planet, but 85 percent of the processing capacity. At the top of its market domain fifteen years ago, China was supplying around 97 percent of strange minerals from the land of the world.
There are several reasons for China’s dominant position, but one of the most important is the environmental impact. China simply does not care about environmental regulations, while American companies find it almost impossible to obtain the necessary permits to build refineries. Until now, the cost of developing a national rare earth industry was too high for the effort to be profitable.
Refining is essential because foreign lands are always intertwined with other minerals in nature – That is why the scientists who discovered them assumed that they were “rare.” The mineral must be extracted, then the strange lands must be separated from other minerals, and the resulting oxides (that is, dust) must be processed again in pure metals.
Refining rare earth is a thorough and extent process, and the duration of the long years in which the environmental regulations made it not profitable that the national refineries turn, the Chinese engineers made important discoveries that helped them perfect an industry created in the one created in the one created in the one created in the one created in the one created in the industry.
The demand for these minerals has shot because they have important applications for high technology and alternative energy products that have flourished in recent decades. The Chinese leaders saw this construction of the demand decades ago and moved aggressively to control the mineral supply. All the way in 1987, Chinese President Deng Xiaoping declared: “The medium has oil. China has rare earths.”
The supply and demand curves for the 17 strange lands are not the same. China’s new commercial restrictions focus In seven of them: Samario, Gadolinio, Terbium, Disposium, Lutetio, Scandio E Ytrio.
These are mostly “heavy” rare elements (HREE), which means that they are useful in high temperature magnets – The type of magnet widely used in electric vehicle engines (EV), wind turbines and military electronic systems.
China has the virtual monopoly to supply them to the seven. The Chinese government carefully avoided slapping the restrictions in the rare lands of the lighthouse because they are more easily obtained from alternative suppliers.
The Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic and its consequences galvanized the United States Department of Defense (DOD) to realize that the total unit of the main global strategic rival of the United States for vital minerals was not a good idea. The DOD developed a plan in 2024 to build a domestic supply chain of “mine a magnet” for rare earths, and has committed almost half a billion dollars in funds for that project, but it is not online until 2027 as very soon.
At the moment, the only mining and processing processing installation of the strange earth in the western hemisphere is location In Mountain Pass, California. It reached a new maximum in 2024 producing 45,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides. Porcelain produced Around 270,000 tons of oxide metric in the same year.
There are no heavy land processing facilities in the United States, although Mountain Pass facilities are scheduled to obtain that capacity in the future, and other heavy rare land processing plants are low development In Texas. The only refinery of existing heavy earths outside China is located in Vietnam, but it was close Last year for a fiscal dispute.
China has not completely closed the strange exports of the Earth to the United States, but has arrested exports, while new restrictions and license requirements are established. In addition, China involved A series of US defense companies in their “list of unreliable entities” last week, Ostibysiy Dey compromised Chinese national security by doing business with Taiwan. These companies will have a lot of problems to obtain permits for rare earth supplies under new restrictions.
China has used its rare earth monopoly as a weapon before, no edge Against Japan In 2010. In September of that year, the Japanese Coast Guard arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that collided with Japanese ships from the cost of the disputed Senkaku islands. China retaliates drowning the supply of Japan or rare earth minerals. Japan quickly cool in And he released the captain of the fishing boat, but still suffered significantly economic damage due to the strange blacklist of the earth in the coming years.
Japan learned from that incident, implementing an ambitious plan of one billion dollars to reduce its dependence on Chinese rare land exports in part by finding ways to use less minerals in their manufacturing operations. It also builds a large reserve or foreign lands to make future seizures less effective and the exploration of bees for the strange mines of land in other countries that Japanese companies could buy.
According to industry analysts, Japan’s plan was highly effective – But it is still 60 percent dependent on Chinese exports of rare earth minerals or 90 percent before its implementation.
