Obama announces trade case against China, says US workers must have ‘fair shot’
The president claims that China’s restrictions on exports of materials known as rare earth have made it difficult for American companies to build the technology that uses those materials.
“We want our companies building those products right here in America, but to do that American manufacturers need to have access to rare earth materials which China supplies,” Obama said.
“Now if China would simply let the market work on its own, we would have no objections. Their policies currently are preventing that from happening, and they go against the very rules that China agreed to follow.”
China has a stranglehold on the global supply of 17 rare earth minerals that are essential for making high-tech goods, including hybrid cars, weapons, flat-screen TVs, mobile phones, mercury-vapor lights, smartphones and camera lenses. The materials also are used in the manufacture of tiny motors, such as those used to raise and lower car windows and in consumer electronics.
Read more here.
Actually, they do all of that and much more. Essentially, any tech device used today has REE in them.
Our president is a moron. While most may think I’m engaging in political partisanship, I’m not. I truly wish, hope, pray, my president could be someone I’m proud to have as a leader of this nation. And, while my criticism, at times, may sound harsh, I’ve given more passes on his intellectual, moral, and leadership failings than I can count.
Honestly, I believe him to be incredibly vapid. Surely, he would have taken the time to ask if we couldn’t remedy the problem without whining and begging China and the World Trade Organization to fix a non-problem (opportunity).
Mr. President, it is unbecoming of the office to beg! Pull your head out of your posterior and use this moment to make the U.S. the leading manufacturing country of the world, once again. United States Geological Survey (USGS) released a study which found that the United States had 13 million metric tons of rare earth elements.
This moron thinks we need to beg for China to export REE while we’re sitting on 13 million metric tons? That’s more than enough to take care of our needs. But, like the oil issue, Obama and friends would rather us beg other people and nations for our necessities and then demand sacrifices for our own people rather than insist we go get the stuff ourselves. This advocacy of dependency is deplorable. THIS DAMN SURE ISN’T WHAT MADE AMERICA!!! This is a disease which needs stamped out. The U.S. has all that it needs within our borders. If someone like China doesn’t want to play by the rules, screw them, and we’ll get it ourselves. Then what are the bitches going to do? Cry because they’ve lost their biggest market….. that’s what. WTF? This is a moment for the American people!! And, not just the American people, the world. No nation has to crawl to China for their REE. All we need to do is want to stand.
BTW, did I say anything tech has REE in it? Why don’t we take advantage of the largess and spending we’ve done in the last 30 f’n years and recycle that shit!!!!! Stupid bastard earthday birthday lunatics make it such a big damned deal about recycling, why don’t they advocate recycling something useful? This should be priority number one of recycling.
Keep a very close eye on the recycling bit…… already in Kansas, one has to be “certified” to take “e-waste”……… for our own good, of course. Where is all of that REE going?
Consider the massive amount of REE Mountain Pass mined.
Now consider how much is possible to for the U.S. to mine. Morons. This is an intentional impoverishment of the American people. Stupid, stupid bastards.
suyts space 
LOL….does it bother you that I can read your mind
I told you years ago. we were separated at birth…..
anywho….you just covered all the points
We have to become energy independent….so we can stop begging other countries for oil…
but we can’t drill here, except on private land where the permits were issued under the Bush administration….and issuing permits here would be the fastest/instant way to lower gas prices and become independent
…..but we can crawl and beg to China to play fair….because we can’t mine REE’s here either
Thank God they decided trees were renewable….can you imagine the lumber shortage!
lol, naw…. it doesn’t bother me…. though sometimes I do wonder how we track so well…… sometimes, it is uncanny. Often, I’ll be writing while you’re commenting, and its nearly the same thing!
It’s disgraceful the way these lunatics act. Dependency seems to be a virtue for these people. What a hopeless sort of life…… I’m saddened and sickened by them.
…I would call it flat out spooky sometimes LOL
Kevin seems to think they made that 1875 map by holding hundreds of miles off shore.
Two things about it are obvious. The first is no islands in the middle of the Arctic. How did they know that Greenland didn’t stretch all the way across to Siberia, or visa versa. They couldn’t have know that there were no islands in the middle, unless they could see the middle.
Second, it was last year or the year before that row to the pole thing. They couldn’t even get from Greenland to the old north pole without dragging their boat. If the ice had been at that level when they made that map, they couldn’t have mapped the north coast of Greenland………
Kevin who? Thinks what?
You are absolutely correct James. But Mr Obama is wrong when saying “if China would simply let the market work on its own, we would have no objections”. That is because the current situation is because the market worked on its own until the prices went up in 2010 because of the shortage. Then China was so frightened the REE producers in their country would sell to Western buyers and cause a shortage in their own country that they put the export limits on.
I blame wind turbines, at roughly 1 t of neodymium per turbine. And Priuses, which use both Nd and La.
Ok, ok, plasma TV’s too, they need Eu.
REE are quite common. I know, because I work with them. Its my job. In fact one single mine here in Oz contains about 80 million tonnes of REE. But they are not worth the bother extracting because that mine is already arguably the largest copper deposit in the world, the largest uranium deposit and one of the largest gold deposits. I won’t mention the name because I used to work for them. I am working on a REE project now, but for a different company.
The value in REE is due to the difficulty of refining them. You need 100’s of stages of solvent extraction. This requires patience and a lot of cheap metallurgists to control everything. The US and Oz pretty much no longer bother to train metallurgists. Environmental science is sexier. So we are in shortage and our price has accordingly risen (heh!). China has literally millions of metallurgists. So hence they do all the refining of REE.
Mr Obama, if he is for real, needs to establish a supported strategic production program for REE refining. Or a reserve. This is the problem – China will be the only refiner of REE and other similarly difficult metals (eg magnesium) until the Western countries work out that there are strategic needs as well as economic. Oh well, I can’t talk, I just do this stuff.
Bruce, thanks for your thoughts…… It’s beyond my comprehension that we’d just give this to China, and reject the economic and strategic advantages to mining our own REE.
I’m afraid Mr. Obama is some anti-american’s puppet. No one can legitimately know we have an abundance of REE and yet not advocate we get it ourselves.
And the dumbasses just look at a solar panel or a wind turbine and say “gosh-all that energy is produced by the sun or wind with no fossil fuels”. They are so STUPID that not for one second do they consider that the refining process that you wrote uses huge amounts of fossil fuels. So although a solar panel or wind farm does not use fossil fuel on site where the energy is created, an enormous amount is used to construct the plant. In fact, I am quite sure that both wind and solar use much more fossil fuel than if we just burned it in the first place. This is the situation we find ourselves in! Thinking has been outlawed, STUPIDITY RULES. In fact, the new “smart” is STUPID!
No doubt. Up is down and down is up. As we squander our opportunities, the world eagerly awaits the next I-something. ……
Thanks to James and Bruce for this rare infomation.
I don’t blame China. I blame that retarded Obama and his fetish with all things green and his anti American policy’s!
Thanks Ted……..
Agreed, China is acting in China’s interests. There’s nothing to be upset with them about, in this regard. We could and should, simply show some wherewithal, and mine the stuff we have here.
I truly believe this is a moment in time which should be seized. As far as I can see, (which, admittedly is not very far) the future is held by REE. Until we can approximately synthesize these elements, the world requires these as much as we do oil.
So he says “We want our companies building those products right here in America.”
Ok so why was Gibson Guitars raided again? Not that I care much about Gibson anymore because it seems they have been infiltrated by the likes of Greenpiss.
He says “but to do that American manufacturers need to have access to rare earth materials which China supplies.”
What about American companies like Gibson, to have access to rare wood materials which other countries supplies? Na Just raid them, and confiscate all their materials, because most of that is supposed to be finished wood products before it is improted, so it appears!
I have always found it curious that all the reserves of REE seem to be in China. I mean the Earth does not really work like that, does it?
Nope, It sure doesn’t.
The key word is ‘reserves’ which is a technical term.
The ~80 million tonnes of REE that I mentioned is not on the reserves list, nor the list of the largest REE projects because of this, despite the grade actually being higher than some projects now under consideration (to be fair one issue is the balance of lights vs heavies, and that deposit is richer in the less valuable lights).
Ditto mineral sands (xenotime and monazite, which are mostly thrown away presently) and Bayer process red mud, which both contain vast amounts of REE.
All these things are relative to the economics. There is a similar amount of gold in a good gold ore as there is uranium in the dirt in your backyard (usually 1-2 ppm).
Sure, there are code words and technical terms…… our USGS uses reserves…. recoverable, technically recoverable….. ect…. And, truly, not all REE is equal..
But, the point is, we don’t need the Chinese to dig up REE for us. We can all try to do something crazy…. like mine our own. Instead our countries choose to lose money for their gain. I just don’t understand this.
Obama’s Pump Debacle
As gasoline prices climb, President Obama’s poll numbers plummet. In February, a Washington Post/ABC poll had Obama up 6 points against Mitt Romney. Monday’s poll has him down 2.
Let’s take the second proposition first. Obama often says, “Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.” That’s true: It’s also true that under Obama’s administration, Snooki from “Jersey Shore” got pregnant and Charlie Sheen lost his job. And he can take about as much credit for those developments too.
Never mind that if he’d gotten the cap-and-trade proposals he campaigned on, energy prices would be even worse. (He once acknowledged that under his plan, electricity prices would “skyrocket” and coal companies would go bankrupt. His Energy secretary, Steven Chu, admitted he wanted America to emulate European gas prices, when they were about $8 per gallon.)
The boom in oil production has taken place almost entirely on private and state lands, while on federal lands it’s dropped (11 percent from 2010 to 2011 alone). The administration has also slowed the permitting of offshore oil and gas development to a trickle.
http://townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/2012/03/14/obamas_pump_debacle/page/full/
today’s delegate count….
Romney 453 (excluding about 20 from Hawaii and American Samoa)
Santorum second at 241
Gingrich is third with 127
Ron Paul is fourth with 46
true that Romney is not even half way…..
…but still, it might make sense if the others three added up to even half of Romney’s
but they don’t
The one thing, they are forcing the republican’s hand. Making them conservative…….
in the mean time…
Obama and the democrats have launched a new campaign strategy…
Attacking christians, jews, and raising gas prices
Well, he must get on with the job of dividing the populous and destroying the economy, reelection or not…… this seems to be his mission.
The mining of REE was halted by the EPA restrictions. If those restrictions were removed we could once again open a good number of mines to again produce REE. Sure the O’Bambi team should know all that but it was their predecessors that shut down our production. It was cheaper to let China dirty their air than abide by the restrictions. What was a few thousand people put out of work for the good of a fantasy. Who ever it was I am certain it was a Demowhacko.
I think there are several globalists who would be typically known as Repubs, but also sell out their country.
The RINOs? Still Demowhackos! They took the name to get elected.
The outsourcing of mining of REE happened under Bush. That fucking dummy just like you placing blame on Obama. The corporations realized they could move operations over to china for cheaper costs so the entire industry was outsourced just like most industries under Bush. All under the republican mantra of putting profits over people. Another disaster that Obama needs to fix that Bush, The. Worst. President. Ever. left us with. Estimates that now are going to take 15 years for the US to come back from. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904EFDD133DF936A25751C1A9669D8B63&ref=rareearths&pagewanted=1 Obama and SolarWorld(Germany) are doing exactly the right thing, tariff the chinese and watch as they cant sell to anyone because they are already in trouble economically and the housing bubble and slow down in growth will further hurt them. Better to do something in coordination with the rest of the world(australia is also opening a mine of ree along with america) than allow an entire industry to be outsourced like it was under Bush because the pro-corporate republicans want to suck the ass of their wealthy donor class.
lol, holy crap!! There are still people blindly blathering this stupidity.
Look at the graph above. You do realize there were presidents before Bush?
And, it isn’t relevant. The fact is, we have an abundance of REE. All we have to do is go get it. Instead, Obama wants to cry to the WTO.
You do realize the “Solar World” requires REE to be “Solar World”. China doesn’t care how much you tariff them, if they’re the only game in town, all you’re doing in raising the cost of the product.
Do you even understand what’s happening? Obama is mad because the Chinese are not selling the REE. China is hoarding the material purposefully.
actually…it happened in 1984….under Reagan
and it wasn’t because of the Chinese….it was because of the “other”
Which was Africa………….
lol, it’s been a while since I’ve had a vacant drive-by. I’m glad to see the “it’s all George’s fault” nutters are still alive and well.
Well…………….LOL
I keep saying…….we are rapidly approaching the lowest common denominator
It’s not Obama’s fault….it’s Bush’s fault….it’s another problem Obama needs to fix
So why hasn’t the moron done something about it in over 3 years?
or the democrats in over 5 years?
…why haven’t the democrats – with a super majority – even passed a budget?
“So why hasn’t the moron done something about it in over 3 years?”
‘Cause you couldn’t blame George anymore. Team Obama is completely out of their depth. Best to do nothing and blame Bush than to try and do something. Everything Obama touches turns to $hit……
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/26/rare-earth-metals-us
A little background info on that article….
Most people would think China – mining REE’s in China
China is buying up all the mines, around the world, as fast as they can.
South Africa is predicted to the the biggest producer of REE’s, and China is buying the mines…
….they will still control the market….but it’s because they have such a high demand for it themselves
yep….. anything tech, you need REE. If China is to advance, they need it.
read the link…………..LOL
Well, I’m not sure what your take away is on this, but here’s mine….
“”The growth in demand for these minerals is just phenomenal,” Smith said. “A 6% average growth rate for us would be very, very good but when you start adding things like hybrid vehicles and wind turbines to the rare earth sectors now you are talking about double digit growth, and you still don’t know where that will end.”
At this point, though, Molycorp is not even at the beginning. “The road to the green world of the future starts from the black earth. But first you have to get the materials out of the ground,” said Hatch. “The whole clean-tech energy industry is hinging on it.”
What people don’t readily understand, is that the demand and use of this stuff is because of this lunatic green/clean energy thing. Which is sad, because we could have been using this stuff for something useful. Instead, we’ve got windmills, solar panels, smart meters, hybrids, and I-pads. Which has caused China to hoard their resources, and cause a shortage of the available elements.
exactly…………that’s the same exact take home I got
Here’s another fun fact……..
Africa is the largest producer of bismuth……..Pepto-Bismol, kitty litter, paint, water softeners, etc
The mines are already in place to mine REE’s
“The government has set its 2012 export quota for rare earths at around 30,000 tons, the same level as 2011. However, exporters only filled roughly half the quota last year.” http://www.industryweek.com/articles/china_to_boost_internal_use_of_rare_earths_in_manufacturing_26669.aspx?Page=2?ShowAll=1
So it is unclear that they are doing anything wrong anyway as the miners may have set contracts with local manufacturers and only export excess product.
And you have your own mine that has about 1.5 million tonnes of rare earths at high grade in a mine that is just re opening http://www.molycorp.com/AboutUs/OurFacilities/MolycorpMountainPass.aspx
Seems a bit like blaming others for your own predicament.
kelly…Molycorp is the same link I posted
Exactly……. we’ve got our own, but, we expect China to give us theirs. And, we’ll cry all the way to the WTO because of it.
Pingback: Wow, The Nutters Are Back In Force | suyts space
Pingback: Taking A Bow …. Did Suyts Solve The REE Crisis? | suyts space