China just issued an ominous threat to America but it is really a bluff more than anything. Trump has blacklisted some of China’s most important technology firms by denying them key technology China cannot make on their own. This will cripple these companies.
China really only has one move left they think could impact us in the same way - stop shipping rare earth elements to the U.S.
China dominated this industry but the elements are actually quite common. We have all we need here - they are just messy and not that profitable, but if China stops selling them we will start mining them again.
From The Daily Wire: Communist China is threatening to retaliate against the United States for limiting the federal dollars spent on Chinese products; the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Daily, intimated that China would stop exporting “rare earth” minerals to the United States.
The People’s Daily wrote, “Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” That phrase has been historically used by the Chinese Communist party to threaten armed warfare.
According to the Daily Mail, the paper threatened:
Will rare earths become China’s counter weapon against the unreasonable crackdown from the U.S.? The answer is not profound. American companies have particularly high demand for rare earth products. At present, some people from the U.S. side are indeed fantasizing about obtaining resources independently, but it’s unarguable that the U.S. depends highly on the global supply chain. Without doubt, the U.S. wants to use the products made with the rare earths imported from China to suppress China’s development. Chinese people must not agree.
President Trump and President Xi Jinping are supposed to meet at the G-20 meeting next month.
“Rare earth’ minerals, although plentiful, can be found in concentrated and economic deposits in only a few countries; Yahoo Finance notes, “China is the biggest by far, accounting for almost 70% of global production and 40% of the world’s reserves, USGS data show.” Roughly 80% of “rare earths’ imported by the U.S. between 2014 and 2017 came from China.
The Daily Mail listed the 17 “rare earths” and their uses:
Scandium. Found in aerospace alloys and cars’ xenon headlamps
Yttrium. Used in energy-efficient lightbulbs, spark plugs and cancer treatments
Lanthanum. Found in camera lenses, battery electrodes, and catalysts used in oil refineries
Cerium. Used in self-cleaning ovens and industrial polishers
Praseodymium. Used in lasers and cigarette lighters
Neodymium. Used in electric motors for electric cars, hi-tech capacitors
Promethium. Found in luminous paint
Samarium. Used in the control rods of nuclear reactors, lasers and atomic clocks
Europium. Used in fluorescent lamps, MRI scanners
Gadolinium. Found in computer memory chips, steel, X-ray machines
Terbium. Used in sonar systems on navy vessels, fuel cells on hi-tech cars
Dysprosium. Used in hard disk drives and lasers
Holmium. Used in mass spectrometers by hospitals and forensic scientists
Erbium. Used in catalysts for the chemicals industry and in batteries designed to store power for the electrical grid
Thulium. Found in portable X-ray machines and lasers
Ytterbium. Used in stainless steel, thyroid cancer treatment and earthquake monitoring
Lutetium. Used in LED lightbulbs, oil refining and medical PET scans
