12.16.10

Rare Earth Epic Fail

Posted in Made in China at 1:54 pm by George Smith

DD went to Target to pick up sundries yesterday. Stopping by the electronics department, I noticed the $72.50 made-in-China electric guitar and amp kit in a cardboard box.

Everything in the electronic department was made in China. And the components of electric guitars, amplifiers and batteries use what are called rare earth metals.

Yesterday, the Dept. of Energy released a comprehensive report on moving toward a “Critical Materials Strategy.”

One graph from it tells you everything you need to know.

The rare earths are distributed widely across the globe. And there are supplies in the United States. But during the GWB administration, mining of rare earths in the US didn’t just crater. It died! Kaput!

While mining in China and other nations took off.

Although the DoE report does not explicitly state it, the historical picture painted is one in which US business abandoned rare earth mining. Simply because it was easier and better for the bottom line to get the underpriced stuff from China and other countries for all the electronic kit they now have made overseas.

And that shortsightedness and singular inattention to the big picture has set up a problem with potentially strategic implications for the United States. Because utilization of rare earths is also critical in clean energy innovation. And so while such things are advancing elsewhere, again most notably in China, here the story is one of lassitude and the now held-to-be-stupid view that things would be just peachy if we let that country make everything for the consumer society.

And this is why the good people at DoE have furnished this report.

The US has been able to somewhat diversify its draw of rare earths from the world market. But the control of the trade by China and its withholding of materials for its own markets has created a visible negative for this country.

In the short term, the DoE report notes our country can take advantage of rare earth mines starting up in Canada and Australia.

Both nations support successful mining of strategic materials.

And a rare earth mine in California is said to poised to begin operation in 2012. After it stopped in 2002.

“The United States is too reliant on China for minerals crucial to new clean energy technologies, making the American economy vulnerable to shortages of materials needed for a range of green products — from compact fluorescent light bulbs to electric cars to giant wind turbines,” read a New York Times business story on the DoE report yesterday.

“[The] report presents a fairly gloomy assessment of the United States’ ability to wean itself from Chinese imports,” it continued. “For as long as the next 15 years, the supplies of at least five minerals that come almost exclusively from China will remain as vulnerable to disruption as they are absolutely vital to the manufacture of small yet powerful electric motors, energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs and other clean energy technologies, the report said.”

Look at the DoE graph again. US mining of rare earths shuffled off into the oblivion right at the height of the so-called war on terror. Funding counter-terror and war, good! Keeping your critical industries for strategic materials needed for jobs and innovation — eh, not so much.

That’s real leadership!

Here’s a picture, included in the New York Times piece, of a Chinese worker hauling a sack of dirt/rare earths.

Which only emphasizes the stupidity involved in killing the industry in the United States even more.

The New York Times piece is here.

The Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Strategy is here.

Permalink