October 25, 2010

The Washington Independent reported on the history of the Mountain Pass rare earth mine, and the need to diversify our resource away from reliance on China. In an interview, a reporter asked us what is the missing link in the supply chain.

Yaron Vorona, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security’s Technology and Rare Earth Metals Center, cited an April 2010 Government Accountability Office report that says it could take 15 years to develop a U.S. rare earth industry.

Vorona says the U.S. has a lack of scientific knowledge about REEs because most scientists went to China to continue their work on the minerals decades ago. “If the mines that are being planned were all to come online tomorrow that would be fantastic, but there would be nobody to run them,” Vorona said, noting that China has 100,000 rare earth scientists.

He also said that chemical separation of REEs is often very difficult to perfect. “It’s a very long and involved process,” he says. “That’s one of the biggest risks. It can take dozens, hundreds of steps to separate the rare earths.”

Vorona notes that the Chinese rare earth society has hundreds of thousands of members, and China employs thousands of rare earth scientists.

The full article here:

http://washingtonindependent.com/101462/california-mine-represents-hope-and-peril-for-u-s-rare-earth-industry

October 22, 2010

Congressman Edward J. Markey, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has written a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and US Trade Representative Ronald Kirk. The subject of the letter is the reported export ban of rare earths from China to the US.

He will be holding a hearing on the subject, and posed the following questions:

1. Has China actually blocked shipments beyond export quota restrictions? How is the blockade being enforced?
2. How has the export quota been implemented?
3. Which elements are of concern to the Department of Defense?
4. Which elements are of concert to the Department of Energy?

Sept 19, 2010

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has said that Chinese trade practices in the compeonents for clean energy are a violation of World Trade Organization rules.

On Platts Energy Week, Senator Brown said, “What we have done is operate within the confines of World Trade Organization rules... The Chinese haven’t. They haven’t because of currency, they haven’t because of other direct subsidies in clean energy.” He says that this could undermine the goals of the US stimulus plan.

Earlier in the week, Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich) Ron Wyden (D-Ore) and others joined Senator Brown in supporting a United Steelworkers petition to the US Trade Representative to bring a case against China before the WTO.

United Steelworkers, the largest labor union representing 1.2 million active and retired members, claims that various Chinese subsidies and preferences for domestic firms are harming U.S. companies and freezing them out of a growing market. Their case, filed on September 9, 2010 is 5800 pages long and identifies five predatory and protectionist practices used by China"

• Restrictions on access to critical materials
• Performance requirements for investors
• Discrimination against foreign firms and goods
• Prohibited export subsidies and prohibited domestic content subsidies
• Trade distorting domestic subsidies

“Green jobs are key to our future,” said Leo W. Gerard, International President of the USW. “Right now, China is taking every possible step – many of them illegal under international trade laws – to ensure that it will control that sector. America can’t afford to cede more of its manufacturing base to China."

October 20, 2010

National Public Radio (NPR) has featured China's trade policies in a recent show. Note that in the trascript, tungsten is erroneously used as an example of a rare earth metal. Tungsten is an important technology metal that China controls as well.

Transcript:

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=130704695

Related article:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130704695