The Chinese Xi administration may choose to leverage its state dominance of rare-earth elements to better balance the current Sino-U.S. trade war.

Dan Rochefort

2019-06-13 10:26:00 Thu ET

The Chinese Xi administration may choose to leverage its state dominance of rare-earth elements to better balance the current Sino-U.S. trade war. In recent times, President Xi visits a Jiangxi hardware factory that spins rare earth elements into permanent magnets in iPhones, electric cars, wind turbines, and military missiles. China monopolizes 80% of the strenuous extraction of 17 vital rare-earth elements for ubiquitous applications from consumer electronic technology to military defense. Although the raw ores are as common as copper and lead, rare-earth ores oxidize quickly and their extraction can cause severe pollution. With its low labor costs and lax environmental regulations, China has become the dominant force in the rare-earth market since the 1980s. With almost half of global rare-earth deposits, China produces 120,000 metric tons of rare-earth per annum, or about 80% of the global supply. Australia is the second largest supplier of only 20,000 metric tons of rare-earth per year.

The Chinese Xi administration has a strategic incentive to reduce the quota of rare-earth elements for better environmental protection. The next quota reset is due in June 2019, and this reset can indicate whether China intends to leverage its rare-earth quasi-monopoly to counteract the Trump tariff tactic.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Uniform field theory of corporate finance

Peter Prince

2022-11-25 09:29:00 Friday ET

Uniform field theory of corporate finance

Uniform field theory of corporate finance While the agency and precautionary-motive stories are complementary, these stories can be nested as special cas

+See More

Americans continue to keep their financial New Year resolutions.

Jonah Whanau

2019-01-15 13:35:00 Tuesday ET

Americans continue to keep their financial New Year resolutions.

Americans continue to keep their financial New Year resolutions. First, Americans should save more money. Everyone needs a budget to ensure that key paychec

+See More

Trump tariffs begin to bite U.S. corporate profits from Ford and Harley-Davidson to Caterpillar and Walmart etc.

James Campbell

2018-10-25 10:36:00 Thursday ET

Trump tariffs begin to bite U.S. corporate profits from Ford and Harley-Davidson to Caterpillar and Walmart etc.

Trump tariffs begin to bite U.S. corporate profits from Ford and Harley-Davidson to Caterpillar and Walmart etc. U.S. corporate profit growth remains high a

+See More

Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan discerns asset bubbles in the American stock and bond markets in early-2018.

Jonah Whanau

2018-01-21 07:25:00 Sunday ET

Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan discerns asset bubbles in the American stock and bond markets in early-2018.

As he refrains from using the memorable phrase *irrational exuberance* to assess bullish investor sentiments, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan discerns as

+See More

Fed Chair Jerome Powell answers CBS News 60 Minutes questions about the recent U.S. economic outlook.

Dan Rochefort

2019-03-29 12:28:00 Friday ET

Fed Chair Jerome Powell answers CBS News 60 Minutes questions about the recent U.S. economic outlook.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell answers CBS News 60 Minutes questions about the recent U.S. economic outlook and interest rate cycle. Powell views the c

+See More

U.S. yield curve inversion can be a sign but not a root cause of the next economic recession.

Dan Rochefort

2019-09-19 15:30:00 Thursday ET

U.S. yield curve inversion can be a sign but not a root cause of the next economic recession.

U.S. yield curve inversion can be a sign but not a root cause of the next economic recession. Treasury yield curve inversion helps predict each of the U.S.

+See More