China’s threat to halt the export of rare earth metals to\nthe United States may not give Beijing much strength in the ongoing trade war\nbetween the world’s two largest economies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While China is the world’s largest producer of rare earths –\nminerals found in a wide range of everyday consumer electronics – Beijing’s\nability to use it as a weapon is somewhat limited, according to a number of\nanalysts. It still remains questionable how China will regulate and ban rare\nearths, but some Wall Street officials say the move will not be a game changer\nin the trade negotiations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs a general rule, we believe that the impact on the United\nStates will be mild\u201d, one analyst said in a research note on Monday. He added\nthat this would be “one reason why we are skeptical that Beijing would\n\u2018pull the trigger\u2019 on this particular threat”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The official newspaper of the Communist Party of China\nwarned last week that Beijing may soon stop exporting rare earths to the United\nStates. The threat came right after an increase in the US tariffs on the $200\nbillion worth of Chinese goods, which came into force at the end of last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rare earths are a collection of 17 metals that are not\nreally rare, but rather produced in relatively small quantities compared to the\nmany other minerals such as copper. They have become more important in recent\nyears because they are being increasingly used in high-tech equipment, defense\nmanufacturing and electric vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China extracted 70% of these minerals in 2018, prompting\nsome analysts last week to ask questions about the impact on the US industries\nthat rely on these rare earths. But the United States accounts for only 9% of\nglobal demand for rare earths. This means that the United States spent only\n$160 million in 2018 on rare earths imports for manufacturing purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Analysts declared that “The reason is fairly\nstraightforward: the U.S. has only limited manufacturing capacity vis-a-vis the\nhigh-tech products that are most commonly associated with rare earths. Consumer\nelectronics (PCs, smartphones, flat panel TVs) and various industrial goods\n(electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines, lasers, fiber optics) are simply\nnot produced in the U.S. on the scale that they are in China itself and\/or its\nAsian neighbors,\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China’s threat to halt the export of rare earth metals to the United States may not give Beijing much strength in the ongoing trade war between the world’s two largest economies. While China is the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[116,36,34,114,120,102,119,109,39,115],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1218,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions\/1218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}