

Chinese price manipulation has taken its toll on the U.S. economy





Rare earth metals
[Image Source: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg]




II. Attacking the Problem From All Angles

Among the research projects will be:
  • Improve rare earth recycling/reuse
  • Improve extraction processes
  • Develop rapid deployment mining techniques
  • Develop rare earth material substitutes
  • Study and optimize supply chains to minimize waste




Sources: DOE, Ames Lab

Comments     Threshold


By dgingerich on 1/11/2013 11:28:41 AM , Rating: 3
It's smarter for us to not use up our resources on such thing while other countries supply it, with our oil, rare earths, or anything else.

Here's why: ok, with any depletable resource, if you have the wealth, buy up the resources that other sources offer, wait for them to deplete their supply, then as they supply from around the world runs down, ramp up local sources and sell at much higher rates due to the shortage. In the long run, we're much better off.

Sure, we can buy from China now, and it is smart for them to restrict their supply artificially, but we're smarter to save our supply and get it from whoever else might have it. I've heard there are a couple countries down in South America that have decent supplies.

On top of all that, the government shouldn't be spending money on this sort of thing. It's such a waste.

