

Is China playing a clever capitalist or malicious miscreant?


I. Once the U.S. Was a Rare Earth Leader



Neodymium wide




II. Tough Talk


Rare Earth miner






III. Is the U.S. Being Unfair?




iPhone 4S


Source: Reuters

Comments     Threshold


RE: Unfair?
By lightfoot on 3/19/2012 6:21:34 PM , Rating: 2
I think China has the right to do whatever it wants with whatever resources it finds/controls on it's land.

I agree, to an extent. They have the right to not mine the materials if they choose not to (for environmental reasons or any other reason.) However they ARE continuing to mine it and choosing only to sell it to domestic companies.

It would be like if we started building cars and decided to only sell them to English speaking white people. Would that be fair? No. If we chose to simply not make cars that would be one thing, but discriminating against who can BUY them would make it unfair.

That is what China is doing, they are saying who can and who can not buy the product that they are already producing.

OPEC can get away with limiting production of oil. That's fine, they can choose not to extract their natural resources. What they CAN'T do is say that specific people aren't allowed to buy that oil, or that a particular group must pay a higher price. That's why we have the WTO, to prevent embargos from occuring and causing trade (and actual) wars.

RE: Unfair?
By StevoLincolnite on 3/19/2012 6:29:32 PM , Rating: 2

That's bringing race into it which completely changes it.

It would be more attuned to the USA designing and building a car and only selling it in the United States. Which... Funnily enough does happen. :P

RE: Unfair?
By Reclaimer77 on 3/19/2012 9:57:18 PM , Rating: 1


RE: Unfair?
By carniver on 3/20/2012 5:11:30 PM , Rating: 2
Gas sold in Venezula is ultra cheap. How is it fair that they don't sell US the same cheap gasoline according to your logic?

RE: Unfair?
By lightfoot on 3/20/2012 5:42:29 PM , Rating: 2
Counter example - we export food to China. Would it be fair if we didn't let them buy OUR food? Or if we charged them MORE for consuming our food than our domestic ethanol producers?

Just because others engage in unfair practices does not make unfair practices fair.

The WTO prohibits such activities, if you don't want to follow the rules, don't join.

If they want to place embargos on us, we should be able to do the same to them.

