Those "Rare Earths" Battles
Rare earth minerals . No, they don’t refer to gold or silver. They are the lanthanides (lanthanum, neodymium, cerium, europium etc), scandium, and yttrium. Never heard of them? Well, they are critical for a whole host of industries, which is why they have been in the news for a while. Importantly, China is the world’s largest producer of these vital minerals. A key point here is that the rare earth minerals aren’t really rare. Rather, they are found in low concentrations, which makes their extraction economically unviable. So did China just get lucky in having higher concentration ores in its territory? Like how the Middle East lucked out by having oil under its feet? Nope, that’s not the case here. Rather, China got to this point via its deliberate economic policies. First, China heavily subsidized the rare earth mining/extraction industry. These subsidies made it cheaper to extract in China. Second , China doesn’t allow its exchange rate to be decide...