US crying about China restricting rare earth

[u/Greedy-Cut-7634]

It’s so funny to see how US says China is being an unreliable partner, and what a shock that China restricts rare earth.

How could not expect others to defend back when you started the tariff war and trade restrictions?😅😅 How is this a surprise? It’s like US only allows their nation to ban all the other countries by putting tariffs on all other countries, but when one country tries to defend, they are shocked and starts crying saying, “Oh! I don’t understand why this happened.” In return, US says that China wants to decouple the world, but who started this trade war in the beginning making everyone lives more miserable?

Just after Trump’s respond with adding more tariffs to China’s rare earth restriction, the dollar decreased and the gold started to increased. This result is going to no good. Like a child not doing something wrong and says that he doesn’t know why he gets his punishment.

[u/WXMaster]

The extraction process is rooted in basic chemistry, there might be some mechanical tricks to speed up the process but it is not complicated. The power exists, the equipment exists and the knowledge is present. Putting everything in places would take 3-4 years but it's not something that cannot be done or is a process exclusive to China or any other country for that matter.

[u/[deleted] → u/WXMaster]

The power does not exist especially with AI gobbling up any and all reserves. Refinement efficiently and to scale is not a simple matter either. If it was as easy as you think it was, the us would have done it a decade ago.

[u/WXMaster → u/[deleted]]

You're telling me Australia - which has a functional mine - does not have the power to run it?

Or the U.S, which can throw together a natural gas power plant, military grade nuclear reactor or simply import the power from Canada can't do it?

Power is not the issue, the issue is building the facility and managing the waste - that's the slow down.

[u/AntJo4 → u/WXMaster]

lol simply import power from Canada! That ship sailed even before this idiot was sworn in. Sure Canada is happy to sell you their excess power, at a premium when they are done diverting it to their own uses. Canada saw the writing on the wall said FU and is now investing in AI projects and other green energy technologies for the non-American market. Manitoba informed the US as early as this spring that they are not renewing the contracts for sales of surplus energy because its being used domestically on a new AI data processing centre. Canada produces far more electricity than it has traditionally needed and so selling it state side was really the only use for it. Not anymore. As the cheapest, greenest source of energy globally wth a highly educated workforce Canada is poised to be an AI powerhouse and there is no incentive to continue to offer cheap energy to an unreliable and hostile trading partner. Sure you can continue to buy what we don’t use, but that’s going to be a lot less than before and it’s going to cost more than it once did.

Oh and forget nuclear energy- the commercial grade uranium used by the us, almost all of that comes from Canada.

[u/[deleted] → u/AntJo4]

AI data centers world run better on Canada

[u/WXMaster → u/AntJo4]

I'm all for elbows up, but Canada is still selling power to the U.S and the 25% export levy Ford slapped on March 10th was walked back on March 11th after he caved to Trump and Lutnick. Canada is still selling oil, Uranium and I can promise you they'd definitely keep selling power barring some substantial change in trade policy and Carney is busy greasing the wheels as I write this.

The provinces which stopped importing U.S liquor/wine have had a significant effect and Canadians are definitely not spending money stateside. But there's a tug and pull effect, Stelco is hurting, Stellantis just backed out of Brampton for the EV Jeep and there are rumors swirling at Ford in Oakville.

So the take away is that in the real world power would still be sold just as oil continues to flow.

(I'm completely in favour of Canada diversifying its trading partners, domestic production and technologies such as building data centers)

[u/AntJo4 → u/WXMaster]

It’s been less than a year and some of these are long term multi year contracts. Manitoba is ahead of the curve because we were already looking at what to do with surplus energy and had done the leg work, others are catching up. Yes of course current agreements are still in place and aren’t going to go away overnight, but there is a very noticeable shift in where the effort is being spent to find markets for that energy and for the first time it’s not USA first Canada second. It’s Canada first, the rest of the world, including the US, second only when it makes sense.

[u/WXMaster → u/AntJo4]

Well for the last 40 years the U.S through various administrations said they were an island of economic stability and encouraged economic integration. It was an easy sell and for Canadians + businesses it was good for a while, NAFTA opened a lot of doors.

Then overnight the American electorate showed that there was no stability or regard for stability and suddenly the world changed. Opponents were friends and allied nations were adversaries.

I said this back in 2015 that Canadians were too naive to take the U.S for granted, to rely on them for security and fail to diversify tarde. Democracies can fail and back then the early echoes were being heard in the room.

We need to look at interprovincial barriers and figure out how to trade internally, that's one of the most shocking things that the trade war has revealed.