[ExI] not that rare earth (part 2 of at least 2)

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> 
...
Subject: Re: [ExI] not that rare earth (part 2 of at least 2)

On Thu, Oct 30, 2025 at 7:19 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
>
...
>
>>... Ja to all, no objection.  Sufficient piles of money have a magic way of accelerating such investments.

>...Who is going to invest when the Chinese can turn their supply off and
on to kill your profit?

>From Wikipedia

>...In 2008, Chevron sold the mine to privately held Molycorp Minerals
LLC, a company formed to revive the Mountain Pass mine. Molycorp
announced plans to spend $500 million to reopen and expand the mine...


With all the recent free publicity that China has a big monopoly on rare earth elements, Molycorp could sell that mine to another entity which could sell plenty of stock based on the risk of China starting a war over Taiwan.  

If the tariff notion can be legally sustained (still not clear) the US could theoretically tariff all rare earth imports at 1000%, protecting domestic supplies for possible military and strategic reasons.  It would be a protective tariff, analogous to  Reagan's tariff against Japanese motorcycles back in the early 1980s.  But this one makes sense in a way: you can't depend on your military adversaries to sell you stuff you might need for your defense systems.

I would buy a share or two of that, if the mine and the refinery are in the USA.

spike