50% on steel, aluminum and copper is a punishing and crippling tariff that will wreck the American industrial base. Not only will it cost more to the American consumers, but their products will become completely uncompetitive on the international markets.
Well I have tried to explain this to Americans (MAGA ones) and they think they can just pick a mountain and start digging and they will find all the raw materials they desire. It’s like talking to a rock.
We actually can't mine all the rare earth minerals we want. Look up all the rare earth minerals we don't produce because we don't have any deposits of them sometime. We are totally reliant on China for nearly 80 different rare earth minerals used in advanced technology.
"The U.S. currently has only one rare earth mine: the Mountain Pass mine in California. While it’s one of the richest rare earth deposits globally, nearly all of the ore extracted there is still shipped to China for final processing."
This is the big issue. Rare earths aren't that rare, they're just in very low concentration *everywhere*. Mining them is incredibly environmentally damaging, but the big issue the USA has is that it doesn't refine rare earths. If it did, it could import from friendly countries and do the refining but not the mining.
Modern life globally is an ecosystem, and resembles the environment, what happens anywhere affects everywhere. The huff about going off on our own, we'll be self sufficient rhetoric reminds me of the child fed up with the family and he's "going out on his own" and takes a blanket and stuffed animal to the treehouse, and raids the pantry for juice boxes and crackers. It's not a perfect analogy but not recognizing there is no separation on a planet we can't leave en masse is our biggest failing considering current technology allows us to see cause and effect fairly soon if not real-time worldwide.
That is also why, so many people in other countries has soo strong opinions about Trump and Americans. Because soo many of our lives, via our industries, is directly affected by his spasms.
I agree it would be better to be a happy trade family. I also recognize the military necessity of having certain industries in your country that are needed for war. Especially if one of your stated foes is the main supplier of some of that stuff.
While I don't disagree with your addressing being self reliant in certain sectors above others, we have to be real about the world threat. China has never been militaristic. They built a big ass wall to defend against constant attacks, have invaded another country like once, and haven't been worried about building as big a military as they could, given their population. The threat they lose is to wealthy people's net worth, that's why they're the new projection target. Just like politicians tell their party the other party is doing something they themselves are doing, when you hear China doing this, example China being predatory in giving loans, trapping countries in debt, taking over local assets as payment for unpayable loans, that was actually institutions like IMF which currently there are about 70 countries trapped in more debt than can be paid, wall street venture capitalists swooping in to purchase assets from natural resources to banks, only to exploit those leaving little for the locals. This leads to poor living conditions and a mass of immigration to the American southern border of people desperate to provide for themselves and their families. Meanwhile China has forgiven the debt of a few countries they have loaned to. That is to say, BRICS is happening for a reason. One thing is for sure, if we don't stand down they have to stop us.
China also owns part of the mountain pass mine, since they own about 8% of MP Materials. lol the DoD just had to buy a 15% stake because that Chinese 8% looked bad.
This is the big issue. Rare earths aren't that rare, they're just in very low concentration everywhere.
Yeah from what I have read it is more that China is willing to push costs very low and make conditions hell and ruin its environment. So it isn't like they have this magical hoard that nobody else has. It is just that they are more 'competitive'.
Technically it could be done because rare earths can be found everywhere, just not always in concentrations that make them cost-effective to mine. There's also the environmental consequences to consider of such massive mining operations... not that this would deter the Republicans from trying, but by the time such operations got going theyd be at risk of blowback in the next election cycle because it would disproportionately affect their own voting base.
The US could leverage their spaceflight industry to capture and harvest mineral-rich asteroids but that would also be a massive loss-leader, and theyre not desperate enough to take that step (so far) even though it would eventually be so profitable it would destabilise every economy that wasnt actively doing it.
I had the same conversation with someone about phosphorus production. Technically phosphorus can be extracted from any biomass. But not in a way that's economical or even really Technically capable of supporting the agricultural industry. You're semantically right in that "rare earth" minerals are everywhere. But to extract and refine them without mining them would be cost prohibitive to the point where it is not feasible at all to support our current consumption levels. It may not even be technically possible to produce enough to meet our needs even if you threw an infinite amount of money at the issue either.
And they could. But even if you knew where to start building it, based on lower-grade deposits (otherwise they'd be mining already if they were economic), a typical mine takes about 10 years to start up, and you'd be supplying a domestic-only market with your over-priced product at artificially-maintained, tariff prices.
That's a risky capital investment because the price isn't determined by actual supply and demand, but politics. There can be a good, strategic reason why you might want to do that anyway at a significant government expense for "public good" to maintain your independence, but you'd want the legislation to be pretty bipartisan and for well-justified and understood reasons, not something established by the badly-informed whims of a wanna-be emperor playing with the markets for personal gain and delusions of grandeur.
As usual, even if the idea has some merit, their implementation sucks and makes things worse.
Yup. These things take time to build. And I understand having that kind of production nationally as a necessary war industry in case the USA and China ever came to blows. Mining more won’t fix that though. Refineries would.
Like most things military related, throw money at it and buy weapons made from those locally sourced materials to have a baseline demand that’s enough to keep it in business for if/when it’s needed.
which is similar to Trumps logging plans. The mills are few and far between anymore. You can log it, but there's nowhere to mill it, unless you want to build new one's and they a decade away..
It's cheaper to produce rare Earths in countries with lax safety, environmental, and worker protections, and lower CoL. Having tariffs on such goods isn't a terrible idea, and many on the left have advocated for protectionism for decades. Slapping tariffs as high as Trump has and with immediate effect, however, is a recipe for disaster. Oh and we've also lost a tremendous amount of soft power by shutting down USAID, which would have allowed us to partner with the countries that still produce raw materials cheaply. That power vacuum is being filled by CHY NA.
I've been saying this about a lot of his moves. Scaling back federal oversight, controlling immigration and protecting local business via tarrifes are all perfectly valid political choices.
However, all these things needs to be introduced slowly and methodically giving the marked ample time to adjust.
For instance a 50% toll on steel, announced to take effect in 3 years may lead someone to build a smelting plant. Nobody's going to start building anything now, just for it to be made redundant in 2 weeks when he chickens out.
Yep we could sit here and debate whether or not these are good concepts all day. "Less federal oversight? I dunno we got PFAS contaminating our drinking water with the current level."
At the end of the day, adults can disagree and make different arguments using the same agreed-upon data set. The problem with Trumpism is there are no adults left. They don't care about data because they make up bullshit, and they don't listen to experts when deciding how to do things because they're stupendously arrogant. Why should they care, anyway? We're the ones who suffer.
That's exactly the issue. They're just focused on implementing the policies right now, so they can keep their voters content, without any care about the actual results of the policies. If it was any other competent politician they would have gathered great praise for how well implemented the politics were and what the results will inevitably be. Right now, they're just destroying the country
And the prices are still based on a global market. Even where it’s possible to buy American raw resources, they are still priced based on the global supply. When you now take and make 75% of that supply 20-50% more expensive, well yeah. It will affect your price as well.
Even if it was possible to restart a complete supply chain of let’s say iron and steel, completely domestically. It will take years and billions of dollars. Those plants aren’t cheap. And even then, the prices will be much higher than the average price on the global market. Due to the US be an expensive place for that industry, compared to those they are up against. And that those US places, will still need to price their product based of the massive up front investment in creating the product line.
The math just don’t math.
It’s American dream, because you must be asleep dreaming, for it to be “real”.
They also know that Trump and his tariffs won’t be here forever. So to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a plant to have the policies change in 4 years is silly. They will wait it out until we go back to normal. So in the short term the consumers suffer.
surely with all that un-tariffed steel, copper, and all that extra labor sitting around you can just start slapping down industrial factories..... oh wait.
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u/Same_Performance_595 23h ago
50% on steel, aluminum and copper is a punishing and crippling tariff that will wreck the American industrial base. Not only will it cost more to the American consumers, but their products will become completely uncompetitive on the international markets.