China has near global monopolies on these exports, accounting for 98% of global gallium production, 93% of germanium production, and 49% of antimony production.
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If I gather anything from the more knowledgable people in the comments it is that the US needn't worry, because these resources aren't just exported by China, but also by Russia and no one else in the world. So they just need to cash in those years of Russian goodwill they've built up and this shouldn't be a problem.
Are you telling me that being blindly antagonistic in every corner of the globe simultaneously actually has consequences? Because that sounds like Russian disinformation.
No, it will be fine. Considering how much of the Earth's surface is taken up by Israel and Taiwan I'm sure there is an endless supply of rare earth minerals to go around.
Well 2/3 of the comments here a jokes barely talking about the issue so idk.
Imo is if American tariffs and sanctions didn't work back in 2022 why should it work for anyone else? China isn't about to police world trade flows in order to make sure these exports wont end up in the US. In practical terms this is just incentivizing the black market supply for it. You should rather temper your expectations that this will actualy have a meaningful long term effect at all.
Yes NATO artillery stocks are low but clearly the US doesn't give a fuck about it given the Ukrainian missile escalation this recently so its one of those things that technicaly ought to matter but in reality doesn't at all. Yeah Ukraine is even more assured to not get more supplies and that changes nothing given they lost this war years ago already.
I think this is an apples and oranges situation. China is not sanctioning or tariffing, they are banning exports of specific items for industries that their government is entirely in control of. The US can say tarrifs this and sanctions that but the private companies can do whatever they want, the US has no real power over them. China has unilateral control over these minerals and nearly every nation that trades with them has a strong incentive to not only follow whatever boundaries China sets for the minerals, but many of these nations are probably also happy to to comply because they don't have good relationships with the US either. If any one is middle manning them to the US, China is approving it, and I'd bet that if they say not to, it won't happen.
If anything I'd be worried about nations like Bolivia who also have some of these metals because the US could be more incentivized to destabilize them for mineral access.