International Trumps tariffs on China working.

[lfd0311]

lol.. trump's midwestern base getting btfo

Not really

 

[NoDak]

I'm not that good at economy. You need Jack for that.

Gandhi's good too.

Those are solid policy goals that I think rational people agree on, but there's no evidence that I've seen that shows it's working (did they stop stealing intellectual property?). No one wants to see China stealing intellectual property or undercutting industries.

I am not opposed to using tough tactics to achieve these goals either. But the way this administration is carrying out this strategy is haphazard and poorly thought out. Has this administration even laid out a plan as to how the goals are achieved through tariffs? I certainly haven't seen it. And I have a huge problem with a clumsy strategy that drags down the world economy without a clear path to achieving our goals. I think the reality is that Trump is a nationalist doing nationalist stuff and he doesn't fucking care who gets hurt, unless they vote for him (see farm subsidies handed out as a result of collateral damage).

Just a side note, your response was much more articulate and thought out than the Trumpster who's claiming we're winning (which is who my post was aimed at).

I think (USTR) Robert Lighthizer has been consistent with his rhetoric and reasoning as he's always described the tariffs as a form of punishment - among the others I mentioned - for China's trade practices and IP theft with nary anything about the deficits Trump constantly bangs on about and leaves an economically astute guy like Jack rightly bewildered.

That he's been able to carry out this agenda at the behest of the POTUS while largely shielding both American business and consumers up to this point - at least certainly to a far greater degree than expected - is pretty impressive and speaks to his three-plus decades experience as an international trade lawyer. This appointment is far more James Mattis than Betsy DeVos. He's not the only voice in the room though.

Mnuchin is the Goldman Sachs status quo guy, Navarro is the Sino radical and Kudlow doesn't know if he's coming or going (literally and figuratively). All of them can and have said different things on virtually the same day. And then there's Trump. It would be hilariously brilliant if it was all calculated and China has undoubtedly been thrown off by the wildly erratic US behavior but we'd probably never be so lucky.

Part of my confidence stems from the fact that they can't do much harm to our top exports in retaliation or without tremendous self harm. Boeing has a back log of 5,800 commercial aircraft, switch to Airbus all you want. Oh wait, they can't because Airbus lacks the current and even near future production capacity to replace Boeing for at least another five years. China also desperately needs the aircraft.

Intel holds as close to full market dominance as you'll find in both PC and data server microprocessors (which is why the ire over AMD's partnership with THATIC) and there's practically no cutting edge niche of the semiconductor market in which they've raised a competent domestic industry. The larger point is that all of their modern electronics based technology is ultimately dependent on America and regional neighbors such as South Korea and Japan who view them with high suspicion. The US government can effectively crush enormous Chinese multi-billion dollar "tech" corporations at a moment's notice.

Power, much? And then it turns out they probably can't even afford to place duties on US crude in the short term. They're fucking with the wrong hombres and need to stop doing what they're doing, reconfigure the culture over there or something.

U.S. Oil Vanishing From Chinese Tariffs Reveals America's Clout

The removal of U.S. crude from goods targeted by Chinese tariffs is a sign that America has become too big to ignore in the oil market.

Less than two months after threatening to impose levies on imports of U.S. crude, the world’s biggest oil buyer has now spared the commodity. Only fuels such as diesel, gasoline, propane will be hit with duties, according to China’s commerce ministry. That’s after the nation’s buyers, including top refiner Sinopec, began shunning American supplies to avoid the risk of tariffs.

China’s original plan to target U.S. crude came at an inopportune time for the country’s buyers. Sinopec’s trading unit, Unipec, was embroiled in a dispute with Saudi Arabia, saying the producer’s prices were costly and cutting purchases just as it was boosting American imports. Two months on, refiners were faced with the risk of supply disruptions from Iran to Venezuela and paying more to take advantage of booming U.S. output.

^^ The US is sanctioning the shit out of Iran and Venezuela.

 

[Big Nasty Edison]

The broad policy goals are for China to cease engaging in writ large currency manipulation, overbuilding, subsidization, product dumping, lack of reciprocity, forced technology transfers and the state directed intransigent strategy for the outright theft of intellectual property and trade secrets that violate their WTO free trade agreements and undercut US output, competitiveness, employment, investment, research, development, innovation and strategic domestic industries (a few of which America literally brought into existence) invaluable to our sustained economic growth and national security.

The problem is, the PRC isn't going to willingly cease doing any of that because those are fundamental tenants of their development model and a significant factor in how they've managed to build themselves up to present day status; asking nicely whilst maintaining the shitty status quo isn't exactly working out and the relationship we have with them isn't free trade.

So there's a number of things the US either can, has and/or should do to punish them for those activities including but not limited to: blocking all foreign investment in US tech assets (Lattice, Xcerra, Qualcomm), choking off access to US components critical to the global operations of Chinese corporations (ZTE, Fujian Jinhua), banning the sale of products in the US (Huawei) and controversially implementing tariffs on imports. However...

Does this actually hurt us more than what has been outlined in the Administration spanning, bipartisan accounts detailed in the 2011 USITC, 2016 USTR, 2017 USTR or 2017 IP Commission reports? I'd sincerely welcome the input of @Gandhi, @Trotsky, @japman40, @Rational Poster, @Edison Carasio, @Darth_Inv1ctu5 here as well, all posters I respect and agree with on a number of other domestic political issues from browsing topics on here.

This is where we are right now and as noted it can change, although I'm going to have some difficulty buying any feigned sympathy for a large chunk of Trump's base being the most affected. The US is the world's largest agriculture exporter by a considerable distance and it was a given that the sector - less than 1% of US GDP output - would be collateral damage.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/...g-for-most-of-trump-s-trade-war-research-says

President Donald Trump The United States of America is succeeding in making China pay most of the cost of his the trade war it has been begging for.

That’s the conclusion of a new paper from EconPol Europe, a network of researchers in the European Union. U.S. companies and consumers will only pay 4.5 percent more after the nation imposed 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods, and the other 20.5 percent toll will fall on Chinese producers.

According to Zoller-Rydzek and Felbermayr, the tariffs will do what Trump has longed for: They will cut American imports of affected Chinese goods by more than a third, and lower the bilateral trade deficit by 17 percent.

The Trump administration Robert Lighthizer (ND: as if Trump is running the show here) selected products with the highest “price elasticity,” or high availability of substitutes. The Chinese products hit by US tariffs can mostly be replaced by other goods, forcing exporters to cut selling prices to keep buyers.

“Through its strategic choice of Chinese products, the U.S. government was not only able to minimize the negative effects on U.S. consumers and firms, but also to create substantial net welfare gains in the U.S.,” the researchers wrote.





For China to cease being the only country in the world in which all of the above is a profound problem, something which virtually all of America's Western and East Asian allies are in agreement with. There are reasons Dem leadership is backing the DJT Admin actions, the EU is looking to establish its own incarnation of CFIUS, Germany moved to block multiple state-backed Chinese acquisitions of national assets and Australia has banned the likes of Huawei and ZTE from its telecom industry.



Well, at least I have you. I miss Homer, man.

Thanks for mentioning me. Unfortunately I'm not economically savvy enough to give as technical an opinion as you'd probably like. And even an anecdotal opinion from a laymen is a little too lengthy than I could do justice on my phone.

 

[NoDak]

Let's see him hit Apple (for example) with a 25% tarrif. There are many consumer goods he hasn't touched by yet, and for good reason.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/11/26...nt-tariffs-on-iphones-laptops-from-china.html

President Donald Trump suggested he could place a 10 percent tariff on iPhones and laptops imported from China, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Monday. He also said it's "highly unlikely" that he would delay an increase in tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on Jan. 1, just four days before a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump said he expects he will increase tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25 percent. He will also add $267 billion worth of tariffs onto goods that are not already subjected to existing tariffs if the two countries don't make a deal.

Apple's products are currently exempt from the tariffs. It previously announced that the tariffs would affect the Apple Watch, AirPods and other products, but were spared when the tariffs were announced. Although iPhones are assembled in China, several parts come from the U.S.

Apple could not immediately be reached for comment.

 

[NoDak]

Lives,Jobs,Spratleys!

#Obosen!

DDS pa din. Lol.

Remember when Chinese billionaire Jack Ma said Alibaba would no longer be bringing those "1 million jobs" stateside that were "promised" and everyone was supposed to be upset about that? Yeah, nevermind US exports to China would've had to rise by around $205 billion to deliver on the "pledge" (per US Commerce Department) and that's it's more than what was exported to the PRC in total goods and services last year...

Jack Ma Confirmed As Chinese Communist Party Member

<45>

 

[Prutfis]

Have the ekstra billions in farmer welfare etc and the jobs lost been deducted?

 

[ShinkanPo]

Remember when Chinese billionaire Jack Ma said Alibaba would no longer be bringing those "1 million jobs" stateside that were "promised" and everyone was supposed to be upset about that? Yeah, nevermind US exports to China would've had to rise by around $205 billion to deliver on the "pledge" (per US Commerce Department) and that's it's more than what was exported to the PRC in total goods and services last year...

Jack Ma Confirmed As Chinese Communist Party Member

<45>

I was about to make a thread about Jack Ma being outed as a Communist Party Member and Tag you as I am know you would be interested in such topics.And coincidentally I will be also using the Bloomberg article.

Jack Ma being a CCP member is a not a big reveal to anyone, everyone knows that the Chinese Commie government have conspired together to create this fake free trade capitalist atmosphere in China where private enterprises are growing.

Who knows maybe its the Chineese government that really gave Jack Ma and others like him the big capital investment to start the business, in short there is really no private industry in China as we know it. Every thing is just a charade and their industry are all being run by political commissars.


Because lets just face it China has been communist super block for decades and a lot of people are dirt poor because of their policies etc, Its just hard to believe a private industry will prosper there like Alibaba did.

Jacka Ma being a communist party member?

Or as my Japanese business associate tells me when we talk about Japanese porn,

Haah Very Bad ahh!!! No Say No Say!!

lol/

 

[SiKnSiN]

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/11/26...nt-tariffs-on-iphones-laptops-from-china.html

President Donald Trump suggested he could place a 10 percent tariff on iPhones and laptops imported from China, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Monday. He also said it's "highly unlikely" that he would delay an increase in tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on Jan. 1, just four days before a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump said he expects he will increase tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25 percent. He will also add $267 billion worth of tariffs onto goods that are not already subjected to existing tariffs if the two countries don't make a deal.

Apple's products are currently exempt from the tariffs. It previously announced that the tariffs would affect the Apple Watch, AirPods and other products, but were spared when the tariffs were announced. Although iPhones are assembled in China, several parts come from the U.S.

Apple could not immediately be reached for comment.

Ok, that interview was embarrassing.

 

[HunterSdVa29]

Exactly as I said would happen...

they're at much more risk at plummeting due to their neocolonial efforts in Africa anyway

 

[NoDak]

Ok, that interview was embarrassing.

I'd imagine so, he really needs to STFU about the Fed.

He has a gut, alright.

 

[Rum]

You call that neutral?

"Looks like a bunch of plots that show the upward trends set in motion by Obama have continued under Trump."

If you're a Dem this proves Trump hasn't improved the trend and if you're a Trumper this proves Trump hasn't ruined it.

To anyone who understands English this is so neutral it makes Switzerland look like Darth Vader.

 

[NoDak]

"Looks like a bunch of plots that show the upward trends set in motion by Obama have continued under Trump."

If you're a Dem this proves Trump hasn't improved the trend and if you're a Trumper this proves Trump hasn't ruined it.

To anyone who understands English this is so neutral it makes Switzerland look like Darth Vader.

I'm going to celebrate the plots even when Trump is voted out of office, probably even more so.

 

[Prefect]

The broad policy goals are for China to cease engaging in writ large currency manipulation, overbuilding, subsidization, product dumping, lack of reciprocity, forced technology transfers and the state directed intransigent strategy for the outright theft of intellectual property and trade secrets that violate their WTO free trade agreements and undercut US output, competitiveness, employment, investment, research, development, innovation and strategic domestic industries (a few of which America literally brought into existence) invaluable to our sustained economic growth and national security.

The problem is, the PRC isn't going to willingly cease doing any of that because those are fundamental tenants of their development model and a significant factor in how they've managed to build themselves up to present day status; asking nicely whilst maintaining the shitty status quo isn't exactly working out and the relationship we have with them isn't free trade.

So there's a number of things the US either can, has and/or should do to punish them for those activities including but not limited to: blocking all foreign investment in US tech assets (Lattice, Xcerra, Qualcomm), choking off access to US components critical to the global operations of Chinese corporations (ZTE, Fujian Jinhua), banning the sale of products in the US (Huawei) and controversially implementing tariffs on imports. However...

Does this actually hurt us more than what has been outlined in the Administration spanning, bipartisan accounts detailed in the 2011 USITC, 2016 USTR, 2017 USTR or 2017 IP Commission reports? I'd sincerely welcome the input of @Gandhi, @Trotsky, @japman40, @Rational Poster, @Edison Carasio, @Darth_Inv1ctu5 here as well, all posters I respect and agree with on a number of other domestic political issues from browsing topics on here.

This is where we are right now and as noted it can change, although I'm going to have some difficulty buying any feigned sympathy for a large chunk of Trump's base being the most affected. The US is the world's largest agriculture exporter by a considerable distance and it was a given that the sector - less than 1% of US GDP output - would be collateral damage.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/...g-for-most-of-trump-s-trade-war-research-says

President Donald Trump The United States of America is succeeding in making China pay most of the cost of his the trade war it has been begging for.

That’s the conclusion of a new paper from EconPol Europe, a network of researchers in the European Union. U.S. companies and consumers will only pay 4.5 percent more after the nation imposed 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods, and the other 20.5 percent toll will fall on Chinese producers.

According to Zoller-Rydzek and Felbermayr, the tariffs will do what Trump has longed for: They will cut American imports of affected Chinese goods by more than a third, and lower the bilateral trade deficit by 17 percent.

The Trump administration Robert Lighthizer (ND: as if Trump is running the show here) selected products with the highest “price elasticity,” or high availability of substitutes. The Chinese products hit by US tariffs can mostly be replaced by other goods, forcing exporters to cut selling prices to keep buyers.

“Through its strategic choice of Chinese products, the U.S. government was not only able to minimize the negative effects on U.S. consumers and firms, but also to create substantial net welfare gains in the U.S.,” the researchers wrote.





For China to cease being the only country in the world in which all of the above is a profound problem, something which virtually all of America's Western and East Asian allies are in agreement with. There are reasons Dem leadership is backing the DJT Admin actions, the EU is looking to establish its own incarnation of CFIUS, Germany moved to block multiple state-backed Chinese acquisitions of national assets and Australia has banned the likes of Huawei and ZTE from its telecom industry.



Well, at least I have you. I miss Homer, man.

Do you even understand the concept of what a trade war is? It is one party saying we don't want to buy the good made by those who have a competitive advantage. It would be comparable to driving over to the rich part of town to get your haircut instead of getting it in a run of the mill shop in the middle of a poorer area.

You talk about devaluing their currency is a big sin. Guess what, we and everyone else in the world does the exact same thing to increase exports. Devaluing your currency is like forcing a paycut on everyone in your country. You can't bitch about it. That is just the way it is. Everyone does it. China just has a preference to be a net exporter. You can't stop someone from wanting to make and sell goods cheaply. If they do that, just go find something else that you have a comparative advantage in and do that instead. It isn't rocket science. If a movie theater started selling their tickets for $1.00, you wouldn't go about bitching about them selling their tickets so cheaply. You would buy the ticket and make a note not to get into the movie theater business.

 

[NoDak]

Do you even understand the concept of what a trade war is? It is one party saying we don't want to buy the good made by those who have a competitive advantage. It would be comparable to driving over to the rich part of town to get your haircut instead of getting it in a run of the mill shop in the middle of a poorer area.

You talk about devaluing their currency is a big sin. Guess what, we and everyone else in the world does the exact same thing to increase exports. Devaluing your currency is like forcing a paycut on everyone in your country. You can't bitch about it. That is just the way it is. Everyone does it. China just has a preference to be a net exporter. You can't stop someone from wanting to make and sell goods cheaply. If they do that, just go find something else that you have a comparative advantage in and do that instead. It isn't rocket science. If a movie theater started selling their tickets for $1.00, you wouldn't go about bitching about them selling their tickets so cheaply. You would buy the ticket and make a note not to get into the movie theater business.

Given the condescending opener, I thought for sure you'd at least answer the question. I quoted or mentioned around a dozen people in that post for a reason and still no dice. Just wanted to be sure. It's difficult to see the tariffs serving any real purpose for the USTR outside being a blunt instrument of punishment among several other measures for what this conflict is actually about, and that is not China making and selling goods cheaply nor anything to do with US desire to buy them.

I rarely mention currency manipulation at all beyond reiteration as part of a collective of tools China utilizes excessively and in contravention to their international trade agreements. The US doesn't need to devalue its currency and force pay cuts when it develops technologies and innovates new processes - China should try that some time - which lower the total cost of production instead, and that is the driving factor behind US manufacturing resurgence.

 

[NoDak]

But Obama was working on the problem and making real progress. And of course the TPP, which got demagogued to shit, was also part of the strategy. The thing is, the issue you're referring to is something that requires a delicate mix of diplomacy and power moves, but Trump has the subtlety of a costume designer for a rap video, and a trade war hurts us while we hope for a solution.

Indeed, he was and I think we'd be seeing him act more aggressively were he still POTUS. This report landed on Barry's desk the month he was about to leave office.

Note some of the players.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ught-in-u-s-assault-on-china-s-tech-ambitions

For a sense of the damage the United States can inflict on China with export controls, take a trip to the city of Jinjiang on the country’s southeastern coast.

That’s where Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. built a $6 billion plant to produce semiconductors as part of China’s goal of making the country a self-sufficient technology powerhouse. But after the U.S. President barred exports to the company, its dream is now in tatters with consultants from American suppliers gone, the factories silent and workers rattled.

Less than a month ago, Jinhua was full-speed ahead on an enormous undertaking financed by the local government that blanketed its corner of the city with bristling power plants, hulking workers’ dormitories and modern research labs. It was within months of a deadline to kick off full-scale production of some 60,000 wafers a month, a key step to giving China a competitive producer of memory chips used in smartphones.

Then the U.S. Justice Department accused it of stealing American technology, and Commerce slammed the door on purchases of the chipmaking gear it needed to hit that milestone. Expansion work halted as its American and even European suppliers skipped town. Now, uncertainty shrouds a company President Xi Jinping’s touted as one of three future domestic champions of chipmaking.

The day the U.S. announced its ban, Applied Materials Inc. staff packed up and left, according to people familiar with the matter. The American company had shipped components to Jinhua as recently as Sept. 20, according to an airway bill seen by Bloomberg. KLA-Tencor Corp and Lam Research Corp. also recalled their engineers, the people said. Even Dutch giant ASML Holding N.V. -- whose EUV machines are the linchpin in next-generation chipmaking -- pulled out within days, abandoning work on a second assembly line. The once-smooth influx of equipment ground to a halt. On a windy afternoon in November, a giant plot of land adjoining Jinhua’s campus earmarked for its second facility stood vacant, not even a bulldozer in sight.

So rapid was the exodus that, in many cases, Jinhua employees had no inkling of the departures till they were gone, one person said. Only a smattering of the foreign-employed engineers bothered to inform their peers before catching flights to Shanghai and Taipei, the person said. “They didn’t even give us time to say goodbye,” one person said.

From a broader perspective, the speed with which the U.S. squashed Jinhua’s ambitions underscores the extent to which China -- despite well-publicized intentions of becoming a global tech superpower by 2025 -- remains reliant on American innovation. Jinhua was to spearhead the transition for a country beholden to giants from Intel Corp. to Micron Technologies Inc. It’s an effort that’s become critical as the rivalry between the world’s two largest economies deepens. Indeed, It was Micron that first accused Jinhua and UMC of purloining its trade secrets, setting events in motion.

“Memory chips are cement for the entire IT industry, so China is eager to break the international monopoly and improve its own power of discourse in the world,” said Roger Sheng, an industry analyst with Gartner Research.

Jinhua was a key cog in a campaign to move away from chip imports -- an influx that surpasses China’s annual spending on oil. Now that vision’s in jeopardy. To some, it seems a matter of time until the Trump administration targets the other two designated national champions: Tsinghua Unigroup’s Yangtze River Memory and Hefei Changxin, run by the government of central Anhui province.

 

[NoDak]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-11-with-selling-samsung-technology-to-china

South Korea charged nine people and two companies of illegally selling Samsung Electronics Co.’s bendable screen technology to a Chinese rival.

The chief executive officer of a Samsung supplier and eight of his employees received 15.5 billion won ($13.8 million) after conspiring with two representatives of the Chinese company to transfer organic light-emitting diode knowhow, according to a statement from prosecutors in Suwon. The names of the companies and individuals weren’t disclosed.

The U.S. is also concerned about what it considers a state-backed campaign of technology theft by China. Earlier this year a former Apple Inc. engineer was arrested in the U.S. on charges of stealing driverless car secrets. Earlier this month Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. and Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. were indicted on charges they conspired to steal trade secrets form Micron Technology Inc.

Samsung spent about 150 billion won over a period of six years to develop the OLED technology that is now considered highly-classified national knowledge, prosecution said. Samsung plans to release at least two versions of the upcoming Galaxy S10 with curved screens next year, Bloomberg News reported last month.

@Arkain2K

 

[Sauron]

The long term consequence is that Chinese companies will do their best to avoid any reliance on US suppliers. Potentially other countries may look to do the same.

 

[NoDak]

The long term consequence is that Chinese companies will do their best to avoid any reliance on US suppliers. Potentially other countries may look to do the same.

That's a lot easier said than done. These sort of moves started under the Obama administration although the supercomputer chip ban is hardly enforceable. Germany had already withdrawn approval and has blocked more than one attempted Chinese takeover this year. The US, EU and East Asia are still more or less loosely united on this sort of front but it's why you don't start needless conflicts with allies.

https://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-chips-china/amp/

In an aggressive move to curb’s China’s advancements in supercomputing the US government has proceeded to ban sales of high end Intel, Nvidia and AMD CPUs and GPUs for use in Chinese supercomputers.

This development came to light as Intel was preparing to ship high-end Xeon E5 Haswell based processors to refresh the Tianhe-2 supercomputer belonging to the Chinese government. The plan for the Tianhe-2 supercomputer was to upgrade its computational capability from 33 petaflops to 110 petaflops reports the BBC. However the US Department of Commerce barred Intel from shipping the processors required for the upgrade citing worries over nuclear weapons related research.

https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/eco...chinese-takeover-german-semiconductor-company

Citing a national security risk, President Barack Obama on Friday blocked a Chinese investor’s proposed takeover of Aixtron SE, a German maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, a rare move that drew objections from Beijing and complaints that the US was injecting politics into the deal.

Obama ordered Fujan Grand Chip to “fully and permanently abandon” its proposed acquisition of Aixtron SE’s California-based subsidiary, Aixtron, Inc. The decision upheld a recommendation from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, which reviews foreign purchases of US companies.

The decision threatens to jeopardise the larger deal, which is under scrutiny by Berlin and is valued at US$740 million.

 

[NoDak]

On another note, looking at Global R&D on the whole among these mega corporations is interesting. Lol @ Amazon the "retailer". Sure, that's not false or anything in terms of its origin and largest revenue stream but uh, it's also the biggest cloud computing company in the world and the people who work for the AWS arm aren't exactly making fulfillment center wages. Intel currently provides the chips that run all of their data centers but Amazon is already designing their own, which will be manufactured by the go-to pure play foundry TSMC.

Jeff Bezos has been scouring every corner of the planet for the greatest talent he can possibly acquire and Amazon is also about to become a major US defense contractor. I'm also wondering when he'll decide to liquidate more than $1 billion in Amazon stock he does every year to actually competitively fund his aerospace firm Blue Origin and go H2H with SpaceX.

 

[Fanu]

Tariffs on Chinese rare-earth minerals create a sticky problem for US competitors
Rare-earth minerals mined in the US need to be sent to China for processing.

https://arstechnica.com/information...rting-domestic-rare-earth-mineral-production/

However, most of the world's rare-earth processing facilities are in China, which also produces more than 90 percent of the world's rare-earth minerals. To develop its metals as cheaply as possible, Mountain Pass has first been shipping its ore to China, where the processed metals are then sold on the world market to makers of smartphones, laptops, and magnets that go into electric car motors and giant wind turbines.

But in September, President Trump placed a 25 percent tariff on Chinese goods entering the US, and China reacted by placing a tariff on US goods entering China. That means Mountain Pass is paying much more to have its ore made into useable products.

Now, the WSJ writes, the tariffs are eating into Mountain Pass' profit margins. "And that eats into the money Mountain Pass would be reinvesting into upgrading the facility so that it can actually process the rare earths itself, the only way to lessen dependence on the Chinese processors."