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U.S.-China trade war sparks worries about rare earth minerals

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By ANITA SNOW

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There is a U.S. rare minerals mine in California.

U.S. mine stopped production in 2002.

Since then, Mountain Pass has focused on achieving greater autonomy with a $1.7 billion separation system set to go online late next year that would allow it skip sending rare earths ore to China for that step.

It costs a lot to process the rate earths. When prices of rare earths went up 300% after restrictions in 2012 over the Senkaku islands, many companies attempted to enter the market but ended up going bankrupt. That said it’s best that the US has its own system.

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Canada has lots of these.  Just need to pay more is all.

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The U.S. relies on China because of cheaper costs. It seems obvious that countries outside of China should have backup sources for rare-earth minerals, whatever the cost.

On the other hand, only one year and seven months until the cause of the current trade tensions goes away.....hopefully......and it would take at least that long to build alternative sources of rare earth minerals.

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America soes not use rare earth metals much. But they are used to manufacture products in China sent to USA. There are productive mines for Rare Earth metals in USA but were closed due to environmental concerns.

Historically when America cannot find a reserve needed the ingenious engineers find a better and cheaper replacement . Necessity is the mother of invention.

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