China is banning all critical material exports, not just controlling it. This is a game changing move.
The West has to find alternatives to source for critical items like antimony, gallium and germanium. Their semiconductor manufacturing, weapons production and even plane production will be affected.
China dominates in the processing and control of all the essential minerals which it can use for retaliatory purposes when needed. How essential these are for Western manufacturing cannot be underestimated. We all have seen how cheap energy suffocation is turning Germany and the EU into lame duck economies. And China and India are benefitting from all the sanctions imposed by the West against Russia.
What China is doing by banning the export of critical materials is left to be seen. But it will not be pretty for sure.
Anonymous
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The USA and the West needs to produce weapons, having exhausted even their stockpiles fueling the needs of Ukraine and Israel. There is also the impending conflict in East Asia that needs vast number of weapons. Talk about Russia exhausting its weapons manufacturing propaganda, when Russia has all the essential critical materials at its disposal.
Essential materials for weapons like gallium, germanium and antimony, are dominated by China, which is the main source of supplies. The USA had tried to overcome the shortages by trying to extract rare earth elements in Outer Mongolia, which failed due to China's refusal to allow shipments using its Tianjin port. China is not that stupid to allow that to happen. China could have done even worse to Mongolia by allowing Tianjin Port to be used by Mongolia by first luring it to set up its extraction facilities and then sabotaging Mongolia later with disallowing Tianjin ports to be used. Now Outer Mongolia, knowing its frailty in playing geopolitics, is trying to be chummy once again towards China.
Vietnam is another rich source of rare earth elements which the USA tried to exploit. Which is why the USA is trying to be chummy with the Vietnamese, a country the USA tried to destroy earlier. Are the Vietnamese really that stupid like the Europeans?
Rare earth is abundant worldwide, but extracting and setting up refining outlets is a very costly affair and takes a long time. Australia, itself a rich source of rare earth, but is trying to export its toxic refining regime to other countries, like Malaysia, which created radioactive problems in the country.
The situation is so dire for the USA that it was reported earlier that the USA is setting up recycling facilities to extract those essential elements from washing machines, discarded electronic devices and solar panels. How that is progressing is unknown and at what cost.
The earlier China de-couple from the USA and EU, the better for China. Cutting off USA imports is the right move for a start. Next is banning export of all essential materials for manufacturing.
Growing and encouraging more trade among BRICS countries is a big move for -de-dollarization. All done without using the US$ of course. Let Trump erect all the tariffs he wants, as without trade with the USA, it is all nothing but rhetoric.
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