“The elements of rare heavy earths are added as a kind of spices, a doping agent, to maintain the magnetism of the magnet at high temperature. It also improves resistance to corrosion and longevity of the magnet, “explains Seaver Wang, director of the climate and energy team at the Breakthrough Institute, a reflection group based in Oakland.
Beyond magnets, these rare earth elements can also serve a range of objectives, such as strengthening metals, improving radar systems and even the treatment of cancer. Without them, in many cases, technological infrastructure and general public gadgets will not be able to operate at the same level, but they will always keep their basic functions. “Wind turbines will simply be out of service 10 years earlier; Electric vehicles will not last so long, ”explains Wang.
Lange should that the impact of loss of access to heavy elements of rare earths would be somewhat manageable for American companies. “A place where this rare land is located in your car is located in the engines that shoot and down your window,” explains Lange. “There are ways to just manage certain things that are not as fun, such as kill your windows by hand.”
Exhaust and bypass solutions
In the past, China’s critical mineral restrictions have not worked very well. One of the reasons is that American companies wishing to buy rare earth minerals can simply go through an intermediate country. For example, Belgium has become a possible re -export center which seems to pass Germanium – one of the Beijing minerals initially limited in 2023 – from China to the United States, according to commercial data. Given that the European Union has much closer links with Washington than with Beijing, it is difficult for the Chinese government to effectively stop this trade flow.
Another sign that China’s export controls have not been very effective is that the price of critical minerals has only increased slightly since the implementation of policies, which indicates that the supply levels have remained stable. “Everything they did in 2023 has not really changed the status quo” on the market, explains Lange.
But the last restrictions of China are more extensive, and there is already evidence that things could be different this time. Companies that need these elements have been forced to buy them from other companies with existing private stocks, which have become more precious in recent weeks. “There is a very high increase in prices to be written on stocks at the moment,” says Baskaran, citing conversations that she had with rare land merchants.
In the long term, however, companies can find technological solutions to deal with a potential shortage of rare earth minerals. Tesla, for example, announced in 2023 that it had reduced its use in its EV engines by 25%, and he planned to get rid of it completely in the future. The automaker did not specify what he would use instead, but experts speculate that he could turn to other types of magnets who do not depend on rare earths.
Where are the American mines?
Although the rare earth, or critical minerals in general, are often cited with semiconductors, because the industries that the United States wishes the most, the challenges associated with each of them are very different.
Unlike the manufacture of advanced semiconductors, which requires the use of sophisticated machines worth hundreds of millions of dollars and building extremely complicated factories, critical minerals are not so difficult to produce. The technologies involved to extract and refine them are mature and the United States and Canada have great natural deposits of some of them. But the mining industry has been expelled from the West because it does not generate much value and is also extremely polluting.
