The administration’s harsh regulatory environment is harming yet more sectors of the American economy, rare earth minerals mining and electronics manufacturing. We use these minerals every day in cell phones, high tech industries and leading edge medical tech, even jet engines. DoD uses them in some of our most sophisticated information systems and weapons. American businesses want to purchase these minerals from domestic sources, and the US is among the world’s leading sources of rare earth minerals. A huge new source for one rare earth element, niobium, was announced in Nebraska just this week.
But:
It currently takes up to five times longer to get approval to mine for minerals here than it does in other countries, driving investment, production and jobs away from America. From the time a project request is submitted to the time a final ruling is made, a decade can slip by and paperwork as much as 6 feet high filed and reviewed – repeatedly. Not surprisingly, when investors are ready to move on a project, they turn to countries that are ready to do business, rather than tackle the Byzantine regulatory review process here in the United States.
One of those countries is China, which also possesses large quantities of these minerals. American businesses are finding it easier to do business with the ChiComs than with the American government to get these minerals. Democrat Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania writes that China is leveraging its position (and the Obama administration’s regulatory hostility to mining) to hold a monopoly.
How does China maintain its control over rare earth elements? For one thing, it controls production. The only mine currently producing rare earths is based in China. They also ensure that most of the supplies remain in China by deliberately limiting exports through strict quotas and stiff duties. These illegal measures operate to chill exports and drive global prices through the roof.
As a consequence, today American manufacturers struggle with ever-escalating costs of production, compromising the ability of American companies to compete and create jobs.
One example is the tungsten market:
The world tungsten supply is dominated by Chinese production, with 85 percent of the world’s supply mined in China. In recent years, China has been steadily raising the prices on these products, which directly impact manufacturers’ costs of production. These companies can’t be expected to continue to compete on the current terrain.
So we must ask — what do we do for our manufacturers? These are the exact trade practices China committed to give up when they joined the World Trade Organization. We have to level the playing field. That is why I have encouraged swift action on multiple fronts to stop China’s cheating.
That makes sense. So does getting our own regulations into line with reality.
Rare earth minerals are strategic economic and national security assets.
China’s hold on the rare-earth minerals market has raised concerns that the U.S. is too reliant on the country for materials that are necessary for complex weapons systems. The Pentagon last fall, in a report to Congress, warned lawmakers about the U.S. military’s dependence on the raw materials and recommended alternatives to Chinese supplies.
We have an alternative. The United States has an estimated $6.2 trillion in rare earth minerals under our own soil. But our own government’s policies plus Chinese cheating force our high end industries to go to our competitor to get those necessary minerals.
This is regulatory madness.
Maybe Obama can ask the Chinese to give him some space until after the election, then he can be more flexible, like throwing Taiwan under the bus….
This is actually part of the Obama National Security Plan. By making it prohibitively difficult to mine rare earths here, we are cleverly depleting China’s natural resources. By some time around the third quarter of the century, when China decides to call in our staggering outstanding debt, we will be the only ones with a large stock of rare earths, which we can then use to force China to forgive what we owe.
You’re just not thinking in the long term.
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Adding to this demise of America’s and American’s energy and strategic earth needs is the following:
1) From March 2010 to March 2011 = 16 known “green” enterprises, with government loans, grants, loan guarantees, municipal waivers, unaccounted for losses were responsible for $1.1 trillion dollars frittered away.
2) From March 2010 to March 2011 = more than 172 coal fired electricity producing plants have been shut down by the EPA, taken “off-line,” no longer on america’s power grid. Countless thousands of jobs lost. Communities wiped out.
3) Coal mines shut down by the EPA number in the 10 or 20. More job losses and disasterous effects for many communities across all of USA.
4) Renewable energy sources requirements for immediate future (2013) will increase costs by 32% (reported 3/17/2012)
Some facts;
29 states adopted new standards including D.C. & Puerto Rico
05 states with highest rates: Hawaii= 28.7cents/kilowatt hour
Commecticut=19.25cents/kilowatt hour
New York = 18.74cents/kilowatt hour
New Jersey = 16.57cents/kilowatt hour
New Hampshire = 16.32cents/kilowatt hour
2010 indusrial rates increased to 30.7%
2010 commercial rates increased to 27.4%
2010 residential rate increases were 31.9% than in 21 other states.
2010 state without renewable energy source requirements = Idaho 7.99% increase.
Conclusion: energy cost projection for 2012 and beyond will be 32% or higher as promised by Mr. Obama. God Bless America. Wake-up!
That “harsh regulatory environment” is consistent with the domestic left’s desire to reduce America’s military power, economic prowess, and cultural influence.
Don’t be fooled. The Obama administration is not inept (at least in this regard). It knows precisely what it is doing.
Whining that the Chinese are ‘cheating’ because they are choosing who to sell their own resources to is a bit pathetic. The Chinese are looking after their own property, if they don’t want to sell their natural resources that’s their own business.
If you don’t like it, just get on and mine your own, don’t whine and complain, it just makes you look feeble.
So let me get this straight. Canada was willing to sell us all the oil we wanted, at below market rates, and was willing to build a pipeline at their own expense to get this cheap oil to us, in the process paying for tens of thousands of US jobs. This project was under review for 3 yrs, while the half a billion wasted on Solyndra was reviewed for one day. And Obama says no. So now we pay higher prices forever, while the oil goes to China.
In the meantime, our justice dept purposely allows thousands of guns to go to Mexican drug cartels, without telling mexico, so those cartels can go across our open borders to kill our border guards, and also offend our other nearby ally, Mexico.
This is called smart diplomacy, and forward looking economic policy, and anybody who objects is a flat earther. Makes perfect sense to me, not.
These are just a few of a long list of reasons most of the people in the Obama administration need to be introduced to a rope and tree. Won’t happen, but it should.