[westiseast]

Perhaps it’s churlish to mention, but...

China was happy to ignore environmental standards in order to corner the market in rare earth minerals. American miners couldn’t compete because they were already “internalizing” the environmental costs, and were priced out of the market.

Once China had put everyone else out of business (and blocked foreign businesses from mining inside China), it started not only reducing output to increase prices, but also started to very slowly apply environmental standards it previously ignored.

The Chinese government also showed how willing they were to now use this almost complete monopoly for political purposes in 2010.

And now in 2019 they’re calling for consumers and global companies to contribute to the costs of “internalizing” the pollution?

[titzer]

Now you realize how the game theory of economics is fundamentally at odds with the natural world and sustainability. It always pays to defect now, and the loudest voices are usually the rich players who moan about economic growth and "burdensome regulations". Mining and logging in the US was very much like this before regulation, but that was on a much smaller scale, with simpler technology and less energy available to scale up. My advice: pay attention closely to environmental policy and don't let regulations be rolled back in the name of growth!

[dustingetz]

The resolution to the economic prisoner’s dilemma is religion, which evolved to coordinate the globally shared values needed to defeat a backstab/backstab situation. For example “thou shalt not murder” is win/win.

[anthonypasq]

in what world does murdering someone have equivalently inconspicuous externalities as burning fossil fuels?

[earthstabber]

ours

[wayoutthere]

Policy doesn’t even need to be rolled back much of the time: they can just stall progress while they figure loopholes around the existing policies. Which has been the GOP strategy for almost 40 years.

[bluGill]

Don't blame the GOP, both parties have been doing it for the last 200 years (the republican party isn't that old, but the Whigs before them as well). They target different areas to stall progress. Sometimes the stalling is good, sometimes is bad - and it is often a matter of opinion which is good or bad.

[wayoutthere]

I mean, sure; the democrats do some of this but the entire GOP strategy over the last 40 years has been to bring the government to a standstill to avoid passing anything.

The GOP strategy succeeds in the case of “passing GOP-sponsored laws” and in the case of “doing absolutely nothing”. The Democrat strategy only succeeds in the “passing Dem-sponsored laws” case — it disheartens the Dem base to see an ineffective government while confirming the pre-held anti-government bias of the GOP base.

Also, I would avoid this argumentation approach related to modern politics in the future; “whataboutism” which is widely recognized as a GOP propaganda technique. The Progressive agenda is not actually about getting even, it’s about fixing a system that has oppressed the middle and working class into a rent-seeking economy with little social mobility. We don’t care that it’s “always been done this way;” the “old guard” of the Democratic Party is only slightly less of a problem than the GOP.

We’re trying to fix the systemic issues in our electoral process, which also includes the Democrat “superdelegate” nomination process designed to weed out populist candidates. Like it or not, we’re in a populist era...

[tracker1]

Another point worth mentioning is exceptions to environmental treaties... they, like any loophole, will be abused.

[RHSeeger]

It's not churlish at all.

> Environmental experts and local officials say the cost of the cleanup should not be shouldered by the Chinese government alone.

The Chinese companies and government knew what they were doing and benefited greatly from their actions. I would argue that they are exactly the ones that should be shouldering the the cost... alone.

[yorwba]

Seems like you agree then that the cost should not be shouldered by the government alone, but also by the companies who benefited.

The article mentions that most mining operations were illegal until recently and the Longnan government only managed to shut down the last of them in 2017. Some local officials probably lined their pockets by looking the other way, but the central government likely didn't see any of those profits.

Now that the industry is controlled by state-owned companies, stricter regulations were introduced, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect if the government were willing to tolerate the pollution in exchange for profit.

[tim333]

>As far back as 1992, Deng Xiaoping stressed that “the Middle East has oil; China has rare earths.” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevehanke/2019/06/27/chinas-ra... )

The government probably knew what was going on and encouraged it.

[westiseast]

The central government almost certainly ‘profited’ (ie. benefited) from this whole situation.

1) Strategically, it cornered the market and has been able to use that dominance to great geopolitical effect.

2) Economic development: environmental regulation and ‘fair’ competition with foreign firms would’ve held back the industry in China, costing jobs and the bottom line for the Chinese state. The breakneck economic growth has been achieved in large part because the Chinese state put economic development ahead of all other concerns.

3) Internal politics. The basic balance between local and central government since the 1990s were that local governments had to fend for themselves financially, and in return central government wouldn’t bog them down with regulation and oversight. The lack of environmental regulation of what is a nationally and strategically vital industry reflects that balance.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

They didn't benefit though, they were clear losers.

[ptah]

that sounds exactly like the strategy used by large corporations like Amazon and Starbucks to rid the marketplace of smaller competitors. Things like elaborate tax structures and subsidies not available to small businesses https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crickhowell-welsh-town...

[adrianN]

So now American miners can start being cost competitive again.

[arcticfox]

> So now American miners

They don't exist anymore though. According to Australia, all of the rare earth expertise is in China now, so it's not as simple as just reopening, and in fact might be very difficult

[bluGill]

This is a changeable situation. Expertise can be obtained. We have plenty of experts in Engineering, physics and chemistry. Everything about mining and processing comes down to those. Experts in the field know exactly what is important to know and and won't try something that seems good but doesn't work out. However there is no reason a few years of investment can't create experts of our own from the basic principals we already have.

Note that we have experts in mining and refining scattered around the country. While the specifics of rare earths are different from iron or gold, many details are close enough for round one, from there is is just improving the processes.

[adventured]

The US Mountain Pass mine in California is operational. They send all of the output to China for processing. That will change in a few years as the US brings new domestic processing facilities online. The US chemical company, Blue Line Corp, has partnered with Australia's Lynas to build a facility in Texas. They're forecasting two years from now to have it running. That facility should enable the most critical / sensitive domestic demand to become entirely independent of China.

[adrianN]

A few years ago there were no Chinese miners and they managed to get some.

[henntipular]

Canada has been training the Chinese on how to mine since before the Canadians had railroads!

[agumonkey]

It's "always" like that. Someone lowers the bar to grab the market until collapse. Annoying.

[blunte]

Welcome to unregulated capitalism.

[mc32]

That person, looks like they have some environmental role, seems to be talking about future mining. That future mining should internalize the externalities in its price, which seems fair enough.

I don’t think they are asking companies to help with their current cleanup. (That would expose them to similar claims in other countries which serve their industries).

But your major point is right that they were more than happy to dump rare earths to corner a market and are now suffering the consequences of that policy.

[lsd5you]

Which is why tariffs make a lot of sense. Yet there has been this massive movement of reaganite/right wing tariffs bashing for decades now - where the mantra of tariffs causing economic harm is mindlessly repeated. You would think they didn't generate tax revenue (and thus reduce taxes/improve economics elsewhere), and where not easier to collect than many other taxes.

I'm not denying the dangers. I can see how countries could fall into populist/short term positions or get involved in harmful escalating tit-for-tat increases, but this is a strawman when it comes to having moderate tariffs.

[tomp]

I agree with you. Strict environmental and employment standards in US and EU make no sense if companies can just relocate to China and pollute & abuse people there.

I'm a strong proponent of "fair" trade (not "free" trade) for this reason - I'm OK with production moving elsewhere because salaries are lower, there's more resources and/or better climate for production, but it's completely unacceptable if it's done to skirt local environmental/employment/anti-corruption laws, and should be taxed heavily.

I don't quite understand your criticism of "right wing tariff bashing" though - Trump's the one who's bent on introducing tariffs, whereas past governments (including left-wing Obama) were happy to play along...

[lsd5you]

I'd argue that trump is a break from those past dogmas and regulatory capture (to some extent). Certainly he wasn't approved by the media - who are controlled by big business via advertisements.

Trump is rightwing in the same way that the german national socialists were right wing. i.e. Not really economically, or at least big business has to be aligned with the nation. I am not drawing an equivalence - he is to the Nazis what Bernie Sanders is to the Soviets i.e. not comparable in scale at all.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Honestly if country A can make a product X% cheaper than country B because of having less stringent regulation (be it environmental, quality, labor laws...) it's just logical to me that country B should impose a tariff of X% on that product.

I'm not much of a free-market capitalism, but if you have to be, then a free market is not a free market if not everyone is playing by the same rules, right?

[tim333]

That sounds sensible but the devil's in the details. How do you figure how much of X% is environmental? Do you insist the Chinese have similar pay and conditions for workers? How do you check where the rare earths you are buying in say Singapore actually came from?

[yoz-y]

In an ideal world some entity could force country A to include externalities such as environment in the price of the goods.

[lsd5you]

Which is why precautionary and moderate tariffs are suitable, with some discretion for cases where things are especially egregious and/or where the economics are different (low margin vs luxury goods need different levels of tariff).

Probably ideally tariff levels should not directly made by the executive, but rather some kind of review system - (although quangos are another problem).

[bin0]

It's not to prevent a competitive industry which can just produce something cheaper but also to prevent governments which actively use banned practices to give their nation an unfair advantage. More here:

https://twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1094717028009689089

https://twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1085193754787512320

[bluGill]

I'm a free market capitalist. The response we give is if country A is cheaper we should let them do it and concentrate on what we can do well instead. Even if county A is better in everything, they have limited resources so they are better off buying from us something they could do better just so they can concentrate on what they do well while we get good at something we can do but not as well. In the end the efficiency of scale allowed be working together is better for both of us.

It probably makes sense to ignore the above for things like guns and ammo - in case the other country decides to use this monopoly on military supplies against us in war. This is a worst case though, and is rarely required in the real world.

[ambicapter]

> This is a worst case though, and is rarely required in the real world.

Is it though? We're currently talking about the national security concerns coming from frickin magnets. We could have the same conversation for soybeans or steel or manure. There are a lot of things that are crucial in a country's functioning.

[aoeusnth1]

That argument assumes that country A's economy does not affect lives of citizens in the purchasing country (B?). Global warming, among other effects, violates this assumption. Carbon pricing + tariffs on carbon make complete sense even in the free market capitalist mental framework.