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Biden Planning Major New China Investment Curbs
Under intense pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, the Biden administration is poised to announce new measures aimed at restricting investment in China.
The balloon fiasco sharped Congress's focus on an issue that already had the closest thing to bipartisan support you can hope to see inside the Beltway these days -- namely, curbing the flow of US investment dollars to the world's second-largest economy.
The premise is straightforward. China remains a command economy, and every
That’s the official national security explanation. But more than once the other motivation is acknowledged = stifle the growth of the Chinese economy in general.
My mother taught me it is stupid to cut off your nose to spite your face. We’ve been doing this for all the decades I can still remember. Back in the Carter Admin, I believe, we weaponized our food exports by refusing to send food to folks we didn’t like even if they willing to pay for it (did we think that’s what Jesus would do, starve the hungry?). People found other folks to buy from and our overseas sales took years to recover. Meanwhile we had to pay subsidies to farmers, a tax on us, because they lost much of their revenue. We do this over and over and it really became serious starting with his Trumpness, copied by his successor. Don’t we get it? China has 1.5 bil people with a brain. Admittedly, these folks are not all geniuses but if even if only 2% are, that’s 30,000,000 very smart people! Doesn’t anyone get that their geniuses are just as smart as ours? I know they are, I’ve taught them. My school has two very successful MBA programs running in China. Not only don’t we get income from not working with them but we don’t get to know what they know. We never get to share in their reactions to what they learn from us. For many years the US gained much strength, not only from our resources, but also from what we took from others. We were pretty independent but as our way of life became increasingly expensive we were forced to work with others. We may find rare earths we need for modern society in the US eventually, but China processes more of that metal than everyone else put together and they have more than anyone else. Where the US was in the 1950s doesn’t count anymore. Any kid can tell you what counts now. All this messing around with Xi is political crap. Come on, a powerless balloon, with no controls drifting aimlessly here and there is a major threat? Be serious. We look ridiculous throwing a hissy fit about a balloon. When we actually mattered to the world we would send their foreign minister a stern diplomatic note and set up a meeting to yell at them in person. Now we cancel the meeting and threaten to do stuff to them they can already overcome. Oh yeah, we do have Marjorie to yell at Biden in her prom dress so shake, shake with fear everyone. Do we really understand how stupid we look to the world right now? More nose cutting ….
Wow. well put, Prof Lucky.
(FYI – the only listed non-Chinese rare earth minerals refiner I’ve found is Lynas in Australia. MP in the Us is building one, but at the moment they still have to send the ore they mine over to the PRC to be refined.)
As a past investor in Lynas my understanding is the refining was happening in Malaysia. Also rare earths are mis-named they are found many places in the earths crust, the ones from china were just the cheapest so nobody bothered to find other sources until the last few years.