Start dictation.
What about the Rare Earth elements?
Normally we hardly ever hear anything about this subject. At one time they talk about it in your chemistry class or in your physics class and then you probably forgot whatever it was the teacher said. On the periodic scale of elements there are some 17 items that are listed as Rare Earth.
Are they really rare? And Freddie you find them? Actually, they are not so rare, and they are everywhere. The hard part is making them appear enough for industrial use. In their raw forms they are often combined with many other things and so you have to have a process that separates these elements from all the other stuff.
So what is the big fuss? It is because China is presently the biggest producer and the biggest stockpile or of these elements that are used throughout industry for making a wide variety of things that are part of the modern age.
Anything that's made out of metal or chemicals will probably need at some point a little bit of the rare earth stuff. Not much is needed, a little bit goes a long way. So what is the problem?
As you know there is currently quite a bit of tension between the United States and China over trade issues and someone brought up the idea that maybe China would crack down on export of the aforementioned rare earth elements. That is unlikely and even if they did it would not have any immediate impact on current industrial production.
United States has a large stockpile of this material and there is no reason to believe that it'll get used up in the near future. Also, Brazil is one of the countries that also produces and stores this kind of stuff. So even without the Chinese there still is another way to get the stuff. Here in the United States it is no longer being produced or refined because there is little interest in it.
And yes, Russia also produces it and has a large storehouse. It is very unlikely that Russia and China together would get a firm grip on the worlds supply of rare earth elements. It's just not going to happen. So don't worry about it.
The end of dictation.
