America is sooooo fucked

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        3 days ago

        That never actually says they’re selling at a loss, just that they’re not using the same market based pricing structure as American businesses.

        Looking at some other sources, it looks like they overproduced materials to keep prices low, since their primary potential competition refuses to use state money to fund production of critical resources.

        It’s manipulative, but it’s not selling at a loss.
        It’s difficult to feel sympathetic towards us when we refused to invest in the industry and shutdown the people responsible for helping develop the industry.
        If it was that critical we should have just spent to money to develop the industries domestically, which would have made lower prices moot.

        Being upset that a country that calls itself Communist doesn’t follow free market ideology seems foolish.

      • orange_squeezer@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        3 days ago

        Alright, but that’s not what the article says. I even went back and the read the first of the three-parter, where the businesses they interviewed confidently stated

        MP’s Rosenthal, USA Rare Earth’s Althaus and McCarthy all said their companies — or proposed companies — could withstand a price war brought on by China. Which fundamentally requires China not be selling at a loss, unless it’s actually cheaper to mine and refine rare earths in the US than it is in China.

        The closest thing to what you claimed was a snippet from the 100-day government review stating that “China does not operate on market principles of cost or pricing structure.” According to your own source, they never drove anyone out of business or sold at loss, they just happened to be the first to invest in rare earth production and processing, and nobody else wanted to build the facilities for it. At worst they provided subsidies, just like the US which also ignored market principles of cost or pricing structure, and allocated 400 million (Defense Production Act) to develop local mines and refineries.

        More than anything your article series blames a 1980 government regulation that requires US mines to seal mine leavings or risk liability for mishandling thorium.