scte long read
Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose and Recover
back to the US begins to make some sense. Van Dyke raised her eyebrows. “I know it’s basically sacrilege in Europe to say Trump’s right about anything, but on this, Trump’s been right for a very long time.” This didn’t happen in a vacuum; Trump’s policy was the result of years of hard lobbying by Silicon Valley and Elon Musk in particular, all of whom saw the writing on the wall well before the rest of us and certainly before US Intelligence by the looks of it. However, the damage is done. Fifty years of strategy, massive investment and operating at a loss means China has the advantage and debate continues whether the US can be the hare to China’s tortoise. Time will tell. Circular economy It isn’t all about mining and processing, however. Victoria D’Arcy and James George are both UK-based economy experts concerned with the finite nature of the rare earths left on the planet, and what we are doing with the amount of existing rare earth minerals. Those will be already mined, processed and languishing in obsolete hardware in kitchen drawers, charity shops and landfill all over the planet in staggering quantities; it remains a persistent worry, as well as a gigantic, lucrative, missed opportunity. James George told Broadband, “A survey has just been completed on electronic waste just in the US, and they had calculated that in the legacy equipment in our homes - phones and laptops and electronics - in the US alone there was enough lithium ion in the batteries and components sitting in our cupboards,
One critic on Reddit was particularly scathing about the imbalance of power. “None of this is new. It’s decades-old information that yellow-bellied politicians have been ignoring since the 90s. Enriching Communist China would set us on this path. You’d have to live with your head in the sand to not realise what China would do with that newfound power and money.” “They don’t want anyone else to know their secret sauce. That said, it’s not that hard. It’s not nuclear fission. It’s chemistry. It’s material science and chemistry. China started with sweatshops, but it went into mining, then into energy. China builds more nuclear power plants every year than we’ve built in the West in the last 10.” Van Dyke was firm on this point. “I don’t blame China for what they’ve done. They have a long-term, intelligent business plan that was economically rational, and invested and worked hard. They built the factories, and they built the relationships. They learned how to be good miners, and they learned how to process materials. They spent the money over long periods of time without expecting immediate returns in order to build a solid, secure industry. And the rest of the world is having a serious problem competing with that.” Broadband Journal turned to Chris Miller for some perspective. Chris detailed the semiconductor supply chain and the West’s reliance on China and Taiwan in his excellent book on the subject, Chip War – The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (Simon & Schuster, 2022). “Tech companies are beginning to focus on China’s dominance of rare earth processing as well as processing of other important minerals like gallium and germanium,” he said. ”However, China benefits from several factors. Energy prices are low. Environmental rules are lax. And because it dominates global production, the Chinese government can reduce the world price of these materials whenever it likes, making foreign production unprofitable. Without action from Western governments, it will be difficult to reduce China’s market dominance.”
All of the above means Mr Trump’s determination to bring manufacturing
May 2025 Volume 47 No.2
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