The US imports about 75% of it's oil, that's where the main problem lies.
There are critical imports of
-
*Cobalt - from the Congo / Zaire - multiple wars fought over this
*Tantalum - Australia, China, Africa, Malaysia, Thailand
*Tungsten - China 75% S. Korea, Vietnam, other places
*Lithium gets mined in Chile and Argentina and the US, then sent to Japan to become batteries.
*Tin - China 43% Indonesia 43% Peru ,Malaysia ,Bolivia Now has expanded use in solder because of the stupid European RoHS rules.
Titanium - Russia, also US sources.
Nickel - Russia, Canada, Australia, Indonesia
Bauxite (Jamaica) and Aluminum (many places, including China)
Copper - from Chile, US, Peru, Indonesia
Steel - Many places, but a lot from China
Uranium - from Canada, Kazakhstan (ore) and Russia (concentrated form)
Chromium - South Africa, India, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, Finland
I think that is all the critical ones.
All the other elements (except REs) fall into 3 categories -
1) US is the or a major producer Helium, Molybdenum, Beryllium and a few others ... and copper.
2) US not a major producer, but many producers world wide with lots ore, not shortage. A good example of this is Zinc. It is cheap, because there are a lot of fairly good ore bodies all over the world, and it is a by product copper or lead mining .
In this category are Zinc, Lead, Antimony, Mercury, Bismuth, Manganese, Vanadium (by product of some Uranium ores).
An analogy -
Some could corner the market on wheat. With the above elements, it would be like trying to corner the market on crabgrass. Every other lawn has plenty.
3) Key byproducts - Indium (used for LCDs) and Gallium (used for Leds) are both Copper byproducts, and Chile is a major supplier. Also Germaium, which has been replaced by silicon.
So there are maybe 5 elements which might be vulnerable -
Co, Ta, W, Li, Sn.
And China has leverage over Tungsten W and Tin Sn.
Rare Earths Production over time -
en.wikipedia.org
China currently produces about 97 % of world RE
There are deposits that have produced in India, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia. There are some large Canadian deposits.
The Brazil and Indian deposits are placer sands, so maybe they can be dug up, run through a sluice to separate the heavy sands (just like gold) and then the heavy sands sent to Japan to be refined.
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Back in the Cold War, the US had stockpiles of every critical mineral, and kept a number of mines going to provide back up supplies in case all foreign trade was stopped. |
