Tariffs Catch-All

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As venture capitalist (and Trump suppoerter) Brad Gerstner said on CNBC a few months ago: "Don't start a full-scale trade war with China until the rare earths issue is taken care of/" (which is years away)
taken care of.

Trump has made at least a half dozen major strategic blunders dyring this trade war with the world. I doubt China wants to do this now, but they could easilty crassh our economy (semiconductors, batteries, autos, F35 and other defense weapos). China has more levferage thgan US so Trump will have to give them the deal they want.
 
So NVidia has a near monopoly on AI chips, for a number of reasons. China is countering that by saying nobody can use its rare earths to do any chip fabrication.

This is probably why the stock market crashed. I don't know the details here -- really, any details, as I do not know semiconductor manufacturing processes, economics or supply chains of rare earths, or anything else that might be able to assess the significance -- but one can suppose that TSM and other chip foundries or chip foundry equipment makers (LAM) might be in trouble here, long-term. Or even shorter term, who knows. Might is the operative word, but I can at least understand the market reaction.

It wasn't to tariff bullshit; it was to the very real export control system announced by China.
 
Also, if you are going to do a trade war with China, it is not smnart to do a trade war against the rest of the world at the same time....
Scoreboard
1. China fully used tjhe rare earth weapon for first time vs US
2. China has improvbed relations with India and other key players.
3. China had hoped to be worldd's dominant econ power by 2045 or 2050/ Trump's screw everyone isolationist bunglimg jas arguably moved that timetable up a decade
4. Under Biden, China boughts US soybeans, US had unrestricteed access tp rare eartjhs from China, and China got 2nd or 3rd generation chops from NBVDA
5. Now thanks to Trump, non e of #4 is true. And to fix things, will likely have to allow sale of higjly advanced NVDA chijps to China.

If you use the national security argument tp ban chip salesa to China, keep in mind that rare earths are used to make chios, F-35 and other advanced Pentagon systems. So China can use the nat; security argument if tjey want to.
 
nycfan said:


IMG_0187.jpeg
Click to expand...

I was listening to an interview the other day. They guy said that rare earths are not really that rare, it's the risk in processing and China is willing to take that risk. He mentioned much higher rates of cancer around the processing areas.

I thought that Africa also had lots of deposits of these, but it they all go through China for processing, were fucked if we don't get trump out of the way and start working on actual agreements or reinstating the previous.

Everything trump touches dies.
 
superrific said:
So NVidia has a near monopoly on AI chips, for a number of reasons. China is countering that by saying nobody can use its rare earths to do any chip fabrication.

This is probably why the stock market crashed. I don't know the details here -- really, any details, as I do not know semiconductor manufacturing processes, economics or supply chains of rare earths, or anything else that might be able to assess the significance -- but one can suppose that TSM and other chip foundries or chip foundry equipment makers (LAM) might be in trouble here, long-term. Or even shorter term, who knows. Might is the operative word, but I can at least understand the market reaction.

It wasn't to tariff bullshit; it was to the very real export control system announced by China.
Click to expand...
Yes, the markets Wed through Friday last week were brutal to my hopes of someday retiring.
 
UNCatTech said:
I was listening to an interview the other day. They guy said that rare earths are not really that rare, it's the risk in processing and China is willing to take that risk. He mentioned much higher rates of cancer around the processing areas.

I thought that Africa also had lots of deposits of these, but it they all go through China for processing, were fucked if we don't get trump out of the way and start working on actual agreements or reinstating the previous.

Everything trump touches dies.
Click to expand...
hir.harvard.edu

Not So “Green” Technology: The Complicated Legacy of Rare Earth Mining

"As much as technology is hailed as the panacea of the future, most of these innovations have a dirty underside: production of these new technologies requires companies to dig up what are referred to as rare earth elements (REEs)."
hir.harvard.edu hir.harvard.edu

“Overall, for every ton of rare earth, 2,000 tons of toxic waste are produced.”
 
www.theguardian.com

One of Europe’s biggest farm machinery firms halts US exports over ‘hidden’ tariffs

Krone says ‘alarming’ levies on about 400 goods including hair dryers and combine harvesters have forced pause
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Asked what his US customers were saying, he said: “Many of them are surprised. When they saw Mr Trump talk about tariffs, they got the impression that the foreign companies are paying these tariffs, but what they now figure out is that it is the customer who pays.

“If the farmers’ prices go up, then at the end of the day it is the US citizen who goes into Walmart or Target who has to pay more for their daily goods.”

Providing a paper trail that essentially proves to the US that every nail, nut or bolt did not originate in China is a bureaucratic nightmare.

The EU’s trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, told a conference in Dublin last week that the new paperwork was “very, very challenging” and he has written to the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to address them.

Bernie Hart, the vice-president of customs and business development at Flexport, says the new requirements are in the “top tier” of complexity his business has dealt with as they “require new, granular data, country of melt and pour (steel), and country of primary smelt and cast (aluminium), often down to a stock-taking unit” level which can track minutiae such as colour and size of a product.
 
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