There are no export restrictions on the export of items actually made from rare earths.
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There are two good reasons to boost efforts to recycle all metals, not just rare earths.
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Rare earths are exotic materials used in everything from BlackBerrys to radars to hybrid vehicles.
As a result, there is almost no domestic production of rare earths in the United States.
China produces the vast majority of two particularly important rare earths, dysprosium (99%) and neodymium (95%).
Iron, uranium and rare earths lie underground, but opinions differ over how to extract them.
The strange thing, and thus the opportunity, is that rare earths are not in fact rare.
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Meanwhile, investors can assume that demand for rare earths in the near future will outpace supply.
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The global rare earths market is perhaps 150, 000 tonnes a year of mixed oxides.
The average hybrid vehicle, such as the Toyota Prius, contains 20-25 pounds of rare earths.
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China will continue to export, and will manage rare earths based on WTO rules.
Mixes the mercury and rare earths that make metal halide and CFL lamps work.
Chinese mines lowered prices on rare earths in the 1990s and essentially drove out all competition.
My first example was the Chinese near monopoly on the production of rare earths.
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Rare earths metals play a large role in current modern technology, cruise missiles and other weapons systems.
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Rare earths prices alone are also an issue not only with volatility, but with their general cost.
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According to the US Geological Survey, there may be deposits of rare earths in 14 US states.
In this case of rare earths and dual-use magnet technology, no quick or easy resolution is likely.
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If you want to manufacture products with rare earths, you will almost have to move to China.
Yet as Ford and other are discovering, many modern technologies need not rely on rare earths at all.
Then the question becomes whether the rare earths mining business is approaching the end of its cyclical downturn.
To recycle a passage from Matthew 5:5: Blessed are the geeks, for they share inherit the rare earths.
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Rare earths are 17 chemically similar elements crucial to making many hi-tech products, such as phones and PCs.
Despite unstable prices throughout 2011, there is some expectation that rare earths prices might become more stable in 2012.
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For the restrictions are on the export of rare earths as rare earths.
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From the start, the strategy failed to account for the progress of innovation away from dependence on rare earths.
China consumes some 65% of the world's rare earths, Reuters reported last year, compared to 25% a decade earlier.
Either scenario would be good news for Molycorp, as one of the major non-Chinese producers of these rare earths.
China currently produces 97% of the world's rare earths, vital in the manufacture of mobile phones and other high-tech products.
That is, either the mixed rare earth concentrates or as the separated individual salts or metals of the rare earths.
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