May 14, 2021
From the US to Europe, there is growing awareness that an over-reliance on China for rare earths presents economic and national security risks. One high-stakes arena that could shape the trajectory of the global climate economy is the rare earth permanent magnet industry.
What are rare earth magnets?
Permanent magnets are so called because they maintain their magnetic properties even when exposed to a magnetic field. Put another way, the magnets have permanent magnetic fields.
There are four major types of permanent magnets: two that have no rare earths in them, and two that do. Rare earths are a group of 17 metals, classified into lights and heavies depending on their atomic number, and are crucial to the manufacturing of high-tech products.
April 23, 2021
In 2010, the Japanese government had a rude wakeup call: Beijing had abruptly cut off all rare earth exports to Japan over a fishing trawler dispute. Tokyo was almost entirely dependent on China for the critical metals, and the embargo exposed this acute vulnerability.
The silver lining to this incident, which sent global rare earth prices skyrocketing before they crashed down as the speculative bubble popped, is that it forced Japan to rethink its critical raw materials policy. A decade on, it has significantly reduced its dependance on China for rare earths, and continues to diversify its supply chain by investing in projects around the world. Its model may have lessons for the US, which desperately wants to break China’s rare earths monopoly. Rare earths are a group of 17 metals that are crucial in the manufacturing of high-tech products.