You know, an iphone sold in the us or europe might be designed in california and built in india using Semiconductors Made in taiwan from Raw Materials provided by china. So if any link in that supply chain breaks, it sets up big problems for the rest of the chain. And thats true for smartphones, as it is for pcs, and especially in Battery Production for those Electric Vehicles were buying more and more of. So what if one country decides to make it harderfor others to get hold of some of those critical Raw Materials . Well, thats what china announced just last month. Translation the Chinese Government implements i Export Controls on gallium and germanium related items in accordance with the law to ensure that they are used for legitimate purposes in order to safeguard National Security and better fulfil our international obligations. For quite some time now, the us side has been abusing Export Control measures to continuously strengthen its crackdown on chinas semiconductors and artific
to continuously strengthen its crackdown on china s semiconductors and artificially segregate the global semiconductor market. it is damaging global free trade, ignoring international economic and trade rules, and trampling on the principle of fair competition. those restrictions came into play from the 1st of august, and it doesn t look like a tit for tat response to the us stopping china from snapping up advanced american microprocessors. it s all part of the so called chip wars , but both japan and the netherlands have done the same. well, for his part, president biden wants to limit china s ability to develop new weapons and spy tools. now i ve mentioned gallium and germanium, but there s also a rush by countries to get their hands on 17 so called rare earth elements. now, despite the name, they re quite abundant, but they re concentrated in a handful of countries. and they re also a fast growing need for other minerals, such as copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium. and global deman