[KlaraNovikoffaZ]

Well, forget Mr. Morley's liberal New Deal propagandacrap for a moment...

Trade wars between any two nations have economic impacts, including socialist countries.


Several members of the Communist Party in China are trying to pass a total export ban on all lanthanides (Rare Earth metals), such as ytterbium which is used in computer monitors.

The real reason for banning the export of the raw materials is to force all Western manufacturing to relocate to China that requires the use of these restricted materials to export out of the country.


If those guys actually succeed with their ban, then I don't see why we shouldn't compensate either export ban by imposing an import tariff on all the finished goods that we have to buy from China made with the same raw materials.

At least that way the income potential is neutralized in two ways... consumers curtail their demand and this produces two cash flows that rebalance the trade of the raw material between the two countries; effectively neutralizing their policy and is a deterrent against raw material blackmail since it stops the Chinese from benefiting from a price monopoly [despite what some people fear, there are ore deposits of many of these elements elsewhere].


All the trade ban from China will do is accelerate innovation to get around the ban. For LCD displays which we love to use, this means people will switch to the better OLED displays which don't use any rare earth metals to manufacture.... all the chemicals in an OLED display are organic, plus OLED doesn't use a backlight which can go out, like LCD monitors do. OLED doesn't last as long as LCD, but all the materials in an OLED display can be recycled into biodegradable components.



Our Commerce Department should be sending clear warnings to China if they proceed with these material export bans then we will short-circuit WTO and go straight to tariffing the crap out of the finished goods to get them to stop it.