Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States (spectrum.ieee.org)
Animats 35 days ago [-]
MP Minerals got their magnet plant going. Good.

MP Minerals operates the Mountain Pass, CA rare earths mine. This was the largest rare earths mine in the world at one time. After several shutdowns and two bankruptcies due to low rare earth prices, MP Minerals bought the mine in 2017 and had it producing ore in 2020. The mine already had a "beneficiation" plant, where raw ore goes in and a mix of rare earth elements, plus lots of unwanted tailings, come out. Unlike the plants in China, they have a process that doesn't require huge settlement ponds and vast amounts of water, so it doesn't create too much of a mess. It's mostly a mechanical process, and processes huge volumes of ore, yielding a much smaller volume of concentrate.

What comes out of the benficiation plant needs more separation. That had to be sent to China to be refined, because there were no plants to do the separation in the US. So MP Minerals got the US Department of Defense to fund a separation plant at Mountain Pass. This separates the different rare earths. It's mostly a chemical process. Again, what comes out is a lot less volume than goes in. The Mountain Pass separation plant has been working for a few years now.

What comes out of the separation plant needs more purification and alloying. That's what the new plant in Texas does. That's a modest sized facility in an industrial park. What comes out is metal ready to be formed into magnets. That completes the supply chain.

Owning the whole supply chain insulates MP Minerals from trouble in the middle stages. Such as China's 2024 ban on export of rare earth processing technology.[1] Now that they have the whole supply chain working, they can increase production if desired. It's much easier to duplicate a plant than make a new one for a new process.

[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-chinas-ban-rare-earths-pr...

roenxi 34 days ago [-]
> After several shutdowns and two bankruptcies due to low rare earth prices...

It's important to contextualise this, it is probably the most important part of the entire story. Rare earths aren't all that rare, they generally have a crustal abundance comparable to copper. The question of where rare earth mining & processing happens is mainly one of price. Or, accounting for second order effects, a question of environmental regulations.

bombcar 34 days ago [-]
And bankruptcies due to price are a common occurrence in the mining industry.

I’ve done consulting work at a giant open pit copper mine the size of which cannot be described, sitting idle waiting for the price of cooper to climb above a benchmark.

corimaith 34 days ago [-]
Which is where tariffs come in to offset low price dumping. Inefficient, but it's better thought of as insurance premium on future geopolitical risk.
bushbaba 34 days ago [-]
Or schemes similar to agriculture where the government buys excess production for price stability. Which is good for consumers and businesses alike.
lesuorac 34 days ago [-]
To be clear, "price stability" in this case means a higher price compared to absence of government intervention.

I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason.

We are also well beyond sufficient domestic production. Our population has doubled in the past 50 years [1] while food production has tripled. We do not need agriculture subsides for sufficient domestic production.

[1]: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange...

[2]: https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/look-agricultural-...

Animats 33 days ago [-]
> To be clear, "price stability" in this case means a higher price compared to absence of government intervention.

Depends on how it works. There are a few different cases.

One is for a commodity where increased supply and lower cost does not increase demand much. Rare earths are like that. The cost of the metal is a small part of the cost of the finished product. A drop in rare earth prices will not increase motor sales much. So overproduction from multiple sources will crash the price. This is why commodity prices are so volatile, despite relatively constant supply and demand. A slight imbalance in supply and demand produces huge price changes.

Here's the historical price of copper.[1] The price has varied over a 4x range in the last 15 years. 2x in the last 5 years.

Futures trading can help stabilize prices, but too much futures trading relative to the actual commodity can increase volatility.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper

mschuster91 34 days ago [-]
> I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason.

Price stability itself is a valid goal. Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread, but the price of the good can be relied upon which is very important for low-income households and their financial planning.

roenxi 34 days ago [-]
Are you absolutely sure that low prices wouldn't be more important to low income families? It seems like low prices-low income is a better match than slightly high prices-low income.

My understanding of the situation was that low income shoppers are typically extremely keen for a bargain and are quite happy to shop around. And on paper they can just pretend the price is higher than it really is if stability matters that much to their planning.

mschuster91 33 days ago [-]
See my reply to another person raising a similar question. Price discounts are a good thing for consumers, but what particularly sucks is over night price hikes for basic staples.
KETHERCORTEX 33 days ago [-]
> Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread

> very important for low-income households and their financial planning.

Paying more is beneficial for low income households, I see. That looks like expert level mental gymnastics detached from the reality.

mschuster91 33 days ago [-]
> That looks like expert level mental gymnastics detached from the reality.

Bro, I literally used to be homeless for a while many years ago. Believe me, I know how reality looks like, and there was nothing more frustrating than finding out, whoops, you don't have the 20 fucking cents to buy the groceries you wanted because they decided to raise the price of butter over night. Price reductions are announced in ads all the time, but price hikes? You can only find that out when you are in the store but then it may be too late and you gotta reschedule what you buy at a moment's notice.

Grocery prices must be stable and not subject to arbitrary games.

roenxi 32 days ago [-]
This is an argument that you felt bad. Is it an argument that you were worse off? Homeless people tend to have a huge stack of problems and how they feel isn't #1 as I understand it. And while I'd expect it to be a reasonable guide I don't trust the instincts of a homeless person to work out what is in their own best interests when those instincts are saying "systemically push the price of food up, that'll help". Frankly, it sounds like a traumatic experience and the response to the trauma would lead to bad policy.

I don't want to thoughtlessly minimise feeling bad, but between (having more food), (shelter) and (feeling good), society would be doing better to prioritise in that order when it comes to trying to help. We're talking about a situation where you have 20 cents; a 2% average reduction in the price of butter means you get around 2% more butter and associated calories. If we trade off price increases for higher average prices you'd literally just have had less butter to eat. Those differences will add up over a month, even if sometimes there is a tough shopping trip.

If the price stability thing is for poor families there are many better policies than pushing up the average price of food. Like pushing the price of food down, then finding ways to communicate what is cheapest this week. Ie, solving the "You can only find that out when you are in the store" part.

vanattab 34 days ago [-]
you must not be buying eggs lately
mschuster91 33 days ago [-]
I'm European, we don't hold chickens in such absurdly large farms as Americans, my eggs come from the farm next door...
mschuster91 34 days ago [-]
> Which is good for consumers and businesses alike.

Only for domestic consumers. Foreign consumers? Not so much. A ton of the EU's excess butter and milk products for example ended up being donated to Africa and ruined local agriculture there that couldn't compete with free products.

A similar story is playing out in Gaza where there hasn't ever been any incentive to build out domestic production of food because UNRWA brought in a loooot of food aid (which on top of that got looted and commercially re-sold by Hamas).

Excess production is vital for any country, but it has to be kept at a moderate level and especially it must not be donated off in a way that threatens domestic production of the good in question.

eightysixfour 34 days ago [-]
Panama?
Animats 34 days ago [-]
Right. See this story about the 2015 rare earths glut.[1] That glut triggered one of the shutdowns of Mountain Pass.

Owning the whole supply chain is a win because the price of magnet-ready alloy fluctuates less than the price of dirt with some rare earths mixed in.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timtreadgold/2015/05/15/chinese...

modo_mario 34 days ago [-]
> So MP Minerals got the US Department of Defense to fund a separation plant at Mountain Pass.

Are there any other contenders or did this come with any guarantees of this yet another example of oneside public-private partnerships?

Animats 34 days ago [-]
There are other rare-earth deposits in the US, at least two in Wyoming and one in Arizona.[1] A different group claims to have a big find in Colorado. The Wyoming people claim to have found a deposit so big that if they built a large mine, they'd crash the rare earths market. Those are all in exploration stage, with no production.

MP Minerals was mining ore and shipping beneficiated ore to China for further refining. So it made sense from a DoD national security perspective to fund on site refining in California. DoD only funded one of the four steps from mine to magnets.

[1] https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/02/07/rare-earths-discover...

mikewarot 34 days ago [-]
Perhaps it was a bad idea to let it stop happening in the US[1] in the first place? I have acquaintances who told me about this more than a decade ago. We thought it was stupid to let the production lines go then... and obviously, we were right.

[1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/04/07/the-saga-of-magneque...

myrmidon 34 days ago [-]
I don't think that this is an obvious decision at all, and it is very easy to be deceptive about upsides and gloss over the downsides of forcefully retaining domestic industry sectors:

If you want to keep industries like this, you are basically arguing that taxpayers should subsidise them-- the jobs you retain are not a straightforward net gain, you pay for the wage difference in tax money (or price, where typically the consumer foots the bill, which is often just like a rather regressive tax).

There are good arguments that this is simply necessary for absolutely vital industries like agriculture, which gets a generous ~$20 billion/year to stay local. But it is clear to me that this is not something that you can do for every industry-- that would basically amount to a small-scale planned economy (with all its drawbacks), would be very likely to poach talent from sectors that are actually "more valuable" according to market consensus, and would also be likely to provoke retaliatory actions by international trading partners.

For this specifically, I think throwing some hundreds of millions of taxdollars around to keep/reestablish the industry is probably a good deal, but it is rather obvious to me that you have to draw the line somewhere; spending hundreds of billions to maximize autarky would be a really bad idea even though it is easy to make it sound universally good ("local jobs! supply chain safety! trade balance!").

lesuorac 34 days ago [-]
Pretty sure it's a very obvious decision.

Fire your unionized US workforce. Replace them a cheaper non-unionized workforce. Sell the goods at the same price. Increase your current profit margin while protecting future profit margins from unions.

Like half the reason why people do manufacturing in China is because all the manufacturing is there. If you had a problem with the item after it's been molded you can go to the molder and see what's going on. Then walk across the street to the plastic supplier to get them to adjust their output to fix your mold issues. That's not a Chinese specific thing, you can have this situation anywhere as long as the industries are co-located.

freeone3000 34 days ago [-]
If the American workers aren’t paid better than the Chinese workers then why would they live in America instead of China? It won’t be for the cheap housing and cheap healthcare…
sandworm101 34 days ago [-]
Because movement between countries is not possible for the vast magority of the workforce. An americqn steelworker cannot just up stakes and move to canada/china/europe. Such things take many years and, unless you are allowed to renouce your citizenship, you will still be talking to the IRS every year.
freeone3000 34 days ago [-]
Shouldn’t we be trying to (have local manufacturing) to reach the goal of a better life for our people, rather than sacrificing that life in order to (have local manufacturing)?

Isn’t “oh we’ll just make sure our population can’t leave” a tad dystopian?

lesuorac 33 days ago [-]
I'm really not sure where this sub-thread has gone.

My point is that moving manufacturing to China is not done at the government-level; it's a very smart move by business to break the unions in manufacturing while also increasing the current profit margin. Even if the American workers tried to move to China you wouldn't hire them because they're in a union so its pointless for them to moving (ignoring practical issues like language/family network/etc).

---

> Shouldn’t we be trying to (have local manufacturing) to reach the goal of a better life for our people, rather than sacrificing that life in order to (have local manufacturing)?

This is a false dichotomy. Manufacturing jobs while not as cushy as sitting in an office chair do not need to be deadly. There have been a ton of advances in robotics that allow you to be in significantly less harms way compared to the days of when you use children to repair equipment because their fingers fit in between the blades better.

I wouldn't be surprised if most manufacturing jobs had a lower mortality than dating while female.

34 days ago [-]
myrmidon 33 days ago [-]
> Like half the reason why people do manufacturing in China is because all the manufacturing is there

It sure helps, but the primary reason is price. And the main driver for that are wages.

Chinese manufacturing pays workers an average $24k/year, for 49h/week. This is after adjusting for purchasing power-- actual mean wage is <$15k (!!).

You can shoot suspected union members on sight and allow dumping dimethyl mercury straight into the next river-- no amount of "regulatory streamlining" will come anywhere close to making the US competitive here.

Aunche 34 days ago [-]
The US thought it was "stupid" to let shipbuilding jobs leave the US, leading to the Jones Act. This hurt just about every other domestic industry, consumers, and caused the American shipbuilding industry to deteriorate even more.
dmoy 34 days ago [-]
That's fair, but it can be done in ways drastically different from the Jones Act. The Jones Act fails in large part because it is so indirect. If you instead e.g. buy surplus production (like say we do for farming today), it tends to not totally kill off the industry.

If the Jones Act had worked it would have looked genius because it didn't require spending money by the government. It didn't work though.

jburbank 34 days ago [-]
Has there ever been something like the Jones act, that has worked? In any western democracy? Honest question. I wonder if the nature of international commerce and large nation domestic policy is too complex and chaotic.
freeone3000 34 days ago [-]
The US Army keeps the M1 Abrams line spun up despite a lack of losses to ensure that when losses do happen, it can be replaced.

So far the only effective method has been to purchase a fixed amount of the final desired product regardless of actual demand.

maxwell 34 days ago [-]
Smoot-Hawley and the Buy American Act, which protected/enabled the Arsenal of Democracy to win the Second World War. Europe's Common Agricultural Policy. Voluntary Export Restraints. Steel and aluminum tariffs. Tech/IP restrictions from the U.S./EU on communist Chinese firms.
collinmcnulty 34 days ago [-]
Smoot-Hawley was passed while America was a net exporter of industrial products and hurt American manufacturers. I don't see any way to skew it as having helped win WW2.
maxwell 33 days ago [-]
It decoupled us from foreign markets.
dmoy 34 days ago [-]
Honestly dunno if anyone does anything similar to the Jones Act. Certainly not in shipping (though a lot of countries require domestic flagging, not built).

Outside of shipping idk what the analogous situation would be

nradov 34 days ago [-]
Retaining some amount of domestic shipbuilding and merchant marine capacity is a strategic necessity. This is an existential issue for the entire country. If that hurts other domestic industries then that is an acceptable consequence. But there are probably better ways to accomplish that than the Jones Act.
droopyEyelids 34 days ago [-]
Its easy to throw around words like “stupid” on the internet, especially with hindsight, but how could it have been anything but a complex decision estimating values for many variables?

Would they have been able to hit a competitive price while maintaining environmental regs and paying a domestic workforce, would china end up the only other supplier in the world? Can government subsidies be counted on to last multiple administrations?

BLKNSLVR 34 days ago [-]
Strong disagree, this was obvious if not from the very start, then as soon as the first company that relocated manufacturing started making ridiculous profits.

Keeping the retail prices the same whilst more-than-decimating the manufacturing cost? How could it not be obvious that anyone and everyone would follow once there was a proof of concept.

When capitalism is measured on incredibly short term performance, with no consideration of long term sustainability or national interest or maintenance of national skills and capabilities. This has been going on since well before the world wide web became accessible to most Western households.

Nike started doing it in the 70s and they weren't the first.

I've long been confused* to why there was no legislation to prevent "local" companies from giving away the keys to their kingdoms to foreign countries.

*Not really, politicians are just as short-term motivated as business owners.

It made sense. But the chickens are now coming home to roost, and they're shitting all over the place and the unprecedented profits have been spent on fancy plastic toys (that are now mostly landfill) instead of any kind of preparation for the inevitable tsunami of chicken shit.

michaelt 34 days ago [-]
> I've long been confused to why there was no legislation to prevent "local" companies from giving away the keys to their kingdoms to foreign countries.

For a long time this seemed like an exceptionally good deal for the US.

Other countries dig up their rare natural resources, send them to us, and in exchange we send them intangible products like Microsoft Office licenses? That's a great deal. You're literally getting something for nothing.

Other countries' workers make refrigerators for us, sell them to us really cheaply, then they also send a load of the profits back to us because they licensed an American-owned design and brand? You cannot lose.

Meanwhile, supposedly the skilled, high-added-value manufacturing would stay in the West with our educated workforce. And to top it all off, this was supposedly making the poor countries less poor and more democratic as you can't trade without free-flowing communication and a prosperous middle class.

Of course in practice this has gone badly in the long term. The current generations are certainly feeling the consequences. But for the previous generations? They got the highest standard of living in the world!

myrmidon 34 days ago [-]
> Of course in practice this has gone badly in the long term. The current generations are certainly feeling the consequences.

Has it though? Because I think preventing lower-skill industry from migrating to lower-wage countries would have been a MASSIVE intervention into market dynamics with extremely unclear outcome, and it is very easy to be dishonest about its price and possible consequences.

An example: If we had wanted to prevent consumer electronics industry to shift abroad, we would have needed to massively intervene starting in the 1970s (!!). Products like radios, TVs, etc. would have been significantly more expensive, and a lot of that generations talent that made Intel, NVidia, Microsoft etc. happen might have stayed in those sectors instead, thanks to cushy subsidies.

Its quite possible that as a result, countries that did not waste so much effort on fighting market dynamics would have just pulled ahead. Comparing with a hypothetical timeline where there's a "healthy" (subsidised) US steel industry, lots of domestic electronics assembly and every other screen is "made in USA"-- BUT Microsoft is a European company instead, and Apple is Japanese-- that is a bad tradeoff in my view and entirely plausible.

michaelt 34 days ago [-]
> Has it though?

Well, the hope that trade with China would lead to them becoming more democratic doesn't seem to have come through.

And there was a hope the West would keep doing the design work, and high-tech manufacturing. There isn't much Silicon being produced in Silicon Valley these days.

I'm not saying there's an alternative - I can't take a time machine back to the 1980s and explore a different timeline. I'm just saying that many of the purported long-term benefits of globalisation haven't really come about.

myrmidon 33 days ago [-]
I fully agree with you that effecting "better"/more democratic politics abroad via trade has a poor track record (EU buying Russian gas would be another example).

But answer honestly: Do you think that the US/Europe shaped their trade policies in a way that maximized foreign political improvement (especially pre-Crimea)? Because to me, that sounds almost comically self-delusional: We did not try to foster democracy when trading with Russia/China-- we traded to get stuff for cheap.

Looking at GDP development, this was very effective: Yes China grew more wealthy as well, but current trends are not looking like Chinese real wages will ever catch up to US levels, even in the next several decades...

I honestly believe that the US has profitted immensely from trade with China-- it would be insane to try to avoid this (and hold on to domestic industry) from a perspective of how it affected the average American citizen.

corimaith 34 days ago [-]
Well the idea was those manufacturing countries would also transition to consumption based economies, paving the way for the next generation of manufacturers to then rise up the value chain. Once everyone was rich then I guess we would start relying on automation.

People forget that the flipside of keeping manufacturing in America is that it would have denied the ability for the global poor to rise up. And they should, they deserve that right too. What the neoliberals underestimated was the extent of how nationalistic these rising countries could become, as they instead not to transition but to instead keep on their low end manufacturing while simultaneously competing in the high end. Namely, it wasn't about improving the lives of their citizens, it was about achieving total control over the supply chain.

The sad part of this situation is that for all the global south cheers the "decline of the west", with the closing of the American market and the utter dominance of China, the economic ladders up may have been forever broken.

lupusreal 34 days ago [-]
> What the neoliberals underestimated was the extent of how nationalistic these rising countries could become

Yeah that was totally unprecedented.. If you ignore examples of exactly that happening at other times in history, like Japan. They went from a very poor feudal society where most people lived as peasants society to an industrial society able to seriously challenge America in less than a century. Violent rabid nationalism came with and facilitated that transition.

lotsofpulp 34 days ago [-]
> I've long been confused* to why there was no legislation to prevent "local" companies from giving away the keys to their kingdoms to foreign countries.

>*Not really, politicians are just as short-term motivated as business owners.

Voters also like lower prices today in exchange for higher volatility tomorrow. No one was forced to shop at national businesses rather than local businesses, but people like the lower prices of larger businesses.

TheCraiggers 34 days ago [-]
I was taught during grade school that capitalism drives lower prices, and since capitalism is good, it's alluded that paying less money for a product of similar value is almost a moral obligation. That company selling the "same thing" for more is obviously fleecing people and should go bankrupt.

That model may have worked hundreds of years ago when comparing horseshoes made by local blacksmiths, and possibly still held up when comparing mousetraps made in the same state / country. But it has issues when applied globally, and we have not adopted fast enough.

lazide 34 days ago [-]
If you can pay $5 for something instead of $10, why wouldn’t that be better for you?
mindslight 34 days ago [-]
It's better for you individually-immediately, but on the larger scale the government policy is that average prices cannot go down. So then the government created enough new money to make the lower priced item cost $10. And due to kayfabe "fiscal responsibility", the government couldn't even spend that new money (representing shared surplus from tech/market progress) on useful things, and instead just dumped it into the housing bubble.
lazide 33 days ago [-]
What, consequences?!! In my economy?

Clearly that isn’t actually why and it’s all the fault of (checks notes) illegal immigrants. I’ll warm up the military transports right now!

1oooqooq 33 days ago [-]
as if you ever read the ingredients label of you soap or shampoos....
mrguyorama 34 days ago [-]
Which is why it should be legal to buy stolen goods!
blitzar 34 days ago [-]
> I've long been confused* to why there was no legislation to prevent "local" companies from giving away the keys to their kingdoms to foreign countries

Sounds like you dont want freedom and capitalism anymore.

gkanai 34 days ago [-]
Time and time again we see the US moving production of some key product or material overseas only to regret that decision a number of years later. It happens over and over again.

Market forces are great, but should be ignored in key sectors that are important for national security. That goes for rare earth minerals or shipbuilding or key supplies for munitions or PPE that we needed during the pandemic, (etc.)

solatic 34 days ago [-]
You cannot simply "ignore" market forces (you might as well propose to ignore the laws of gravity, it's basically the same, consumers will "gravitate" to the products they find most attractive). In a free market, the same product (produced abroad) is cheaper. Without restrictions, domestic consumers will buy the foreign product and drive the inefficient domestic producer out of business.

National security considerations can adapt to market forces by either directly subsidizing the domestic product (so that it will be as cheap as the foreign product) or establishing tariffs on the foreign product (so that it will be at least as expensive as the domestic product) or by outright banning the import of the foreign product (so that only the domestic product competes in the domestic market).

snakeyjake 34 days ago [-]
>You cannot simply "ignore" market forces

Market forces aren't real. They are artificial arbitrary rules agreed upon by a majority of participants in a financial system.

They are not natural laws like Newton's law of universal gravitation and the fact that even one person thinks they are is the greatest scam ever pulled on humanity.

Humanity will never be free until it rids itself of economists and MBAs.

Ajedi32 34 days ago [-]
They're as real as any other aspect of human nature. There are no "artificial rules", just humans acting according to normal human behavior. Ignore that at your peril.
snakeyjake 34 days ago [-]
>There are no "artificial rules", just humans acting according to normal human behavior.

There are uncountably many examples of humans, presumably normal, existing outside of the rules set by free market capitalism and not collapsing into a black hole.

One such example is the Indigenous peoples of Australia, who lived for tens of thousands more years than the concept of free market capitalism has existed, without even the concept of money or property beyond what one carried on their person.

I have to assume that they are "normal" humans.

Even today many aboriginals struggle with "tHe NaTuRaL LaWz of tEh MaRkEt JuSt LiKe GrAvItY BrAh TrUsT Me BrAHHHHH" because they've only been exposed to them for less than 0.3% of their culture's total existence.

There are examples, today, right now, this very minute, in (extremely northern) Europe of presumably normal humans who look at the rules you consider to be "natural" with shock and horror.

A cult has convinced you that their ideology is natural law. You can both participate in this system and realize that it is all bullshit and not be a hypocrite.

yardie 34 days ago [-]
The free market will always chose to go to the places for the cheapest material and labor. There is no strategy to it. But, there are some industries the US have placed strategic value on and will subsidize no matter the cost.

- USPS - literally written into the Constitution

- Passenger rail - Amtrak keeps pudding along even though financially it doesn’t make sense.

- Merchant marines - cargo is cheap. And cheaper in flag countries with lax labor rules. Yet, we maintain a expensive flotilla.

lotsofpulp 34 days ago [-]
I wonder if the US does or would subsidize USPS. USPS is required to earn enough money to pay for itself, which it mostly does by delivering advertising to people’s mailboxes.
pclmulqdq 34 days ago [-]
The USPS isn't subsidized with money, but it has a lot of special treatment legally. Things like "the inside of your mailbox becomes federal property" and the office of the postmaster general come to mind.

Other than that, as you said, the USPS is supposed to earn enough to pay for itself, which means that mail in cities tends to subsidize rural services.

oskarkk 34 days ago [-]
> which means that mail in cities tends to subsidize rural services

Do USPS or other mail services in the US have pricing that depends on location? In Poland where I live (much smaller, more uniformly populated and not federal country), I've seen no such things. The prices are the same everywhere, so it seems to me that in every private, commercial mail service the cities kinda subsidize the rural areas.

pclmulqdq 34 days ago [-]
USPS is equal priced as you say. A letter sent to Manhattan is cheaper for the USPS than a letter sent to Nome, Alaska, but both cost the sender 73 cents. Parcels sent by USPS are priced based on regional zones (roughly corresponding to distance traveled), but these are very coarse-grained.

UPS and FedEx and some of the other private shipping services have much more fine-grained pricing based on where something is going. This means that if you are Amazon, it is generally cheaper to send packages to cities by private carrier and cheaper to send to rural areas by USPS.

refurb 34 days ago [-]
> The free market will always chose to go to the places for the cheapest material and labor.

That's absolutely not true and anyone who has been involved in sourcing knows this.

There are plenty of other factors other than price alone. Reliability of source, quality, ability to response to changing volume demands, reputation, customer service, sustainability, overall capability, regulatory compliance, IP protection, financial health, quality management systems, etc.

It's the reason why any large corporation has a months long supplier due diligence process.

richk449 35 days ago [-]
It seems amazing it has taken this long. Electric motors are so critical to national security, as well as the US economy.

I keep wondering if these folks have a realistic alternative: https://www.nironmagnetics.com/ (They claim high performance rare earth free magnets.)

adrian_b 35 days ago [-]
There have passed too many years since they have claimed that they know how to make iron nitride magnets, but no commercial products have appeared.

The iron nitride magnets require a special crystal structure, which is not the most stable for that material, so it is difficult to find processing methods so that the material will have that crystal structure and even if the structure is produced, it might revert in time to a more stable structure, which does not have the desired magnetic properties.

Like typical for such startups, that company does not say anything about which are the roadblocks that have prevented them for so many years to make iron nitride magnets until now, but it is pretty certain that their patents are bogus and the methods described there have not been usable for making what they claim to be able to make.

ggm 35 days ago [-]
We're not looking for autarky, we're looking for strategic assurances and avoidance of dependency with adversarial consequences. It annoys me economic arguments delayed work to expand Australian rare earth sources, it would have been good not to get caught behind "cheaper is best" decision logic. The same logic shut down our microelectronics industry, local manufacturing, strategic policy in oil reserves and refining. Sure. Cheaper is great.. right up until it isn't because somebody else wants an outcome without price.
throwaway422432 34 days ago [-]
It's happening but slowly.

Lynas Rare Earths who are the largest miner and processor outside of China are in the initial stages of building a plant in Texas (which includes funding from the DoD). They currently have plants in Kalgoorlie and Malaysia, but not end-to-end making magnets.

Iluka have also secured the additional funding required for a processing plant in Australia and have deals with other miners for feed stock once they get going.

Disclaimer: I own shares in the above two and others and all currently at a loss on my initial investments.

BLKNSLVR 34 days ago [-]
So if I get in at your loss level, then I'll always be less down than you.

"Less down" seems to be my preferred position.

ck2 35 days ago [-]
"rare earth metals" aren't "rare" to the USA

They are "rare" per ton of earth in general

So it's just that mining them is so labor intensive and so toxic (uranium and other radioactivity) that it is expensive outside of places like China.

Automate that with bots or whatnot and maybe we don't have to invade Canada and Greenland and start WW3

foota 35 days ago [-]
Fun fact: rare earth metals are actually not the rarest metals per ton in the earth's crust, it's just that they only very rarely form into deposits in the form of minerals, and so they're very disperse.
s0rce 35 days ago [-]
I had some of element Tm in the lab the other day (not pure form), had to go look up the name as I had never come across it before.
defrost 35 days ago [-]
From the PoV of Alchemists they rarely (ie. never for the most part) appear as unbound elements in nature.

They are elements that require a lot of chemical processing to seperate and isolate.

The downside is that many of those processes generate a lot of toxic waste that requires (but often never receives) after treatment to neutralise.

Hence reports of dams of low level radioactive waste and so forth associate with rare earth processing (not so much mining as the concentrates are often mined and then shipped elsewhere for processing).

eg: https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/malaysian/rare-earths...

has been an on again, off again relationship for a decade and a half now due to the waste piling up.

XorNot 35 days ago [-]
I know you're being facetious but it's also worth spelling out somewhat explicitly as well: the US has never had a supply problem like that because through effective diplomacy and alliances it has commanded an excellent position to negotiate as a preferred trade partner through its world leading expertise in many areas and the export of its military spending as a security partner which up till very recently ensured alliances like NATO would prioritise these sorts of issues in its favour.

The very recent turn of "we must literally own this territory" has been the surest possible way to create a crisis where none existed.

perihelions 34 days ago [-]
The PRC is a near-monopoly on rare-earths production; the US is neither an ally nor security partner of China (to put it mildly). The US doesn't source these mineral from allies.
lazide 34 days ago [-]
It used to, and used to have significant mines of it’s own.
Gibbon1 35 days ago [-]
My dad said there were a couple of countries that produced bauxite who thought they could be the OPEC of aluminum. And found out very quickly that bauxite isn't rare.
analog31 35 days ago [-]
I think we could just regulate the industry properly and then find out what the actual cost is. It may have to be subsidized. With that said, I wouldn't want any new mining operations started in my state.
jillesvangurp 34 days ago [-]
I think the word 'rare' in rare earths here is merely implies expensive. That's why having cheap alternatives is such a big deal.

Interesting to note that there is quite big movement towards rare earth free electrical motors in the last few years that rely only on cheap, readily available materials. Some expect that to grab up to 30% of the market in about a decade. Similar technology is also being used for creating wind generators that don't depend on these expensive/rare materials.

jjk166 34 days ago [-]
No, 'rare' in this case means dilute. They were named this back at a time when there were few uses for the substances and they were generally considered worthless.
pbmonster 35 days ago [-]
Any motor experts here? Why are they chasing rare earth metals in the first place? In the end, the mines are going to be in China anyway, right? Why don't we design around rare earth magnets in the first place?

Synchronous reluctance motors where torque density isn't a strict requirement, and brushless separately excited synchronous motors (synchro motor with electromagnets on the rotor) for high torque/energy density applications?

adrian_b 35 days ago [-]
Those kinds of motors are usable, but they have a lower energy efficiency than permanent-magnet motors, which causes a lower range for an electric vehicle.

In all applications where it is possible to use motors without permanent magnets, that is usually done, because the motors without permanent magnets are normally cheaper.

nyokodo 35 days ago [-]
> the mines are going to be in China anyway, right

If you had read the article you’d know they have their own mine: “Hardly any firms, even in China, do what MP is attempting: produce finished magnets starting with ore that the company mines itself” Mostly China doesn’t mine materials but has concentrated the refining capacity in China for many commodities. Thankfully, we do have backup capacity so we won’t be totally screwed if China cuts us off, and the refining technology is well understood and in a conflict we or our allies can cut them off from many raw materials so their refining advantage isn’t a checkmate.

pbmonster 34 days ago [-]
> Mostly China doesn’t mine materials but has concentrated the refining capacity

Unless I'm working on old information, this is not correct. The overwhelming majority of neodymium mining capacity is currently in China.

> you’d know they have their own mine:

Sure, but to make a difference from a geopolitical perspective, we need more than that. And I don't see those kind of mines being opened on a large scale anywhere in the west. Regulations are challenging and environmental resistance is significant.

Zamiel_Snawley 35 days ago [-]
Electromagnets for the rotor cause significantly more heating, exactly where it is hardest cool, and where the heat is most likely to seep into the load.

For high torque density applications, heat dissipation is often the limiting factor on duty cycle.

Also, the slip rings capable of passing high current to an electromagnet rotor are expensive and less robust than permanent magnets.

Essentially: it’s possible but I haven’t seen an application where it’s practical.

pbmonster 34 days ago [-]
> Also, the slip rings capable of passing high current to an electromagnet rotor are expensive and less robust than permanent magnets.

The new designs are all inductively coupled, i.e. they have a rotating transformer coil built into the shaft. No brushes, no slip rings.

Workaccount2 34 days ago [-]
Coupling without using a core (or using an air core) is gonna hit efficiency pretty badly though.
pbmonster 34 days ago [-]
Unfortunately, I can only find material from the marketing department on that issue. But if I understand correctly, both coils have a ferrite core (and yoke), but there is a small air gap where the rotating side is separated from the stationary side.
pwrson 35 days ago [-]
[dead]
londons_explore 34 days ago [-]
> but rather in a unique process based on recycling the materials from discarded magnets.

Aka buying magnets from China, crushing them, then reforming them into "American made" magnets.

We've been doing the same with steel for over a decade now. It's a good way around tariffs and origin laws.

pfdietz 35 days ago [-]
More interesting to me is Niron Magnetics, mentioned in the article, which is commercializing magnets based on a particular phase of iron nitride.

https://www.nironmagnetics.com/

adrian_b 35 days ago [-]
I doubt that they are commercializing anything.

I see on their site now that they are building a plant that is expected to produce 5 (five) tons of magnets per year (compared to 1500 t/year for the plant discussed in the article or with 25000 t/year for the biggest of the around 300 Chinese plants).

Such a small-scale production might be enough only to make samples to distribute to potential customers, to convince them to design products using such magnets.

I will be pleasantly surprised when Niron Magnetics will be able to produce even those 5 tons of magnets.

I have already forgotten how many years have passed since I have seen for the first time Niron Magnetics claiming that they will start soon the production of iron nitride magnets.

Certainly there are more than 5 years since then, perhaps almost 10 years.

Their first patents, in which they have claimed to know how to make iron nitride, have been issued 10 years ago. Their inability to actually produce such magnets demonstrate that at least the claims of the first patents were false.

The language that is used in patent law is that patents "teach" how to do something that was unknown and non-obvious for those who were experts in prior art.

I am pretty sure that the patents of Niron Magnetics do not teach anything, but they are the kind of patents filed by those who want to do something, but they have no idea how to do it, so they file bogus patents with overly broad and inaccurate claims, as a preventive strike used to block any competitors to introduce that kind of products, in order to gain for themselves time to actually discover how to make in reality what they want, in a very different way than described in their fictitious patents.

If iron nitride magnets are indeed possible, then it is likely that Niron Magnetics has delayed by many years their use in practice, by being unable to develop such materials themselves, but simultaneously preventing others to do this.

Electric_Genie 34 days ago [-]
The problem with iron nitride is, and always has been, low coercivity. Niron hopes that GM can help them figure out a way to design a traction motor that has high performance even with low coercivity magnets. The fact that there are no such motors using iron-nitride magnets suggests that those efforts haven't succeeded yet. https://spectrum.ieee.org/permanent-magnet-motor
what-the-grump 35 days ago [-]
They just need to hoodwink an investor to give them enough money to buy a factory producing magnets in China. Then they are going to slowly back way from their claims of doing anything special.

If they do not, they will run out of money and close after expending whatever capital they have.

Rinse and repeat and brrr goes the money printer.

ars 34 days ago [-]
Doesn't this shoot them in the foot? Once they get it working they have less time left on the patent.
ahartmetz 34 days ago [-]
They could probably patent the way that actually works.
pfdietz 34 days ago [-]
Good reply, thanks.
physicsguy 34 days ago [-]
This was a key thing that was talked about when I was doing my doctorate in this area. There has been a lot of research in magnet manufacturing without the difficult to source metals coming from abroad.
brcmthrowaway 34 days ago [-]
Wait, those strong neodymium magnets are only produced in China?!
doctorplop 34 days ago [-]
There is a European producer, the German/Finnish VAC Group. But they also get their raw materials from China (I think).

Neodymium magnets are fascinating: they have enabled much smaller and more efficient elevator engines, used as undulators in synchroton x-ray sources, and many other places.

ttoinou 31 days ago [-]
I bought neodymium magnet tiny balls (toys) from China as far back as like 2008, and it was the only way to get them in Europe I believe
seventytwo 34 days ago [-]
Great!
shireboy 35 days ago [-]
It is an attractive industry, but sometimes can be repulsive.
sQL_inject 34 days ago [-]
You're way outside your field buddy, stick to something else.
shireboy 34 days ago [-]
I’d like to. The whole field is in flux and it’s nearly impossible to find balance.
chris_va 34 days ago [-]
While you are spinning around, just try to get your neighbors to align and things will snap into place.
sigpwned 35 days ago [-]
You don't have a monopoley on humor, you know.
shireboy 34 days ago [-]
I know. I like to think my compass points my humor in the right direction, but maybe it got turned around.
slater 35 days ago [-]
[flagged]
Uehreka 35 days ago [-]
Nah, you have to do better than that to be funny on Hacker News.
hosel 35 days ago [-]
Gross, this isn’t Reddit.
throwintp 34 days ago [-]
Thanks to Bill Clinton America can celebrate one or two manufacturing plants it gets..
Sporktacular 34 days ago [-]
This article just kind of assumes the reader should prefer US firms succeed in making these magnets over Chinese firms. I'm not sure why I should prefer that if China do it cheaper and better. Some nationalistic readers or those concerned about US national security and supply chains might care. Or maybe the US should just maintain better trade relations, and vote to do so.
BLKNSLVR 34 days ago [-]
It's definitely rewriting of history / priorities based on the current political climate.

30 years ago the opposite was celebrated as the saviour of American capitalism (by short term thinking people who are probably billionaires now, and therefore, as individuals, insulated against any of the '30 years later' repercussions).

The US is going to need to naturalise all of its illegal immigrants to have a chance at ramping up local manufacturing.

rangestransform 34 days ago [-]
The US could also have a migrant worker program a la Singapore