China ready to hit back at U.S. with rare earths
Firstly, I don&#x27;t know what they expect to achieve with these threats. I think the US has shown so far that it&#x27;s not going to easily bend to such threats, this was a bad move on their part. Maybe they knew this, hence using the media to broadcast this message. Still, this very much sounds like escalation talk rather than de-escalation.<p>Secondly, these &quot;rare earths&quot; aren&#x27;t actually rare, most mines were simply shut down because they weren&#x27;t competitive with China. The Chinese deliberately drove the price of various materials into the ground in order to gain a monopoly (a security risk I think the West should have seen coming). A local example of this was Sheffield steel.<p>Thirdly, if the cost of such materials was to rise significantly, hopefully it would have the affect of removing planned obsolescence being built into products. A mobile for twice the price might make people hold onto their mobile devices a little longer before upgrading, for example. Hopefully we can also get modular devices popular again with planned upgrade paths, rather than the glued-together mess we currently deliver.