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America has a tungsten problem

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Re: America has a tungsten problem

#151

Post by gmerc »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #146
MisterTea wrote: post #2

I really would like to see answers to the four questions at the end. Though I would hazard a guess that the answers to the first three can be summed up as "it's easier and cheaper to let China do the dirty work." The last question I cant answer as I don't understand boom-bust mining cycles. Edit to add: > After all, it turns out tungsten actually isn't hard to find! It's all over the United States. In fact, it's pret…

>I really would like to see answers to the four questions at the end The bottom line is that China has the biggest most economical tungsten reserves, they have been able to flood the market with predatory pricing for the last 40 years and they almost completely control the ore processing bottleneck as well. For this to change the US govt would have to enter major agreements w US mines, offering relaxed permitting and…

Wait until you find out the US is flooding the software market with "predatory" SaaS products. Point being, it's only "predatory" if others do it.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#152

Post by pests »

wolvoleo wrote: post #36
ericmay wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now that China has become more adversarial and also more established (you mean people want to actually get PAID to slave away in a mine, or even worse, refuse to even work in a dangerous and dirty pit mine?!) the US is facing some hard decisions. There is an implication here that the United States is immune or afraid of doing “hard” or “dirty” work and so we outsourced refining and mining to China. This doesn’t see…

> With respect to avoidance of “dirty” jobs. The EU is far , far worse in this respect than the United States is or was. Well yeah. Because we care about the environment and people like to enjoy their retirement instead of sitting in a wheelchair with COPD due to inhaling a lifetime of toxic dust. China is getting better at it too, but only a few years ago I remember a story of all the toxic lakes where all the bypro…

> a few years ago I remember a story of all the toxic lakes where all the byproducts of neodymium mining were dumped.

You might be thinking of Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#153

Post by FpUser »

MisterTea wrote: post #65
hunterpayne wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a pretty unhinged take. > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. No it doesn't (at best its about 35 years) and it often (mostly) uses equipment made in the west. In fact, if you want to extract something from the earth, its very likely you need a US firm to help you do it (depends on how hard the material is to extract). > and ecological collapse You can do mining responsibly, it ju…

> > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. It's amazing how many people think China bootstrapped its industry from first principals when all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying.

>"when all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying"

Would you fucking stop crying already. What did you expect them to do? Commit to being a slave and leave all the value to western corps? And who asked western companies to outsource everything? It seems that for an extra buck they would sell everything. So you basically reap what you sow

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#154

Post by FpUser »

throwway120385 wrote: post #92
MisterTea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. It's amazing how many people think China bootstrapped its industry from first principals when all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying.

That's exactly what the US did in the 1800's, so clearly they're copying a winning strategy.

One rule for me another one for thee.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#155

Post by FpUser »

strangegecko wrote: post #135
tehjoker wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now that China has become more adversarial Just a nitpick, but it is the reverse, the United States has become more adversarial. China isn't kidnapping heads of state.

They've both become more adversarial. China has been using economic blackmail to advance political goals for a long time (e.g. wrt Japan and Taiwan and SEA). They also continue to expand military based in the SCS that don't belong there, hold exercises to simulate blockades outside of China. Etc.

>"China has been using economic blackmail to advance political goals"

Well, they have wonderful mentor

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#156

Post by mullingitover »

anigbrowl wrote: post #140

Counterpoint: Tungsten is about $1100/ton, so if demand averages 10k tons/year the annual US spend is about $10-12 million. That's peanuts in economic terms. If relations with China deteriorate the US could just set up a front company in some third country, buy tungsten, and re-export it.

China learned from watching the US use export controls against them, and they've adapted them to their rare earths exports[1]. They're not going to be as easily bamboozled as the US has been with nVidia cards.

[1] https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/charting-china/2025/02/...

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#157

Post by pseudohadamard »

maxglute wrote: post #75
MisterTea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. It's amazing how many people think China bootstrapped its industry from first principals when all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying.

West had nothing to teach/copy in many cases - there's a reason PRC produced magnitude more mining engineers for decades. Leaching MREE/HREE from ionic clays is a geologic tech stack that PRC fully built out indigenously from 60s. Only reason M/HREE can be refined at _scale_ and _economically_ today was PRC innovating on geology west never bothered in (west ree stack concentrated on hard rock extraction), and now wes…

The "the Chinese can only copy us" thing is quite common in some circles, just as the "all the Japanese can do is copy us" was 50-odd years ago. China overtook the west in a lot of areas 10-20 years ago, to see an example of this travel to any city in China. It's like travelling into the future, we're a decade or more behind them at this stage.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#159

Post by dwd »

55555 wrote: post #138
ricksunny wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cool - I'd imagine 'invested in a mining concern' is rare on the spectrum of HNers' resumes. May I ask how did you come to be confident enough to risk capital on something that's not typically within the average tech person's familiarity space? Asking b/c I would like to be able to develop such confidence if I could credibly (even just to myself) do so.

Actually, if you follow stock tip accounts on X, investing in Australian commodity miners is like the current hot trend, for a few weeks already. This is not to assume that the parent commenter invested for this reason.

Problem is, once it's a trend you may be too late.

In saying that, a lot of the stocks I purchased over a year ago peaked about 3/4 months ago but have had massive sell-offs since. Still trading above what I paid so I'm considering doubling down on some as the timeframes to production are still years out.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#160

Post by Dylan16807 »

pseudohadamard wrote: post #157
maxglute wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

West had nothing to teach/copy in many cases - there's a reason PRC produced magnitude more mining engineers for decades. Leaching MREE/HREE from ionic clays is a geologic tech stack that PRC fully built out indigenously from 60s. Only reason M/HREE can be refined at _scale_ and _economically_ today was PRC innovating on geology west never bothered in (west ree stack concentrated on hard rock extraction), and now wes…

The "the Chinese can only copy us" thing is quite common in some circles, just as the "all the Japanese can do is copy us" was 50-odd years ago. China overtook the west in a lot of areas 10-20 years ago, to see an example of this travel to any city in China. It's like travelling into the future, we're a decade or more behind them at this stage.

The scare quotes the earlier comment put around "learned" are unwarranted, but "they copied us instead of bootstrapping" and "they can only copy us" are very different statements.
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