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Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

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Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#61

Post by solatic »

gkanai wrote: post #33

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.)

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).

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#62

Post by chris_va »

shireboy wrote: post #48
sQL_inject wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're way outside your field buddy, stick to something else.

I’d like to. The whole field is in flux and it’s nearly impossible to find balance.

While you are spinning around, just try to get your neighbors to align and things will snap into place.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#63

Post by myrmidon »

michaelt wrote: post #55
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

> 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 gettin…

> 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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#64

Post by bushbaba »

corimaith wrote: post #56
bombcar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Or schemes similar to agriculture where the government buys excess production for price stability. Which is good for consumers and businesses alike.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#65

Post by pclmulqdq »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #52
yardie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#66

Post by Aunche »

mikewarot wrote: post #26

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...

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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#67

Post by dmoy »

Aunche wrote: post #66
mikewarot wrote: post #26

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...

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.

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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#68

Post by modo_mario »

Animats wrote: post #21

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,…

> 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?

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#69

Post by michaelt »

myrmidon wrote: post #63
michaelt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gettin…

> 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…

> 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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#70

Post by nradov »

Aunche wrote: post #66
mikewarot wrote: post #26

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...

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.

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.
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