Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States • Hacker News Board

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#71

Post by lesuorac » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 4:21 PM UTC

bushbaba wrote: post #64

corimaith wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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-...

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#72

Post by lesuorac » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 4:24 PM UTC

myrmidon wrote: post #59

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...

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…

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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#73

Post by eightysixfour » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 4:28 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #53

roenxi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 environ…

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.

Panama?

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#74

Post by jburbank » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 4:28 PM UTC

dmoy wrote: post #67

Aunche wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#75

Post by jjk166 » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #38

ck2 wrote: post #2

"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

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…

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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#76

Post by freeone3000 » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

jburbank wrote: post #74

dmoy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#77

Post by freeone3000 » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

lesuorac wrote: post #72

myrmidon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 t…

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…

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#78

Post by snakeyjake » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

solatic wrote: post #61

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 considerati…

>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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#79

Post by mindslight » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #60

fooqux wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 he…

If you can pay $5 for something instead of $10, why wouldn’t that be better for you?

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.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#80

Post by mschuster91 » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

bushbaba wrote: post #64

corimaith wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.