The ACID Capitalist Podcast Acid Breath - Rare Earth - Fri 13 October, 2025
23 snips
Oct 11, 2025 Explore the tremors in the market ignited by tariffs and the dark chemistry of rare earths. Delve into how China has dominated refining, raising questions about Western vulnerabilities. Unpack a surprising CPI release amidst discussions of interest rates and oil price trends. Examine a strategic $20 billion currency swap with Argentina and ponder the dollar's complex role in global stability. Hear echoes of past market crises and learn what today's shifts might mean for the future.
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Rare Earths Are Not Rare
- Rare earths are abundant in the crust but hard to separate into pure elements due to chemical similarity.
- China dominated refining by doing the dirty, polluting work that the West outsourced for decades.
Separation Is The Bottleneck
- Separation of rare earths requires many complex chemical steps because the elements behave nearly identically.
- That technical difficulty incentivised moving refining to countries willing to bear environmental costs.
Mountain Pass And The Outsourcing Story
- Hugh recounts how the West closed refineries like Mountain Pass and outsourced refining to China in the 1980s–2000s.
- He compares this to Walter White: we kept the clean parts and let others do the dirty chemistry.
