China faces trade war from Western powers over rare iPod metals

Hace unas semanas me comentaron que realizáramos post acerca de los metales y China. Así como del problema viviendero ahi.

Iniciaremos sentando una base sobre la cual partir, lo haremos de inicio a través algunas noticias y luego iremos concentrándonos en los temas más importantes.

China representa el 90% de la producción mundial de metales raros.  Link

As defined by IUPAC, rare earth elements or rare earth metals are a set of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium.^[2] Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earth elements since they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties.

Despite their name, rare earth elements (with the exception of the radioactive promethium) are relatively plentiful in the Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million (similar to copper). However, because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found in concentrated and economically exploitable forms. The few economically exploitable deposits are known as rare earth minerals.^[3] It was the very scarcity of these minerals (previously called "earths") that led to the term "rare earth". The first such mineral discovered was gadolinite, a compound of cerium, yttrium, iron, silicon and other elements. This mineral was extracted from a mine in the village of Ytterby in Sweden; many of the rare earth elements bear names derived from this location.

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Barack Obama said China was breaking global free-trade rules by restricting exports of the elements used in everything from iPods to  hybrid cars and flat screen TVs.

‘If China would simply let the  market work on its own we would have no objections, but their policies currently are preventing that from happening and they go against the very rules that China agreed to follow,’ Mr Obama said.

The West says it has to pay over the odds for inadequate supplies. EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht said China’s export quotas and export duties give Chinese companies an  unfair competitive advantage and must be removed. 

China’s Ministry of Commerce insists it has ‘no intention of protecting domestic industries by distorting its foreign trade. 

‘China will properly deal with the request for dispute settlement in accordance with the WTO’s settlement procedures,’ the ministry added.