[westiseast]

Perhaps it’s churlish to mention, but...

China was happy to ignore environmental standards in order to corner the market in rare earth minerals. American miners couldn’t compete because they were already “internalizing” the environmental costs, and were priced out of the market.

Once China had put everyone else out of business (and blocked foreign businesses from mining inside China), it started not only reducing output to increase prices, but also started to very slowly apply environmental standards it previously ignored.

The Chinese government also showed how willing they were to now use this almost complete monopoly for political purposes in 2010.

And now in 2019 they’re calling for consumers and global companies to contribute to the costs of “internalizing” the pollution?

[titzer]

Now you realize how the game theory of economics is fundamentally at odds with the natural world and sustainability. It always pays to defect now, and the loudest voices are usually the rich players who moan about economic growth and "burdensome regulations". Mining and logging in the US was very much like this before regulation, but that was on a much smaller scale, with simpler technology and less energy available to scale up. My advice: pay attention closely to environmental policy and don't let regulations be rolled back in the name of growth!

[dustingetz]

The resolution to the economic prisoner’s dilemma is religion, which evolved to coordinate the globally shared values needed to defeat a backstab/backstab situation. For example “thou shalt not murder” is win/win.

[wayoutthere]

Policy doesn’t even need to be rolled back much of the time: they can just stall progress while they figure loopholes around the existing policies. Which has been the GOP strategy for almost 40 years.

[tracker1]

Another point worth mentioning is exceptions to environmental treaties... they, like any loophole, will be abused.

[RHSeeger]

It's not churlish at all.

> Environmental experts and local officials say the cost of the cleanup should not be shouldered by the Chinese government alone.

The Chinese companies and government knew what they were doing and benefited greatly from their actions. I would argue that they are exactly the ones that should be shouldering the the cost... alone.

[yorwba]

Seems like you agree then that the cost should not be shouldered by the government alone, but also by the companies who benefited.

The article mentions that most mining operations were illegal until recently and the Longnan government only managed to shut down the last of them in 2017. Some local officials probably lined their pockets by looking the other way, but the central government likely didn't see any of those profits.

Now that the industry is controlled by state-owned companies, stricter regulations were introduced, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect if the government were willing to tolerate the pollution in exchange for profit.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

They didn't benefit though, they were clear losers.

[ptah]

that sounds exactly like the strategy used by large corporations like Amazon and Starbucks to rid the marketplace of smaller competitors. Things like elaborate tax structures and subsidies not available to small businesses https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crickhowell-welsh-town...

[adrianN]

So now American miners can start being cost competitive again.

[arcticfox]

> So now American miners

They don't exist anymore though. According to Australia, all of the rare earth expertise is in China now, so it's not as simple as just reopening, and in fact might be very difficult

[agumonkey]

It's "always" like that. Someone lowers the bar to grab the market until collapse. Annoying.

[blunte]

Welcome to unregulated capitalism.

[mc32]

That person, looks like they have some environmental role, seems to be talking about future mining. That future mining should internalize the externalities in its price, which seems fair enough.

I don’t think they are asking companies to help with their current cleanup. (That would expose them to similar claims in other countries which serve their industries).

But your major point is right that they were more than happy to dump rare earths to corner a market and are now suffering the consequences of that policy.

[lsd5you]

Which is why tariffs make a lot of sense. Yet there has been this massive movement of reaganite/right wing tariffs bashing for decades now - where the mantra of tariffs causing economic harm is mindlessly repeated. You would think they didn't generate tax revenue (and thus reduce taxes/improve economics elsewhere), and where not easier to collect than many other taxes.

I'm not denying the dangers. I can see how countries could fall into populist/short term positions or get involved in harmful escalating tit-for-tat increases, but this is a strawman when it comes to having moderate tariffs.

[tomp]

I agree with you. Strict environmental and employment standards in US and EU make no sense if companies can just relocate to China and pollute & abuse people there.

I'm a strong proponent of "fair" trade (not "free" trade) for this reason - I'm OK with production moving elsewhere because salaries are lower, there's more resources and/or better climate for production, but it's completely unacceptable if it's done to skirt local environmental/employment/anti-corruption laws, and should be taxed heavily.

I don't quite understand your criticism of "right wing tariff bashing" though - Trump's the one who's bent on introducing tariffs, whereas past governments (including left-wing Obama) were happy to play along...

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Honestly if country A can make a product X% cheaper than country B because of having less stringent regulation (be it environmental, quality, labor laws...) it's just logical to me that country B should impose a tariff of X% on that product.

I'm not much of a free-market capitalism, but if you have to be, then a free market is not a free market if not everyone is playing by the same rules, right?