DoomsdayLullaby

DoomsdayLullaby t1_jeddwql wrote

They learned from the best. Loan money, raise interest rates, debt becomes unsustainable, implement a structural adjustment program, privatize a nations resources for pennies on the dollar and massively reduce the cost of local labor. If they don't comply either install a government who will or hyper inflate their currency and lock them out of the global economy until they bend the knee. --The US way.

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DoomsdayLullaby t1_iujyvtl wrote

>The United States is the largest producer but not the largest exporter because oil is produced primarily for domestic refinement and consumption.

That hasn't been true for the past decade since the shale oil boom. It's one of the largest exporters of oil and the largest exporter of refined oil products.

Battery production encompasses several key minerals, not just lithium.

>It doesn't matter if a cartel does control 58% of exports if a country that controls 42% of exports can undercut them

It does, and especially does when the needed capacity is several orders of magnitude higher than current production levels.

>OPEC is the exception not the rule and it doesn't seem obvious that the economic or political conditions that made forming OPEC are even possible in the lithium market.

Seems like quite the assertion based on little more than intuition.

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DoomsdayLullaby t1_iujuxxe wrote

And the largest producer of oil is the US. Several major players in the fossil fuel industry are not in OPEC. You don't need the entire market to create a cartel, you just need a significant portion.

>I know China holds the bulk of production but rare earth metal mining isn't something that can only be done in certain places.

It is from an economical sense, especially when trying to bring battery production to a scale that could facilitate the current global economy in replacing internal combustion engines and the energy storage capacity fossil fuels represent from its current scale which is orders of magnitude smaller.

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