29 June 2025

What Happens When you Bet Your Industry on a Hostile Supplier?

That country can put your industry out of business on a whim. Auto companies 'in full panic' over rare-earths bottleneck

Politicians, who know nothing about engineering or logistics have mandated that people start driving electric cars, even though they don't work for all of us, and we can't build enough of them anyway.

Frank Eckard, CEO of a German magnet maker, has been fielding a flood of calls in recent weeks. Exasperated automakers and parts suppliers have been desperate to find alternative sources of magnets, which are in short supply due to Chinese export curbs.

Some told Eckard their factories could be idled by mid-July without backup magnet supplies. "The whole car industry is in full panic," said Eckard, CEO of Magnosphere, based in Troisdorf, Germany. "They are willing to pay any price."

China has a virtual monopoly on "rare earth magnets." We could mine some of the rare earths in the US, except for the EPA and the roadblocks, but I'm not sure that they are all available in the US.

That doesn't include other elements, like copper.

You can't snap your fingers and wish an increase, by a couple of orders of magnitude, of an industry. You can't click your fingers and wish that the earth had more copper than it does. That doesn't seem to stop politicians from doing exactly that.

The hat tip goes to Net Zero Quickie: Auto industry in "FULL PANIC MODE" | MGUY Australia. The video is less than 4 minutes.

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