Comment by PowerElectronix
2 days ago
The way I see it, China has leverage once you arreive to that dependency situation. That leverages goes away the moment they restrict exports and every country scrambles to create local production once again.
We are seeing that with some rare earths, even tho china is back into exporting them (except to japan, I think?) everyone is looking for alternatives already. They may have killed their industry 10 years down the line for playing with the export lever a bit too much.
Just like how markets punish the ram cartel creating a chance for cxmt and ymtc to enter. It would create a chance for western companies to do the same if china messes with the markets they have "cornered".
> The way I see it, China has leverage once you arreive to that dependency situation. That leverages goes away the moment they restrict exports and every country scrambles to create local production once again.
The first problem is that it doesn't go away instantaneously, so even if you could recover in ten years, you still get screwed immediately.
The second problem is that it's leverage. They can threaten to do it if they don't get what they want, and if you then do what they want (which often gives them even more leverage) they don't have to do it. But then they keep their leverage and you have to keep doing what they want.