Obama threatens rare earth trade war against China - but why?

Thursday, March 22, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: Obama, trade war, China

(NaturalNews) In the spirit of election season political posturing, the Obama White House has announced that it is filing a trade lawsuit against China for restricting exports on rare earth metals and other materials used in the production of touchscreen mobile phones, military weapons, laptop computers, and various other high-tech devices.

The poster child administration of meaningless political rhetoric, Obama and Co. has taken a convenient interest in China's misdealings with the U.S. and the rest of the world just as its popularity among Americans has reached an all-time low. And in a desperate bid to revive support primarily among Caucasian, middle-class voters, Obama is now feigning concern for American manufacturing with his lawsuit stunt, which will reportedly be handled by the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Since the U.S. no longer mines any rare earth metals and elements from its own earth, the import of these critical manufacturing components from China is necessary to maintain a steady supply of fancy electronic gadgets and war paraphernalia, two of the primary industrial sectors that are keeping the American economy from all-out collapsing. But paper tiger Obama's latest round of litigative grandstanding appears to be nothing more than a desperate election season ploy, as it is unlikely that the lawsuit will come to much in the end.

Mitt Romney has decided to exploit the lawsuit for his own political benefit as well, having recently promised publicly to dub China a "currency manipulator" on his first day of office should he be elected president. Romney was referring, of course, to allegations that China has been unfairly devaluing its own currency to set it self at an unfair advantage -- the U.S., of course, with its phony Federal Reserve notes has been manipulating its own fiat currency for decades.

"It is rash and unfair for the United States to put forward a lawsuit against China before the WTO, which may hurt economic relations between the world's largest and second-largest economies," wrote China's official Xinhua news agency in a recent commentary on the situation. "A better choice for the United States would be sitting down with China face-to-face and solve the problem through negotiations instead of making it an internationalized issue."

Some have also pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of the Obama Administration in seeking increased access to rare earth metals that are reportedly responsible for much environmental destruction in China (https://www.naturalnews.com/028160_rare_earth_metals_mining.html), while simultaneously acting as though it is promoting environmental protection measures (http://worldmeets.us/chinadaily000036.shtml).

Sources for this article include:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/13/obama-touts-lawsuit-against-china/

http://www.rnw.nl

http://www.huffingtonpost.com