"Western govts dont have the guts to insist rare earth customers...

"Western govts dont have the guts to insist rare earth customers buy from Australia at an increased cost over china. They say so but do you see tariffs on rare earths from china?"

the above comments, with respect Birchcorp, from DarsalBrunette to me clearly means in the last sentence that he/she means that western countries are not forcing WESTERN customers from buying Chinese RE by applying import tariffs to disincentivise purchasing Chinese EXPORTED RE. While it's not realistic for Western countries to force RE customers to buy from Oz it's clear that where RE comes from will not be an ethical issue and the cheapest RE supplier will always rule the roost. It will only change when a country in the west can produce RE on scale and at the similar price to the Chinese and then the west can start throwing its weight around and isolating China fully. IMO