Some posts on rare earth materials

China’s Rare Earths Aren’t as Rare as You Think: When the country tried to choke off supply of the metals before, the world found ways to adapt (2025)

China's Threat To Restrict Exports of Rare Earth Minerals to the U.S. Is an Empty Bluff: China's 2010 export restrictions on rare earth compounds failed then, and they would fail now  (2019)

Rare Earths Crisis in Retrospect (2018)

China’s Rare-Earths Bust: A new Honda engine shows the limits of Beijing’s coercion (2016)

The rare earth crisis was exaggerated and what wasn’t exaggerated the market alleviated (2014)

How the Great Rare-Earth Metals Crisis Vanished: China's attempt to control the market for materials essential to the tech industry is turning to dust (2014) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want more solar panels do we have to give up some pine trees? And cause inbreeding and birth defects in bears due to reduced habitat?

See The South Is Having Second Thoughts About Trading Pine Trees for Solar Panels: Americans used to focus on the cost and reliability of electricity. Now, they are fighting over how it is produced, a solar executive says by Ryan Dezember of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Hunters, botanists, residents worried about water quality and people citing Scripture lined up to oppose the installation of 2,100 acres of solar panels next to a wildlife preserve.

But it was the plight of the local black bears that doomed the proposal from Silicon Ranch, one of the South’s largest solar operators."

"The 300 or so bears that roam the Oaky Woods Wildlife Management Area and adjacent timberland are already so hemmed in by highways and development that they are inbreeding"

"The timberland that Silicon Ranch wanted to buy and develop near Perry was long managed as part of the adjacent wildlife preserve. Much of the property was logged to make way for solar panels. 

The bears, for which an area high-school football team is named, were a concern from the start. Ben Carr, a graduate student at the University of Georgia who studies them, said bears can coexist with timber operations, denning in the slash piles left by loggers and feeding on the blackberries that sprout. He presented research at public meetings showing how development reduced their range and pushed sows and their cubs from familiar territory.  

He described the deformities turning up due to genetic isolation. “Those are warning signs,” Carr said."

Related posts:

Life is full of tradeoffs: We can have more data centers and local tax revenue or less tourism and a dirtier environment (2025) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: Seafloor mining could bring us metals used in the making of electric-vehicle batteries at the cost of harming the environment (2025) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want a cleaner environment in Massachuesetts do we have to give up sand used to make concrete? 2024 (this one has another 20 posts on this topic that are not linked here)

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want a cleaner environment in Minnesota do we have to give up metals needed for green energy? (2024) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want to protect Hawaii's marine life and tuna fisheries we will have fewer rare minerals for defense applications (2024) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want to keep gas prices low we might have to reduce sanctions on Russia (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: if we want more "big data" and artificial intelligence then we might have less green energy (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: if we want more nickel to make EV batteries we might have to use more coal (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: it costs money to keep chemicals out of our water systems (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: reaching net zero emissions by 2050 vs. the costs of the transition (2023) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want more wind farms, we might have fewer jaguars & pumas and less water (2023)  

Lawmakers Traded Stocks Heavily as Trump Rolled Out ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs

Buying and selling of stocks spur new push to further restrict lawmakers’ market activities

By Katy Stech Ferek, Jack Gillum, James Benedict and Gunjan Banerji of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"As markets tanked in the wake of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in early April, members of Congress and their families made hundreds of stock trades, shining a spotlight on a controversial practice that some lawmakers have pushed to ban.

From April 2, when Trump launched the sweeping tariffs, to April 8, the day before he paused many of them, more than a dozen House lawmakers and their family members made more than 700 stock trades, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of disclosure filings. Top stocks purchased in that “Liberation Week” period, by the number of trades listed in the disclosures, included MKS Instruments and JPMorgan Chase, while the most sold stocks included Honeywell International and Visa."

"Disclosure rules only require members to report wide ranges of transaction values, not specific amounts or the price. For most members who both bought and sold, that makes it impossible to tell whether their overall trading activity that week made or lost money."

"Lawmakers passed a law in 2012 prohibiting trading on insider information and mandating disclosure"

"the opportunity for insider trading by members of Congress is very real . . . said Rep. Seth Magaziner"

Related post:

Looks Like Some Pretty Good Capitalists Run The Congress (2024)

Did U.S. government officials make money buying and selling stocks based on their inside information about Covid policy? (2022) 

60 Minutes: Insider trading is legal for members of Congress-but it is nothing new, it started in 1790  (2011)

Schools Can Pay Their Athletes—and College Sports Will Never Be the Same

The landmark House settlement seeks some equilibrium on the playing field. But plenty of questions—and some denial—remains

By Jason Gay of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"a settlement has been approved allowing schools to directly pay their athletes.

This isn’t a salary, technically. This is compensation from schools to athletes for use of their “name, image, likeness,” but it’s not a measly NIL like a burly offensive lineman getting all the bratwurst he can eat. This is a real paycheck, directly from the college."

"The settlement of this class action—House vs. NCAA, in which current and former athletes sought name, image and likeness opportunities and a share of athletic department revenue—had been in the works for a while. 

On Friday, a federal judge signed off on the $2.6 billion settlement, which includes back pay to litigants but also creates a revenue-sharing system “in which each Division I school will be able to distribute roughly $20 million a year to their athletes,” the Journal reported."

"The bulk of those $20 million allotments are expected to go to high-revenue sports like football and men’s basketball—that’s where the money’s coming from, after all. Other beneficiaries may be growing sports like women’s basketball and softball."

"The revenue sharing payments will come from the schools, and third party NIL deals over $600 will be subject to review by “NIL Go,” an oversight group overseen by Deloitte.

The idea here is to put outside NIL deals under a microscope—find out what player deals are legitimate arrangements, and what are booster largesses masquerading as NIL."

"Enforcement will be a headache. So will the invariable league challenges."

"the proportion of revenue (22 percent) given to athletes"  

Related posts:

Are lucrative deals for college athletes doomed? (2025) 

The University of North Carolina is trying to turn its student-athletes social media stars (2025)

March Madness will cost $17.3 billion in lost work (2023)

Supreme Court Rejects NCAA’s Tight Limits on Athlete Benefits, Compensation (2021) 

March Madness Is a Moneymaker. Most Schools Still Operate in Red (2021)

NCAA Takes Another Court Hit on Athlete Compensation: The Ninth Circuit ruled that the organization’s restrictions violated federal antitrust law  (2020)

The NCAA wants an antitrust exemption from Congress so it can oversee name, image and likeness deals (2020)

Cost of attendance stipends in college sports  (2018)

How The Economics Of College Sports Might Be Distorted  (2017)

All is not well (financially) in the world of college football (2015)

Public universities spend more per athlete than they do per student (2013)

Will Moving To NCAA Division I Status Pay Off For The University of the Incarnate Word? (2012)

There's A New Book On The Economics Of College Sports  (2011)

What Economists Say About "March Madness" (2009)

The Flutie Effect: When The Teams Win, More Students Apply To The College. (2008)

Basketball on Office Monitors Madness for Business (2008) ("streaming all 63 final college basketball games free, will cost American businesses about $1.7 billion in lost productivity" plus computers  servers might crash)

Are Businesses Absorbing the Tariffs or Passing Them On to Their Customers?

Jaison R. Abel, Richard Deitz, Sebastian Heise, Ben Hyman, and Nick Montalbano. They are all with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Excerpts:

"most businesses passed on at least some of the higher tariffs to their customers, with nearly a third of manufacturers and about 45 percent of service firms fully passing along all tariff-induced cost increases by raising their prices."

"As a result of the higher tariffs, manufacturers indicated that the cost of their tariffed goods had increased by an average of about 20 percent over the past six months, while service firms reported a roughly 15 percent average cost increase. While these figures are quite close to the increases in the firms’ average tariff rates, firms’ costs of tariffed goods may not have increased by as much as the tariffs in part because importers may have switched towards suppliers in other countries or in the United States; foreign suppliers may also have lowered their prices to help offset the tariffs."

"Almost a third of manufacturers and about 45 percent of service firms reported fully passing along all tariff-related cost increases, while 45 percent of manufacturers and a third of service firms said they passed along some but not all of the cost increase."

" a quarter of both types of firms said they absorbed all tariff-related cost increases and were not raising their prices. This pattern is consistent with other research using business surveys showing that in response to a hypothetical 5 percent cost increase, about a quarter of firms would fully pass through this cost increase into higher prices, while another quarter of firms would not change prices at all."

"Consistent with textbook economics, tariffs generally resulted in higher prices to customers. Indeed, roughly half of businesses reported raising prices of goods directly subject to tariffs. Interestingly, a significant share of businesses also reported raising the selling prices of their goods and services unaffected by tariffs. Many businesses indicated they increased prices to cover other rising costs such as wages and insurance"

The article mentions that some prices rose more than others.  How does this work? Let's look at the graph below.

What if there is a reduction in the supply of a good? (this happens when a product is taxed, like in a tariff although the supply line actually shifts upward by the amount of the tax). If we have demand 1 (D1), price will go up quite a bit (as shown by the long green line). This is inelastic demand.

But if demand becomes more elastic and we move to demand 2 (D2), the same decrease in supply means a much smaller increase in price (as shown by the short green line). So if we have more elastic demand (D2), the price is lower than at D1 when supply decreases.

So the products that don't go up as much that the article mentions will have more elastic demand like D1.

 

One caveat. Slope and elasticity are not the same thing. Elasticity usually changes as you move along a demand curve (the elasticity going from a price of 10 down to 9 is not the same as when the price falls from 2 to 1). But if we picked two prices (any prices that are not where the demand curve hits the price axis and zero) and the calculate the elasticity, the steeper line will have a lower elasticity. 

Price elasticity of demand-It tells us how responsive quantity demanded (Q_d)is to a change in price. That is, when price changes, will the change in Q_d be large or small? The bigger the change in Q_d  the greater will be the price elasticity of demand.

We will use E_d to stand for price elasticity of demand. Here is the definition

E_d = %DQ_d /%DP

where D (the Greek letter delta) means "change in."

OR  E_d = % change in Q_d divided by % change in P

Related posts:

Trump’s Tariffs Are Unique in History: U.S. trade policy went through three eras, focused on ‘revenue, restriction and reciprocity,’ economist Douglas Irwin says. The 47th president likes all three Rs, and a fourth, ‘retribution.’ (2025) 

Can Trump’s Tariff Offensive Deliver New American Jobs? (2025)

Americans Are Stockpiling Ahead of Trump’s Tariffs (2025)

Powell Warns of ‘Challenging Scenario’ for Fed as Trade War Rages (2025) 

How Much Do Tariffs Raise Prices? (2025)

Politicians talk about creating manufacturing jobs but do people really want them? (2025)

How some of Trump's policies might affect the economy (2024)

Tariffs are regressive: they fall more heavily on lower-income families who tend to spend more of their income on cheap imported goods (2024)

Americans Are Stockpiling to Get Ahead of Tariffs: Some consumers are snapping up computer parts, vacuum cleaners, coffee and olive oil before levies take effect (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we support American workers with trade restrictions it might mean more inflation (2023) 

The Seasonally Adjusted CPI Was Up 0.081% In May

Here are the changes in the seasonally adjusted CPI each of the last six months:

Dec  0.3647% 

Jan  0.4669%

Feb 0.2160%

Mar -0.0500%

April 0.2209%

May  0.081%

 

The last decline before March 2025 was June 2024 when it was down 0.0029%.

 

See Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) compiled by the Research Division at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for data on the seasonally adjusted CPI.

 

That site shows a graph but if you click on the Download button you will get the actual numbers in Microsoft Excel.

 

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average (CPIAUCSL) was 320.321 in April and 320.580 in May. Since 320.580/320.321 = 1.00081, that means it was up 0.081%. If we had that every month for 12 months it would be up 0.975%.  

 

It was 313.140 in May 2024. Since 320.580/313.140 = 1.0238, that means it was up 2.38% over the last 12 months.  

The non-seasonally adjusted CPI was 321.465 in May and 314.069 in May 2024. That was up 2.36%. So pretty close to the seasonally adjusted CPI. This is still above the Fed's target of 2.0% (although they prefer to use the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index which was 2.1% higher in April 2025 than April 2024).

 

For more information, see U.S. inflation rises 0.1% in May from prior month, less than expected by Jeff Cox of CNBC. 

 

I think the headline should have said that the CPI was up 0.1%, not inflation. If inflation rose 0.1% it would mean that the inflation rate was 0.1% higher than the month before. So if the inflation rate had been .22% in April then to get the May inflation rate we would multiply .0022 times 1.001. Then the May inflation rate would be .0022022 or .22022%. And they must have rounded up from .081% to .1%. So things were not up quite as much as the headline says.

 

Excerpts:

Consumer prices rose less than expected in May as President Donald Trump’s tariffs had yet to show significant impact on inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The consumer price index, a broad-based measure of goods and services across the sprawling U.S. economy, increased 0.1% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.4%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for respective readings of 0.2% and 2.4%.          

Excluding food and energy, the core CPI came in respectively at 0.1% and 2.8%, compared with forecasts for 0.3% and 2.9%. Federal Reserve officials consider core a better measure of long-term trends, with several expressing concerns recently over the impact that tariffs would have on inflation.

The all-items annual rate marked a 0.1 percentage point step up from April while core was the same."  

The article also discusses what types of products are going up in price and what is going down. There is a graph of the monthly year-over-year percent change in prices and core prices going back almost 4 years.

 

Other related links:

 

Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items Less Food and Energy in U.S. City Average (CPILFESL) This is also from from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), compiled by the Research Division at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It has the seasonally adjusted core CPI.

 

Consumer Price Index Data from 1913 to 2025

 

Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index 

 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics makes seasonal adjustments. See Consumer Price Index Summary.

 

The table below has the annual inflation rate since 1914 in the columns labeled CPI %Ch. or CPI percentage change. It is from Consumer Price Index Data from 1913 to 2025 and is not seasonally adjusted. It is also the December to December change in the CPI. That site also looks at how the 12 month average for the CPI changed from one year to the next. 

 

Year	CPI %Ch.		Year	CPI %Ch.		Year	CPI %Ch.		Year	CPI %Ch.
1914	1.0		1944	2.3		1974	12.3		2004	3.3
1915	2.0		1945	2.2		1975	6.9		2005	3.4
1916	12.6		1946	18.1		1976	4.9		2006	2.5
1917	18.1		1947	8.8		1977	6.7		2007	4.1
1918	20.4		1948	3.0		1978	9.0		2008	0.1
1919	14.5		1949	-2.1		1979	13.3		2009	2.7
1920	2.6		1950	5.9		1980	12.5		2010	1.5
1921	-10.8		1951	6.0		1981	8.9		2011	3.0
1922	-2.3		1952	0.8		1982	3.8		2012	1.7
1923	2.4		1953	0.7		1983	3.8		2013	1.5
1924	0.0		1954	-0.7		1984	3.9		2014	0.8
1925	3.5		1955	0.4		1985	3.8		2015	0.7
1926	-1.1		1956	3.0		1986	1.1		2016	2.1
1927	-2.3		1957	2.9		1987	4.4		2017	2.1
1928	-1.2		1958	1.8		1988	4.4		2018	1.9
1929	0.6		1959	1.7		1989	4.6		2019	2.3
1930	-6.4		1960	1.4		1990	6.1		2020	1.4
1931	-9.3		1961	0.7		1991	3.1		2021	7.0
1932	-10.3		1962	1.3		1992	2.9		2022	6.5
1933	0.8		1963	1.6		1993	2.7		2023	3.4
1934	1.5		1964	1.0		1994	2.7		2024	2.9
1935	3.0		1965	1.9		1995	2.5
1936	1.4		1966	3.5		1996	3.3
1937	2.9		1967	3.0		1997	1.7
1938	-2.8		1968	4.7		1998	1.6
1939	0.0		1969	6.2		1999	2.7
1940	0.7		1970	5.6		2000	3.4
1941	9.9		1971	3.3		2001	1.6
1942	9.0		1972	3.4		2002	2.4
1943	3.0		1973	8.7		2003	1.9