Misleading headline. They still want to export it, but they want to process the minerals locally, and then export the processed rare earth material.
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Wow what a stupid title. It's straight up a lie.
Didn't the last country that tried to not be taken advantage of for its rare earth metals have a CIA backed coup like 2 weeks later?
They got a bunch of a valuable resource, and they're going to maximize its value by... not selling it...? So they've been taking lessons from debeers I guess?
Here's how that plays out when it's a critical resource and not a frivolity... the people who critically need it will establish the resource somewhere else. Lets say you own 50% of the current output. That 50% will be made available somewhere else somehow, because it's critical. Now your 50% is only 33%, and it's criticality is significantly less, and you can't sell it for as much as you used to be able to, IF you can even sell it at all, because you were a dick when people needed it and didn't have it, and the world remembers that kinda shit for a while.
And of course, if it's critical enough, there are some pretty big militaries out there that might come knocking...
The article doesn't say this so I'm not sure that this is Malaysia's plan, but usually with things like this the idea is specifically to limit export of the raw materials only in order to get international companies to set up manufacturing in your country. Zimbabwe recently-ish banned lithium ore exports, for example, with the hope of getting the more lucrative industry of processing the ore in to usable lithium in to the country instead
Welp, they're gonna send Zoolander at them again...