Corinium neodymium unobtanium

One of our favourite loudspeakers in the store at the moment is the Acoustic Energy Corinium. This is a brilliant english design made offshore that is remarquable value in its sound quality and engineering.

Now we took an order on a pair on Sunday evening and, on placing the order with our distributor Monday morning, disovered that we were procuring the last pair in Australia for some time.  In fact, and very unusually for this particular very punctillious distributor, they are unable to confirm when their next shipment would be made.

It seems that the shipment is being withheld by the Chinese factory due to the necessity of compliance with the new export licensing edict involving product that may end up in the United States.

At the same time we discovered that some Sonus faber Lumini Amati speakers that we were ordering to replenish stock sold on the weekend, would not be available until December 2025.

Sonus faber, although Italian manufactured, and its sister company McIntosh have recently been purchased by Bose Corporation, that archetypical US audio company.

Now here perhaps arrives the toxic bite of the Trumpian sponsored trade wars of 2025. Neodymium in particular iterations is a monopoly of Chinese manufacturing along with a number of other rare earth based materials.

China's export restrictions, implemented in response to US tariffs, have targeted seven rare earth elements: dysprosium, terbium, scandium, praseodymium, europium, yttrium, and neodymium. 

These materials are crucial for various applications, including defense technologies, renewable energy, and electronics. The restrictions aim to disrupt global supply chains by requiring companies to obtain licenses for exporting these materials and related products. 

Neodymium is intrinsic to the manufacture of consumer products such as Electric vehicles and ... loudspeakers ...

An F35 uses 417Kg of rare earth materials. A Tesla Mdel 3 uses 4.5kg of Neodymium in each motor. A windmill power generator uses up to 2 tons of rare earth magnets per megawatt of generation capacity.

China makes 92% of the worlds rare earth magnets .... 

When these restrictions were announced by China in April, one could not understand why the US administration did not immediately realise their critical vulnerability to this type of targeted reciprocal sanction to the tariffs.

Frankly one can only assume that they suffer that combination of arrogance, incompetence, and in Trumps particular case, ignorance and incontinence; that will allow China to squeeze the US into an unenviable trading position.

No doubt Trump will say that he has negotiated a wonderful deal as he TACO's out of the situation with perhaps one or two extra concessions thrown in along the way, such as ... Taiwan ...?

I am genuinely afraid that these trade wars are going to adversely affect critical product supplies to our industry and make it very difficult to do business. We will see how this plays out.