One day we'll develop a particle accelerator so fast, we'll be able to change hydrogen into metal.

China will be happy to sell its batteries to USA at a very high price. Then USA will better seriously recycle old batteries to recover rare earths from them, instead of "exporting" hi-tech wastes to third world.

Problem solved.

Sorry man, late night, and not much sleep.

It's their stuff, so they can do what they want. No?

No. I've pointed out in above posts that, as a member of WTO, they have certain obligations. This breaks one of those obligations, and so the USA, Japan, and Europe are taking this to the WTO to get something done about it. WTO is supposed to encourage as much free trade as possible between nations, this is a massive protectionist policy which the WTO has rules against. You can't get all the benefits of the WTO, while breaking the rules.

As some would say, you can't have the cake, and eat it.

I didn't know about those obligations.

And if there are rules against that they indeed have to follow or get out of the WTO.

This is where you can sniff a bullshit excuse: the Chinese claiming they can't do something because of environmental concerns.

China caring for the environment.
That's a great oxymoron right there!

LOL, yeah! And if they can use it jointly with some WTO safeguard rules, they could avoid retaliations. Unlike our inept Romano Prodi, that when was President of European Council failed to cite such rules refusing American hormone ridden meats and so cost the EU hundreds million dollars in retaliation duties on exports to USA and Canada. But I'm sure China won't take this risk, people like Prodi there get a bullet in their head far before becoming able to damage the economy so much.
 

I don't think that would ever happen, at least not in the near future, but if they did, no one would win. They both have huge armies, China with more soldiers, US with better tech, both countries are huge, only one side of China is coastal, over a billion people to deal with, America is slightly smaller and has a west and east coastline, but America would have a very powerful and big militia. Neither country would really make it past the coastline of the other. Obviously this is a very simplistic assessment though, and doesn't take into account the several other countries that would be dragged into war and that would start war, it'd be WW3.