Global Chains of Supply of Rare-Earth and Rare Metals as High-Tech Raw Materials Within the Framework of International Industrial Cooperation

The article highlights the results of a systematic analysis of the US, EU and Russia approaches to managing global supply chains of rare-earth and rare metals for high-tech sectors of national economies as a factor of spatial distribution of the international cooperation effects. The applied research method is a qualitative system approach. It is shown that for the US the management of global supply chains of strategic metals and materials is in the focus of attention due to the fact that they are included in the downstream processes of the production of American military-industrial products and high-tech consumer goods, thereby predetermining the preservation of the status quo of the national security as a fundamental and existential factor. For the European Union, the regulation of supply chains of strategic metals for the purpose of producing downstream products is carried out primarily in connection with the increase of energy efficiency of the economy, growth of productivity and resource saving, the spread of «green» technologies. For Russia, there is practically no problem of supplying rare-earth and rare metals from its own sources in the form of low-grade products (carbonates), but the absence of critical mass of production at the middle-downstream levels does not allow balancing the growing supply (10 thousand tons per year) and stabilizing demand for raw materials (up to 2 thousand tons) from the national economy. A set of targeted measures and instruments of institutional and economic policy aimed at accelerating the formation of a high-tech layer of the economy is proposed with a view to expanding the areas and volumes of domestic consumption of metals in the face of financial, economic and technological constraints, primarily by the United States and the European Union. The principles of economic, scientific and technical policy laid down in the foundation of dynamic development with the use of rare-earth and rare metals of the high-tech civil and military industry of the USA and the European Union are applicable and adapt only partially for the Russian conditions, which is connected with different goals of managing global supply chains of raw materials