JemmyChina has stopped exporting rare earths to everyone, not just the U.S., cutting off critical materials for tech, autos, aerospace, and defense
BrikoXfortune.com/2025/04/14/china-rare-earth-exports…
Exports of rare earths now require special licenses, but Beijing has yet to fully establish a system for issuing them, the New York Times reported.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20250414191508/https://fortune.com/2025/04/14/china-rare-earth-exports-halt-trump-trade-war-tariff-retaliation/
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
13 Comments
Comments from other communities
Most retailers have announced price hikes across the globe. I had hoped EU would actually get cheaper electronics and whatnot because of dumping.
Oh well. Guess this 7 year old pc is going to have to sing it out for a few years longer at this rate.
I'm just glad that as I get older I'm more content with simple things. I'd be ok giving up most tech things and I say that while working in IT myself.
Amen. I also work in IT and I find the longer I do, the more I loathe new tech stacks and developments. I used to be passionate about new tech and its applications. Now I just want to be left alone where possible.
It's not necessarily you getting older; there is a fundamental difference in goals, aims and quality of software now. 99% of major software is either funded by VC or incumbent monopolists who are interested in extractions primarily and establishing moats, barriers to free and fair use, and any way possible to monetize an interaction. This is why those of us who lived through the actual innovation stages aren't excited anymore as it's clear this is not "progress" and the warning flags are there from the first marketing pitch.
This entire timeline though was part of the plan, it was never going to be free/cheap, functional and easily accessible forever. We are in the frog boiling phase now that doesn't end until we take back some of what has been lost.
When the end times are here and you find yourself bored you can come by my cave and check my collection of cool rocks and sticks.
FranklinI'm just trying to see my kid through college and then I'm ready for something simpler. Goatops.com (well a copy/paste from before the site existed) made me chuckle and planted the seed, now I'm in the actual consideration stage of it.
I'm running the same desktop for nearky 14 years and I have two laptops that are over 8. Still daily use.
The usa pissed off China so much they basically said "fuck all yall" 😭
They got what everyone wants, and they want to make sure everyone remembers that. No doubt prices will raise due to interrupted supply. China will probably benefit when they resume trade with selected countries
No matter how you spin it, China comes out on top. They get to sit back while their main adversaries simply throw away every advantage they've built up over the last five decades or so. The only winning move is not to play...
Never interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake.
We're only in April, of year 1, this gonna be a long mistake.
The USA used to succeed due to all the brightest young minds wanting to immigrate and study in US universities.
Can’t really see anyone wanting to live in China, even just for study or work.
skulblakaSeeing how things are going stateside and how poorly received American refugees are likely going to be anywhere, I'd consider it.
That‘s their default, though. It’s not the first time they‘re acting up as an unreliable business partner. I mean they bought all those rare earth mines across the globe for a reason and it‘s not to just stick it to the USA. They‘re both bullies.
BoxscapeThey're both bullies.
roofuskitGreat analogy. China and the US are the Kaiju, and the rest of the world are the people living in the cities we fight in.
Deleted by moderator
China has been doing this for years.
Deleted by moderator
From 2011:
That’s because China now controls over 95% of the world’s supplies of rare earth metals, and has placed curbs on rare earth exports, creating a resource stranglehold. China slashed export quotas by 72% in the second half of last year, and imposed a further 35% cut in the first half of 2011 from the year-ago level. As a result prices for some rare earths have jumped more than 1,000%.
☂️-that isn't even a comparison. the fact china stopped sale of minerals doesn't put it in equal footing with the terror the us does.
Makes sense.
Geopoliticts shifts, good idea to just stop, wait and see who's ready to be on friendly terms.
Particularly in Europe, the result is like a few election cycles out. Could go in like 5 different directions and is impossible to predict.
China is encouraging other countries to find new sources which exist on every continent.
They are not nearly as rare as the name implies.
The rarity is the ability to do it without caring about the massive environmental damage often caused while procuring the minerals.
Captain AggravatedCheck my understanding here: It's not that they're scarce, but there's no geological process that concentrates them like copper or gold. There aren't any neodymium seams the way there are gold seams, there's a very little amount everywhere. So you might as well sift the entire Mojave.
Yeah there's a reason people were saber rattling over those offshore deposits Japan claimed, and it's not because undersea mining is cheap and efficient or "they're on every continent what's the big deal"
Finding the labor to mine and process it cheaply enough to maintain profit margins, while simultaneously deporting everyone, is what makes things rare.
Looks like Australia will profit. We have a lot of lithium, and some of the others, china's been undercutting the price for a while.
chaosCruiserAs opposed to what the headline could make you think, it’s not a complete ban on all REE exports. A total ban wouldn’t make much sense.
The REE business is big, and China can’t keep stockpiling these metals for long. Also, REE production is integrated to the rest of the industry, so you can’t just switch those factories off and expect everything else to keep on chugging along as usual.
China can afford to sit on these minerals for years or even decades. EU, US and Russia don't have that luxury.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCAForcing others to find new suppliers is how you find out they built their own supply chains that exclude you. Business 201
Well what if you need to keep on producing more common metals in the meantime, and REEs are a byproduct. You would need to keep the REE factories running too.
If you end up with 100 tons of terbium and yttrium oxide sitting in bags out in the rain, it’s going to lead to some serious quality issues further down the line. Well, just shove them in a warehouse then?
You’ll need a big warehouse, and you need to keep building more of them every year as the stockpiles grow. Needless to say, there are some serious logistical problems with a total export ban. A partial restriction is more viable, because it gives China some time to figure out how to adapt.
In any case, the rest of the world needs these metals, and they are willing to bend to knee long before China runs out of mitigation strategies. It’s going to be a problem in China as well, but at least they’re not totally screwed.
GlitchvidThe US manages to store 1.5B pounds of cheese it doesn't do anything with, I think China can handle constructing some warehouse to hold what it digs up from the ground.
If China never wants to export REE again because other countries have built their own refineries sure, they can.
Is it just that China doesn’t want them to go to another country and resold to the U.S. in another deal?
WrenTo the hoardening!
Western industries like to cry foul. But if they did not do anything since these bans started about 20 years ago it means that they are happy with it.
It’s insane how little reporting there is on this. This is perhaps the biggest story of the week.
Trump is back to making us think in weeks rather than years.
aramovaThis is how a tariff war becomes a war war
HanrahanI could imagine that what US has done has caused fear and a feeling of needing to hoard enough to get your country through a war. It's making me, a lowly in Australia feel like we should be able to survive on our own, and have more available resources. I'm going to guess they're more aware of threats than I am, more aware of where the next steps of this whole "mastermind" plan of Elon and Trumps enacting. This is not the only consequences of what they've done, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg, yet.
hoarding
The main issue with rare earths is extracting them. It's very polluting and labor intensive.
China sells them so cheap it doesn't make economic sense for most countries to extract them, but there are locations with high concentrations all over the world.
Yup, very few rare earth metals are actually rare in absolute terms. Most deposits simply aren't worth the trouble.
A_norny_mousseIn the meantime, shipments of rare earths have been halted at many ports, with customs officials blocking exports to any country, including to the U.S. as well as Japan and Germany, sources told the Times. China’s Ministry of Commerce issued export restrictions alongside the General Administration of Customs, prohibiting Chinese businesses from any engagement with U.S. firms, especially defense contractors.
They're clearly calling Trump's bluff, but why include Japan and Germany in this? Worrying. The article doesn't explain.
BTW I don't buy into the narrative that China is the better world dominator. Their human rights record is abhorrent, and they clearly aren't a democracy. And I don't see that changing anytinme soon.
but why include Japan and Germany in this?
To stop US companies routing shipments through Germany and Japan.
Precisely this. You route a shipment to an un-tarriffed/un-embargoed country, usually to a shell company or something, and then ship it to wherever using THAT country as the country of origin. It's a pretty common way of avoiding arms embargoes.
𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆Because these are all loopholes used to bypass any serious moves. Like everyone is still buying Russian oil even in Europe. The blockade is an ineffective joke. This move is China saying fuck your instability and stupidity, we are serious and can back it up. There are no back doors and no way out of this insanely stupid mess.
It is not so much that China is the better world dominator, it is more that the US is already dominating more than any one nation should and it is a good thing if politicians keep dependencies on nations like that in their minds as a concern.
the US is clearly not a republic
that change did happen recently
The US is a Republic, not just a democratic one. Republic means the power is in the hands of a few, which is exactly the case. It is not democratic at core, because votes mean shit.
An Oligarchic Republic, your wealth determines how many votes you get. In this system, the 99% of poor voters are shit.
We will need wealth floors and ceilings in a revised Constitution in order to get rid of this issue. Economics, politics, and violence, are just different faces of power. The great mistake of the Founding Fathers was failing to recognize that money needs checks and balances, else it runs out of control.
BTW I don't buy into the narrative that China is the better world dominator. Their human rights record is abhorrent, and they clearly aren't a democracy. And I don't see that changing anytinme soon.
China's human rights record is abhorrent, but they're mostly willing to keep it in their pants and not overthrow governments or fund genocides on the other side of the world.
not overthrow governments
Uhhhh....
Not overthrow governments on the other side of the world.
It does not make the slightest difference for location of where a country is overthrowing governments
Of course it doesn't, but go back to the original statement.
Yeah saw and it's still such a silly thing to say. Like is a genocide better because you keep it to yourself? Christ.
They sure like waving their sticks an awful lot in the South China Sea and pissing off all their neighbours though. And in some cases outright hostile. The US needs to be strong to keep China at bay and the reverse needs to be a true, a weaker US will let China get even more belligerent and as someone who's a neighbour of the Chinese, it's not a good sight to see.
They sure like waving their sticks an awful lot in the South China Sea and pissing off all their neighbours though.
Oh yeah absolutely, but then again look at what the US does and has done in the Americas. It more than evens out I think, hence my focus on stuff they do away from home.
You're correct, but are getting downvoted by people who treat the whole topic like they're supporting a sports team.
tell that to someone who lives in an EU country where corrupt politicians are building out surveillance systems with chinese tech, and bringing the country into other large chinese projects from even larger chinese loans, along with chinese battery factories that are polluting our environment!
to someone, like me.
a neighboring country is also neck deep in this shit
I mean that's not what I'm talking about though, and in the first place does it really matter if the surveillance systems are Chinese or American/Israeli?
does it really matter if the surveillance systems are Chinese or American/Israeli?
what matters here is that chinese influence initiated the project
to be fair they havent been at war for decades.
the us has been at constant war for decades.
the choice here is easy.
Snot FlickermanChina knows what it has and isn't afraid to be the new big-dick-swinging-bully in town now that the USA has blown it's wad.
You know what, good for them. When you got it, flaunt it.
The way these Trumpian dipshits might put it is "They hold all the cards."
So this seems...not good.
Could someone please map out a scale of best to worst next events that are most likely to occur as a result of this?
Best? Trump does that thing that certain people have done in bunkers when they recognize how badly they fucked up. You know, a painting or something.
Worst? Just about anything else.
I heard Ukraine has some. Europe has someone to buy it from then, after they freed them from Russian invaders. Which they should be doing anyways.
The US is trying to claim ownership of the Ukrainian stock as a condition of peace with Russia.
Thing is, they truly don't really have that much. The US has more and it's not actually rare, it just was at the time when it was discovered.
This is kind of interesting... China has been working on monopolizing sources of raw materials for awhile now, and putting them on the market cheap so that they become the de facto supplier, making it difficult or impossible for any other sources to be developed.
But... there are other sources of things like lithium and cobalt, it's just been cheaper to buy it from China so everyone does.
Cutting off the supply will cause some slow-downs and a bit of chaos in the short term but what will happen is local sources will suddenly become worth developing. What this does is effectively burn a big piece of China's economic power... I wonder what they're getting out of it right now? The impact won't last very long.
Wanpieserino
setsubyouNeither lithium nor cobalt are rare earths, and China isn’t particularly dominating their production either. The leading producers are other countries. These are completely unrelated to the rare earths problem.
With rare earths the situation is that China isn’t only leading in production of the ores, but also in processing capacity, and the technology needed for it. The US already is the second largest producer of rare earth ores, but they still have to send them to China for processing because they can’t do all of it in the US. For the same reason, China produces ~90% of the world’s permanent magnets (these use rare earths like neodymium or samarium). Basically it’s not about developing sources for the ores. Rare earths are not that rare in the first place. It’s about the technology and capacity to do anything with them.
I do agree that the impact might not last long. They’re just forcing the competition to work faster. But maybe the explanation is that they think that making everybody speed up their rare earths development doesn’t change much in the long run anyway, while throwing a wrench into the US industry right now is a pretty good deal.
From research to large scale trials i would expect building the processing industry to take at the very least a few years. And once things are in place, China can just reopen the floodgates and give these new refiners a hard time, unless they are heavily protected by their government then.
So it requires a dedicated long term strategy to counteract, which will take some years. Also in the meantime all dependent industries are suffering big-time while China can still export the finished products and further strengthen their industries.
In terms of economical power this move is much stronger than Trumps tariffs and there is no rewards to be expected for countries who stick it out for the US. The US has already made it clear that it will just make you suffer more, the more you give in to them.
It's perfectly possible to do in the US, just costs a bit more. So, capitalism being what it is, that work got outsourced so the vultures could see higher numbers.
Is it possible to do in the US where most of the qualified people already do other jobs and a lot of the rest had the reading comprehension of a 6th grader before they had the brillant idea to abolish the department of education and remove funding from universities in other ways though?
throwing a wrench into the US industry right now is a pretty good deal.
This is the part I don't really get - they've spent decades working to control these resources, and I can't really see what benefit they get from this that offsets that time and effort.
Manipulating the flow and the prices makes sense. Cutting it off entirely just to participate in a dick-measuring contest with the US really doesn't make any sense. Nations are already looking at moving their supply chains especially for electronics after all the COVID disruptions. Encouraging those nations to go looking elsewhere for the entire supply chain just loses you business and influence, no matter how much short-term cost you inflict.
CileTheSaneThat kind of infrastructure takes time to build. Nobody wants to invest in something that will take years to start producing if there's a 50/50 chance that tomorrow Trump rolls over and China starts selling again within a month. It's too risky with how unstable the world market is right now.
China is preparing for real war against Taiwan, hoping that restricting these minerals will prevent Taiwan backers from replenishing their militaries in a war of attrition within a meaningful timeftame after invasion.
They're called "rare earth elements", but they're extremely common. They're just in trace amounts...everywhere in the Earth's crust. China stopping exports just means everyone else will have a reason to extract them, when before China was just a path of least resistance. Will take a bit of time to re-establish industry though.
This makes me think they're going to move on Taiwan sooner rather than later.
Why would they? If the US keeps sabotaging its influence and economy they just have to wait for a bit for the protection of Taiwan to collapse completely.
I mean it's in the context. They're shutting down rare mineral resources but given a few years other countries can replace those supplies. If China wants to cripple certain abilities, they probably want to act before we have found workarounds for their actions. Also, as crazy as Trump has seemed so far, the US is nowhere near uninfluential. Yet. He gained influence during his last term. I wouldn't write him off as completely insane just yet.
The last line is also in the post, but I think it's worth stressing that they don't necessarily intend to halt all exports to everywhere. Although I don't like the Chinese having such diplomatic power over core industrial materials.
The USA found a massive stash of them recently
What do you mean a massive stash? Rare earth isn't banded iron it's not gold or copper from porphyry copper deposits it's very spread out throughout entire continents and that's exactly why it is hard to source, and a part of the reason why china succeeded was their government support eliminated risks of unprofitable business
The US and Australia ain't doing shit unless they fund and afterwards support them, or create a state owned enterprise
I believe Australia also has a nice stash of them. I do wonder if part of the reason everyone is eyeing Greenland is for similar reasons.
The thing is, rare earths got their name because they are barely ever found purely on their own, they have to be separated from other metals which is a difficult and expensive proces. If I understand correctly rare earths are basically everywhere but you want to find a site with a high concentration in order to make it financially feasible.
More importantly, absolutely none of this has anything to do with China's near monopoly on rare earth refinement. Rare earth minerals, even high density regions of them, exist all over the world. Digging them up is easy, but separating the actual minerals from the rest of the soil and rock is really hard. That's the part that China is highly specialized in. No one needs to invade Greenland or fucking whatever to get access to rare earth minerals. The US can dig them up right there at home. What they need is to build out the refinement infrastructure. But they would prefer to outsource the extraction to other countries if they can because it involves strip mining vast swathes of land that could be used for other things.
All part of the Clownfish's master plan! Yay!
He successfully put The Resource Wars into overdrive
Contrary to their name, rare earth metals are not rare
They are a finite resource. And China has the biggest reserves.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rare-earth-reserves-by-country
They have the most known reserves. China has subsidized the rare earth market for decades, so capitalism hasn't really bothered with their exploration elsewhere; there has been little incentive beyond "national security".
There will definitely be considerable reserves in Canada, US, Australia, Africa, probably Russia. The problem is infrastructure, expertise, and the volume of highly-toxic pollution that mining and refining them entail.
Everything electronic, and dependent on electronics (everything), is about to see a lot of inflation. Yay!
To some small extent sure, but most of it was long explored during previous natural gas and oil booms.
What do you figure the odds are that any newly discovered deposits in the United States will be found inside of national parks, forests, or wildlife reserves?