MP really start Work on 10x Factory; Ford go with Geely; RE Dual Use License Impact; RE Smuggle; RE with Vitamin C; USARE, JS Link, Lynas, Viridis, MP, Ucore, and the lot.
Rare Earth 24 July 2026 #202
Note
Can the US and its allies break China’s grip on rare earths and AI technology?
As Beijing wields its dominance in critical minerals supply chains, Washington is racing to cut its dependence through domestic investments and international partnerships with allies and partners in a daunting global effort to blunt one of China’s main economic levers.
Helberg heads one of those flagship initiatives: Pax Silica, a 24-country coalition designed to build China-free, AI-related supply chains across critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, AI infrastructure and logistics.
In defending Pax Silica’s expansive mandate, Helberg argued that reducing dependence on China required a whole-of-supply-chain strategy.
Jack Lifton sums it up nicely:
“Every participating country should contribute what it does best instead of trying to recreate an entire supply chain domestically,” he added. “Supply chains are built around customers and qualified suppliers, not around political declarations.”
US: Out of the frying pan, into the fire
We gather that a US delegation may be scheduled to visit Vietnam, also in order to look for rare earth solutions for the US.
How come the US wants to swap rare earth dependency from one communist country to another communist country? Perhaps a rethink is warranted.
However, the delegation, if it happens, could gain some real benefit for the US. An exquisite rare earth production expert, the former chief rare earth separation expert of Vietnam Rare Earths, Luu Anh Tuan, last year was sentenced to 16 years in a Vietnam prison. The Vietnamese government minister, sentenced for enabling and aiding the very same crimes, got away with three years. Perhaps the Americans want to consider bringing home a real rare earth asset, Mr Luu?
Rare earth impact on manufacturing
The IEA has published a new report. It says China’s rare earth restrictions, including the ones pending for implementation on 10 November 2026, will directly affect US$6.5 trillion of manufacturing outside China - referring to “magnet rare earths” only, 4 out of the 16 essential elements (promethium is extinct).
Our previous and current assessment is an impact or all rare earth elements on US$10 trillion of manufacturing, including China, not only the over-hyped “Fabulous Four”.
Slowing to a crawl
One thing is certain, the implementation of the additional rules on 10 November 2026 will slow industries to a crawl, while they wait and wait and wait and wait and wait…. for approval or denial from Beijing.
Nikkei Asia reports:
The European price of dysprosium -- one of the least common rare earths, and a key link of the EV motor supply chain -- stood at $2,250 per kilogram in Europe on July 9, according to Argus Media.
It has been hitting record highs, roughly eight times what it cost before Chinese authorities imposed export controls in April 2025.
The European price serves as a benchmark for the market outside of China. Similarly, the price of terbium, another heavy rare earth used in EV motors, more than quintupled over the same period.
and:
In Japan, 88.2% of rare earths-related businesses reported effects from the Chinese export controls, according to a June survey by Resilire, a Tokyo-based supply chain risk management firm. The impact included delays in deliveries and production cuts.
Of these respondents, 17.5% reported production stoppages. The survey targeted 400 decision-makers dealing in rare earths and rare-earth materials.
Baseless argumentation
As we have demonstrated and proven in detail, China actually does not classify rare earths as means of weapon production or weapon delivery. It classifies rare earths as dual-use products for “other national security reasons”. This pulls the carpet under China’s grandstanding argumentation, it would merely be living up to international non-proliferation agreements (which ones, please?).
We exposed the dual-use license system as an unilateral Chinese policy decision, that has absolutely nothing to do with “international non-proliferation obligations”.
Shooting with cannons at sparrows
China actually shoots with cannons at sparrows, as the presumed target, the US military-industrial complex, is only a really small share of overall rare earths consumption. The dual-use license rules of 4 April 2025 were razor-sharp focussed on the current requirements of the US military-industrial complex, however, causing significant collateral damage. The upcoming restrictions, scheduled for implementation on 10 November 2026, will indiscriminately hit everyone.
Warning!
Recently there is an e-mail circulating. The entire message reads:
Our company can provide high-quality lanthanum oxide/praseodymium-neodymium oxide/dysprosium oxide/terbium oxide series products at preferential prices internal channels.
This is clearly an offer for circumvention of China’s dual-use export license regime.
It may also be a fraudster, in which case you are certain to receive carefully packaged, Grade-A, prime quality Pearl River sand.
And it could also be an agent provocateur of the Chinese government.
Our advice: DO NOT ENGAGE! If you did engage, abort now.
While the sender made every effort to conceal his identity, he of course had to offer a mean to respond. Since nothing ever remains a secret in China, the identity of the sender and all other details can be accurately traced.
Others
Sometimes boastful announcements backfire. Now Lynas is in hot water. See our take in the Companies section.
We had a look at two interesting papers about ion-adsorption clay leaching with an unusual add-on and related zero-waste re-use of leachant. A bit of an expensive approach, it may actually work for a few. See more in the Science section.
The excellent Critical Minerals Essentials newsletter of Amvest Terraden on Friday walks through the Northern Minerals story. NTU sit on a xenotime rare earth deposit.
Xenotime deposits are really small and rare, and their rare earth assemblage tends to be very favourable.
While we disagree with the political insinuations of Amvest Terraden, we do agree that NTU’s troubles with mainland China shareholders started directly after NTU’s offtake agreement with Iluka.
Chinese shareholders of NTU, along with all other shareholders, would actually hugely profit from this offtake, once it comes to life.
Instead, Chinese shareholders became a source of trouble and were officially asked to divest.
It is really, really difficult to imagine that this Chinese shareholder action was coincidence.
If the Australian Government would cancel all of NTU’s permits/licenses, it would leave (Chinese) shareholders with an empty shell. And finita la comedia.
One general observation
Amvest Terraden write: “It is this second stranglehold that turns the West’s remaining industrial giants into the advocates of “engagement” and “cooperation” with the CCP.”
Defining China through the CCP blows into the horn of Communist propaganda, Chinese = Communist. Nothing could be further from reality.
In economic terms, it is businesses engaging with one-another, not businesses with political parties. Politics create the frame in which businesses are built.
There is no reason to assume, that a non-Communist China would politically behave any differently from the currently Communist-run China.
Any aspirations of re-creating a subservient China or even a return to colonial times are absurd. And the current international initiative to put the China genie back into the bottle, does not mean the genie won’t be there anymore.
The next nation to rise and flex its muscles will predictably be India. Will there be insinuations of doing business with the “Hindu Party”?
//Politics
Recommendation on how the European Commission handled a request for public access to documents related to projects that have been recognised as ‘Strategic Projects’ under the Critical Raw Materials Act (case 1855/2025/MIG
The case concerned the European Commission’s refusal to grant public access to documents related to the applications of mineral extraction and processing projects to be recognised as ‘Strategic Projects’ under the Critical Raw Materials Act. Specifically, the complainant sought access to four Commission decisions granting – or not – the status of Strategic Project and to parts of the applications of 12 projects that are located within the EU and whose applications have been successful. The Commission considered that the documents’ disclosure would undermine the commercial interests of the companies concerned, relying, with respect to the majority of the documents at issue, on a general presumption of non-disclosure. Amongst other elements, the complainant contended that there is an overriding public interest in disclosure, given that the documents are likely to contain important environmental information.
….6. In November 2024, the complainant, an environmental civil society organisation, requested[8] from the Commission public access to (i) a list of all projects that had applied for the status of ‘Strategic Project’, (ii) the Commission’s guidelines for the assessment of those applications, and (iii) documents that the mining companies concerned (‘project promoters’) had submitted to demonstrate their compliance with the requirements that environmental impacts would be monitored, prevented and minimised and that they would engage meaningfully with local communities.
Hypocrisy at work.
Minerals apparently materialise in Tesla showrooms, created by good intentions and a yoga playlist. Self-depleting assets in the form of mines, oceans of spent acid, radioactive waste needing babysitting until the heat death of the universe? Details, dear reader, nothing a wordy press release can’t fix.
But heaven forbid the sustainable ones — gliding along in emission-free vehicles, their homes powered by artisanal sunbeams — ever glimpse in the hole their halo was dug from. The hole is in someone else’s backyard; their own backyard is for planting salad.
And who bred this species of exquisite hypocrite? Politicians, whispering “sustainable” like a lullaby until a whole class dozed off dreaming of a utopia, mined and processed anywhere, but not in their backyards.
Sweet dreams. Mind the tailings pond on your way out.
Meanwhile, after EU politicians had set ambitious recycling targets for critical raw materials (CRM) back in 2023, EU bureaucrats are now trying to figure out:
if additional recycling of CRM is feasible,
what EU regulations are barriers to establishing recycling factories,
if toll-recycling in 3rd countries could help meeting the EU’s 2030 targets.
Breathtaking.
Meanwhile, in the White House:
Securing America’s Defense Supply Chains and ensuring Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials
Apparently, Washington DC is still not on top of things.
Full chain
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at a recent press conference acknowledged, what most rare earth hopefuls still need to find out:
Critical minerals: you need the full chain.
That means also rare earths, the full chain of separated lanthanides, minus extinct promethium. No modern economy can live without.
The enigma
After having read and analysed uncounted rare earth feasibility assessments of junior rare earth miners, a pattern emerges. Most of them will not earn a return of investment at current rare earth market prices. Revenue at current or 5-year average prices mostly only covers operating cost. Only at 3-4 times current market prices commercial feasibility kicks-in.
But then, if this was the pattern, how could Lynas’ mine to oxide be successful?
We looked at Lynas 2005 feasibility numbers. One number will jump into your eyes: Mount Weld started off with a TREO of 11% (eleven percent). Current rare earth hopefuls base on deposits that hold +/-1% TREO and lower….
India to Open Thorium Sector to Private Firms
ndia is considering opening parts of its tightly regulated thorium sector to private companies as part of a broader strategy to accelerate nuclear power development and strengthen the country’s critical minerals supply chain. The proposed policy shift would allow greater private sector participation in activities linked to thorium, a strategic nuclear fuel in which India holds some of the world’s largest reserves, while maintaining government oversight over sensitive aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle.
The move aligns with India’s long-term goal of expanding nuclear power capacity to 100 GW by 2047 and reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels. By encouraging private investment, the government aims to boost exploration, processing, and related infrastructure needed to support the country’s ambitious nuclear energy programme.
Same as in rare earths, the bureaucratic inertia of Indian state-owned enterprise is suffocating development. Projects move slower than Japanese miso soup.
So this could be a move in the right direction.
Allegations of harms at China-backed transition minerals projects rise
The number of recorded allegations of harm at projects tied to Chinese firms have increased every year since 2021, rising to 148 in 2025, according to the Business and Human Rights Centre (BHRC). On Wednesday it released new data showing that a total of 434 allegations of abuse were made against Chinese-backed projects over the five-year period in projects across the world.
The world’s top cleantech manufacturer, China is also the leading financier of critical minerals projects worldwide. The country has committed more than $120 billion in foreign direct investment into mineral mining and processing since 2023, Australian think-tank Climate Energy Finance recently found.
The report comes as communities affected by Chinese-backed mineral projects have filed the first two cases to a Beijing-based mediation mechanism intended to bring willing Chinese companies to the discussion table with affected communities.
BHRC’s latest analysis – including data for the period 2023-2025 – covered mining, smelting and refining projects for 11 minerals considered key to manufacturing clean energy technologies such as batteries, EVs and solar panels needed to move away from climate-heating fossil fuels.
The highest number of abuses was recorded in Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of nickel, which is used to make EV batteries. After the Indonesian government banned exports of raw nickel, Chinese firms invested billions of dollars to develop a large-scale nickel smelting and processing industry in the Southeast Asian country, largely powered by coal.
Other countries with a high number of recorded harms include the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Chinese firms dominate cobalt and copper production; Myanmar, where unregulated rare earths mining has caused widespread environmental destruction; Serbia, where Chinese-backed mining of some of Europe’s most significant copper and gold deposits is swallowing land and homes, and Zimbabwe, where Chinese investments have turned the nation into Africa’s top lithium producer.
The report shows that 10 Chinese companies, including Zijin Mining, Tsingshan Group and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, accounted for nearly two-thirds of all allegations recorded in the last five years. It found that some Chinese companies “still appear to turn a blind eye to these issues” but noted that several others have been more responsive to allegations of abuse. However, even among companies with human rights policies, implementation remains a challenge, BHRC warned.
Zijin Mining and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt repeatedly responded to the allegations of harm by saying they take environmental and social risks seriously and adhere to international standards. Tsingshan Group never responded to BHRC’s requests for comment.
Western miners are not exactly poster boys either. But Chinese companies must get used to being watched particularly closely, owing to the aggressive behaviour of the Chinese government regarding critical raw materials in general and the dismal track record of Chinese miners abroad in particular.
Tsingshan Group is a particularly bad example of Chinese miners abroad. Little wonder it does not respond.
//Electric Vehicles
Geely and Ford team up to revive Spanish auto plant
Geely conditionally agreed to acquire a 34% equity interest in the Ford facility for 221 million euros ($252 million), subject to customary completion account adjustments, it said in a filing to the Hong Kong Exchange. Under the deal, the Europe-focused joint venture will make passenger vehicles of multiple powertrains sold under both brands, the companies said in a statement.
Pending regulatory approval, the venture will begin operations in the first half of 2027 at Ford’s Almussafes plant near the eastern Spanish city of Valencia. After renovation, the factory’s annual capacity will be increased to 500,000 units.
The production plan covers two Geely-branded electric SUVs and three Ford models, including the existing plug-in hybrid Kuga SUV, a new European edition of its Bronco off-road vehicle, as well as a new model to be jointly developed by the partners.
The first batch of new vehicles is scheduled to roll off the line in 2028. Meanwhile, Kuga production will continue uninterrupted.
If you can’t beat them, join them.
Guess who in Europe will have the least problems of procuring cheap, top-quality rare earth permanent magnets from China?
The White House won’t be amused.
