WTO; Iran, AI and Rare Earths; Politics & Foghorns; Lynas, Neo, NCM, Mkango, USARE, and the lot
Rare Earth 30 March 2026 #196
Note
WTO
With the WTO in demise, bilateral or multilateral trade agreements take over. This will inevitably degrade free-wheeling global trade, cripple arbitrage trading and fragmentise markets.
The predecessor of the WTO, GATT, led to US exports increasing 61-fold between 1948 and 1998. As the world’s largest importer the US also benefitted from cheap imports being a safety valve for inflation.
The big winners of the WTO are again the US jointly with China, which WTO-membership turned into the factory of the world, and nations built on export such as Germany, Japan, Korea, Taiwan.
Now, with the WTO being dismantled, the US is struggling to maintain all its trade advantages through piece-meal, unequal bilateral trade agreements with everyone & sundry, while China wants to desperately preserve its access to the world’s largest markets, USA, EU and Japan.
The fragmentation of markets means higher cost. For everyone, including industry and consumers. Everywhere.
The International Chamber of Commerce describes this post-WTO scenario:
A 33% drop in developing countries’ non-fuel goods trade relative to a baseline scenario with the multilateral system still in place;
A permanent GDP loss to developing countries of over 5%
Acute export losses of 43% in low-income economies and 32% in middle-income countries
In rare earth it means decoupling from China’s economies of scale. The way things are headed we are not only looking at “ex-China prices”, we will actually be looking at regional and even national prices.
In terms of rare earth exports China may only want to preserve its lanthanum and cerium exports.
Of 53,000 t or 15% of output of rare earth compounds China exported in 2025, 35,500 t or 67% were lanthanum and cerium compounds. A necessary release valve for excessive output. All the rest of China’s rare earth exports is expendable - for China. In the West rare earth juniors will have to either turn out a full range of separated lanthanides plus yttrium or they will simply have no right to exist.
Rare earth permanent magnets will hurt. In REPM China exported 57,400 t or about 17% of its annual production to the world in 2025. Happily the largest export market, the EU, is even conceptually nowhere near to replacing 22,500 t China exported to the EU in 2025. But medium term the EU may be coerced into buying super-expensive American REPM. There are numerous other REPM related, somewhat special products from China that the West will need replacements for.
The whole thing will be messy, expensive, and economically very painful. Years of recession loom. Policy-makers on all sides should think long and hard if they really want this - or if they want to preserve the WTO, if necessary without the US.
Iran, AI and Rare Earths
Artificial intelligence is no match for human stupidity.
Mike Seymour, Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney
If the current US administration had intended to divert attention from 50 missing pages of the Epstein files, implicating members of the current US administration, plus the utter debacle of the “Freedom Day” tariffs by starting something that could turn into World War III, then it has been successful.
It concerns a country that has consistently been involved with state-sponsored terrorism for almost half a century, Iran.
It started off with one of the finest hours in US military history. On 28 February 2026, among an unprovoked first strike, the US also launched a Tomahawk cruise missile to hit and destroy the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, southern Iran. According to the final count 66 boys, 54 girls, 26 teachers, and four parents were killed.
The on-board cameras of the initial Tomahawk as well as live satellite imagery must have shown to the operators what they had been firing at. These visuals apparently did not prevent them from lobbing additional Tomahawks at the primary school.
While the US President credibly assured the media that it must have been the Iranian armed forces who attacked the primary school using their own US-made Tomahawks, it appears now that US artificial intelligence “Claude” may have played a key role in the tragedy, running on a platform provided by Palantir Technologies for targeting missiles.
Safety first?
The slogan of the developers of AI “Claude”, Antropic Inc., is:
AI research and products that put safety at the frontier
Well, congratulations! With the help of Palantir, Antropic have fully lived up to their slogan here and put safety safely out of the way of potential war crime.
Our own experience with AI is that, while it is a search engine on steroids, it tends to put out complete rare earth garbage. The reason for the garbage output is that AI fails the very definition of “intelligence”: The ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge.
And this is the digital crap we allow to mess around with targets for missiles? It takes a single digit human IQ to grasp that this is not a brilliant idea.
The rare earth relevance
The current generation of Tomahawk cruise missiles can only function because of Chinese rare earths and their downstream products. Current data centers hosting artificial intelligence can only exist because of Chinese rare earths and their downstream products.
This being so, the US have impressively validated official Chinese concerns regarding dual-use of rare earths.
The road ahead
The objective of the Iran war has changed. Now the objective is to open the blocked Hormuz Strait, which had been wide open before the uncalled-for aggression of the US.
Depending on who you ask within the current US administration, there is also a variety completely different objectives. Everything is optional, everything is arbitrary, nothing seems to matter.
The US President’s visit to China has been delayed to middle of May because of the mess of the entirely superfluous Iran war.
That means talks about rare earths will be delayed, and the Chinese stance on rare earth dual-use restrictions will have hardened, too.
Lynas
Lynas stakeholders try to make the most out of the current situation and therefore the company developed a flurry of activities in all directions.
It starts production of unloved samarium (the material for the default magnet in defense applications, the “S” in SEG that everybody wants to ship to China, following Lynas’ example. Junior RE miners like to call it “selling to the market”).
The company ventures further into rare earth metals - in Vietnam of all places, cancels the US ‘heavy rare earth’ venture and replaces it with a supply agreement, and it intends to venture into obtaining more resources to add to slowly aging Mount Weld.
MP Materials have the same desire to source “around the world” to add-on to Mountain Pass’ puny & irrelevant content of dysprosium and terbium.
Lynas also has become much more popular with the Malaysian Government, who committed to extend Lynas’ operating license for 10 years instead of the usual 2 years - a problem that had been caused by an earlier chairman of Lynas by committing to something that has always been impossible.
It does not look like CEO Lacaze can retire anytime soon.
Junior miner troubles
Among other things we have for you today are the usual announcements of junior rare earth miners who try to pull wool over everybody’s eyes. Nice try.
There are increased compliance risks of junior rare earth miners, arising from recent US sanctions.
See the details in the Companies section below.
Digital trading
Tezos RWA Ecosystem Expands with Launch of Metals.io
Having pioneered tokenized uranium ownership, developer teams in the Tezos ecosystem have turned their attention to driving access to precious and rare earth metals.
Metals.io, a new application for investing in and trading tokenized commodities, is live in the Tezos ecosystem. Developed by a team at Trilitech, a London-based Tezos R&D hub, the web app unlocks access to a selection of rare-earth metals, as well as base metals and minerals that are critical to the technology sector and the AI boom.
Interesting. The website explains:
RARE enables digital ownership of a fixed basket of strategically important rare and technology metals including hafnium, rhenium, indium, neodymium oxide, and praseodymium oxide - selected for their critical role in advanced industrial and technological applications. Each RARE token corresponds to physically allocated, insured metals held in EU duty-free vault storage under a regulated custody framework, representing direct ownership of real assets rather than derivatives or synthetic exposure. The basket is fixed-weight and non-rebalancing, with transparent net asset value (NAV) calculations published regularly and reserves independently audited. By leveraging blockchain technology and smart contracts, RARE combines institutional-grade custody with the efficiency, transparency, and portability of digital tokens, offering holders verifiable ownership and structured redemption rights for the underlying metals.
And another one
U.S. Mined and Refined Metals as well as Rare Earth Elements to Be Tokenized in Historic American Strategic Minerals and Datavault AI Deal
Datavault AI and American Strategic Minerals debut minting of up to $2 billion USD of refined Antimony-backed stable coins will be followed by the strategic development of future projects in silver, gold, and other American refined Rare Earth Elements the companies have targeted for expansion.
Datavault AI Inc., a provider of data monetization, credentialing, digital engagement, and real-world asset (“RWA”) tokenization technologies, and American Strategic Minerals Inc. (“ASMI”), today announced a strategic partnership to develop and monetize one of ASMI’s resource extraction projects in Arizona through a $78.2 million digital tokenization initiative, with Datavault AI entitled to earn up to a 20% equity interest in ASMI upon successful completion of performance milestones related to the tokenization program The agreement marks the first between the two organizations. Under the partnership, antimony will be the first tokenized element, to be followed by gold, copper, and silver.
Lets hope this AI is quite a bit more brainy than what the US military uses.
//Politics
The pot calling the kettle black
The Ministry of Commerce issued Announcement No. 17 of 2026, announcing the initiation of a trade barrier investigation into US practices and measures that disrupt global supply chains.
Preliminary evidence and information obtained by the Ministry of Commerce indicate that the United States has implemented numerous practices and measures in trade-related areas that severely disrupt global supply chains, including but not limited to: restricting or prohibiting Chinese products from entering the U.S. market, restricting or prohibiting the export of high-tech products to China, and restricting or prohibiting two-way investment in key sectors. These practices and measures may seriously harm the trade interests of Chinese enterprises, and some of these measures are suspected of violating WTO rules and other economic and trade treaties or agreements jointly concluded or acceded to by China and the United States.
In accordance with Articles 41 and 42 of the Foreign Trade Law of the People's Republic of China and Articles 12 and 35 of the Rules for Investigation of Foreign Trade Barriers, the Ministry of Commerce has decided to initiate a trade barrier investigation into relevant practices and measures of the United States, effective March 27, 2026.
Two entitled governments at each other’s throat. Impressive.
The fruit of the US Trade Representative’s meeting with China’s Minister of Commerce?
Astounding to see the Chinese side appealing to WTO principles, an organisation whose rules China has wiped the floor with for 15 years and then even had the audacity to act offended when denied “market economy status” in 2016.
According to the EU’s External Affairs Policy Department analysis “One year to go: The debate over China’s market economy status (MES) heats up” of December 2015:
According to the most recent 'Assessment of the normative and policy framework governing the Chinese economy and its impact on international competition', ‘a large number of sectors were opened to overseas investors and China has acted largely in line with its liberalisation commitments from the accession protocol’. However, the study also notes that numerous businesses are closed to foreign direct investment (FDI) ‘as the Chinese government sought to protect […] domestic companies in general and SOEs [State Owned Enterprises] in particular.’
Add to that the unequal treatment of foreign invested enterprises in China and selective exclusion from even benign state projects like China Railway’s. Quote from a China Railway senior procurement manager in Nanjing during 2013:
We will never buy steel from a foreign company.
Or be a foreign invested enterprise in China and try to get a credit line from a bank. Essentially what you hear is:
You deposit US$150 with us and we’ll give you US$100 of credit.
The same bank has massive essentially unsecured exposure to Chinese state-owned enterprises.
This is the policy-induced “pawnshop mentality” towards private enterprise that Alibaba founder Jack Ma castigated before fleeing to Japan in order to escape the wrath of the Communist bureaucrats, who then methodically revenge-killed Alibaba’s Ant IPO in Hong Kong (yes, Alibaba’s Ant had broken the rules. Because breaking the rules is the only way for start-ups to achieve economic success in China. Everyone must break rules and quickly become too big to fail, else “game is over”).
The Chinese government can’t plausibly claim it would not know. Every year the EU Chamber of Commerce in China publishes a book with hundreds of pages of in-depth descriptions of non-tariff trade barriers which may well be deemed blatant disregard for WTO rules and contents of international/bilateral agreements and commitments. This book is sometimes even hand-delivered to top-ranking officials and bureaucrats.
Facts remain facts and no amount of Chinese censorship will change that.
The US is no free trade WTO-angel either with its kafkaesque regulations, highly restrictive, extra-territorial trade rules and hard-to-navigate extraterritorial sanctions regime. Not a free-trade poster child at all and also an unapologetic abuser of the WTO.
Trump administration to pay French company $1B to walk away from US offshore wind leases
he Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy.
TotalEnergies has agreed to what’s essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday.
President Donald Trump’s administration has tried to halt offshore wind construction, but federal judges repeatedly overturned those orders.
The Interior Department hailed the “innovative agreement” with the French energy giant and said, “the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.″
After the cancellation of subsidies for EV, another body-blow for US rare earth permanent magnet demand.
Meanwhile, the current US administration’s pivot to rare earths makes absolutely no sense at all, when it simultaneously degrades rare earth permanent magnet markets like electric vehicles and wind turbines. Both together are two thirds of the entire rare earth permanent magnet market.
The capacities of NdFeB planned for the US are ca. 30,000 t/year, four to five times current US NdFeB imports. The US administration argues that the large quantity targets also targets “embedded imports”, REPM contained in imported components and products - a bet on all NdFeB consuming industries returning to US soil, amid what may well become among the world’s highest cost for NdFeB magnets (“floor pricing”).
Even before the electric vehicle, automotive was ca. 30% of the NdFeB market. For a rare-earth-free car you have got to go back to the technology of the early 1970s.
To be sure, there was life before the NdFeB magnet. Vestas is 30% of the market share for all wind tower installations outside of China, active in 28 countries. When we asked Vestas six years ago what percentage of its wind turbines used NdFeB magnets, the answer was “zero”.
And there will be life after the NdFeB magnet. Rare-earth-free motors become better and better. For example, see Advanced Electric Machines. The motor is still noisy, but it is getting somewhere.
The NdFeB magnet is soon 45 years old. After its invention it decimated the market share of the previously dominant SmCo magnet, which was just above 20 years old at the time of the NdFeB magnet invention.
It may be only a matter of time until the NdFeB magnet is replaced by the next big thing.
Estonia
A ‘people’s republic’ on NATO’s edge: The Narva narrative testing Europe’s defences
A pro-Russian online campaign is casting the Estonian city of Narva as a “people’s republic”, spreading propaganda and at times calling for violence and sabotage.
On social media, Estonia’s third-largest city, Narva, is now being cast as a so-called “People’s Republic of Narva”.
The most prominent Telegram channel so far, “Narva Republic,” was set up on 14 July last year and now has more than 700 subscribers. It has only been actively posting, however, since 18 February 2026.
Its content mixes calls for armed resistance and sabotage with a familiar narrative: that of a Russian-speaking minority subject to alleged discrimination, alongside claims designed to stoke fears of an Estonian attack on Russia.
Another Telegram post claims the separatists are “in favour of autonomy,” warning that if this were denied it could escalate into a “full-fledged armed conflict” and the creation of an independent state within Ida-Viru, the eastern region bordering Russia.
One post lays it out like a timetable: wake-up at 6am, breakfast at 8am, the “storming of Narva” at 9am, followed by lunch and by mid-afternoon, the “capture” of Sillamäe and Kohtla-Järve.
The proclamation of a so-called “people’s republic” is a familiar ploy. In 2014, pro-Russian separatists, backed by Moscow, declared the self-styled “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Narva is home to the only large scale rare earth permanent magnet factory in the EU, whereas Sillamae is the location of the the only operating full-range rare earth separation unit in the EU, trying to expand into metal production.
Both belong to Neo Performance Materials.
Neo Performance Materials’ factories are in a Russian-speaking part of Estonia with an overwhelmingly Russian population (Sillamae >86%, Narva >87%).
Neo’s net loss improved by $3 mio year on year.
Japan, France, Canada work on alternatives to US-led trade bloc for rare earth supplies
In February, U.S. Vice President JD Vance unveiled plans to marshal allies into a preferential trade bloc for critical minerals. But a month after that announcement, some countries are making different plans, an example of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's appeal for middle powers to band together as U.S. President Donald Trump has alienated allies.
Japan has asked its manufacturing industries to strike commercial deals with rare earths projects that it has funded with allies such as France, Australia, and Canada.
France suggested a quota system where companies can import only certain amounts of metals, and an obligation for companies in certain sectors to diversify their supply chains. Gallezot also said France supports Canada’s idea of a buyers’ alliance and will take the concept forward as it takes over the chair of G7 this year.
Canada has recently signed 30 new deals with 12 countries for a proposed C$12.6 billion ($9.22 billion) of investments in mining and mining technology, taking the total investments to around C$18 billion since October. Australia said on March 4 would join Canada’s G7 critical minerals production alliance.
“Canada believes that the best way to address the issue of concentrated supply of critical minerals is through a production alliance or a buyers’ club,” Energy and Mining Minister Tim Hodgson told Reuters on Tuesday.
We don’t know what we want, but we want it with all our might!
Here the bureaucrats try to eat the cake before it has been baked.
Japan, US to agree to jointly develop rare earths at summit
Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Materials will take part in projects in the U.S. The effort aims to reduce the two countries’ reliance on China for low-cost critical minerals and to strengthen their supply chains.
There are actually four projects. One is a rare-earth refining operation in Indiana, a state in the U.S. Midwest. Mitsubishi Materials is currently discussing investing and participating in the project, which involves recovering and utilizing rare earth elements and rare metals from “wasted permanent magnets” found in household appliances, automobiles and industrial equipment.
The company is also participating in a copper smelting project in the same state, where it has partnered with a British company to produce copper using discarded electronic circuit boards from smartphones, computers and home appliances.
The third is a lithium mine development project. Mitsui is considering a partnership with Albemarle, a U.S. chemical company, that would include a joint investment for the project at Kings Mountain, North Carolina.
The fourth is the development of the Copper World copper mine in Arizona. Japanese trading house Mitsubishi Corp. reached an agreement to acquire a 30% interest in the project owned by Canada’s Hudbay Minerals.
The project in Marion, Indiana, US is ReElement Resources, the license holders of a fringe rare earth separation process from Purdue University, unproven at industrial and even at pilot scale.
Also Japanese companies have a history of placing bets on rare earth duds. So we don’t take Japanese moves as any form of validation of projects.
Beyond Pax Silica: Japan, France and Canada seek rare earth autonomy
Japan, France and Canada have all been exploring how to build supply chains for rare earths and other critical minerals that answer to neither Beijing nor Washington.
Senior officials from the three Group of Seven economies are working on alternatives to a US-led trade framework, according to a Reuters report from March 6, as part of what analysts call an emerging architecture of “minilateral” arrangements that are modest in scope but collectively designed to dilute geopolitical exposure.
The options under discussion include import quotas on certain rare earths, subsidies to help mining companies shift production out of China, and a Canada-led initiative to develop a reliable critical minerals network untethered from any single superpower.
We put on our flameproof gear and ask this:
Who is Canada to lead any rare earth initiative?
Canadian politicians parade at international meetings, pretending to be someone in rare earth resources, only to raise unrealistic expectations.
There is only one advanced, somewhat shovel-ready rare earth project in Canada, Defense Metals, albeit with challenged logistics/infrastructure and a disappointingly narrow product range that does not solve any rare-earthy supply problem. No yttrium, no gadolinium, no lutetium, etc. Instead its cerium-depleted mixed rare earth carbonate probably only adds to a foreseeable NdPr oxide glut.
Denied their only prospective market, China, there are ca. 40 Canadian junior rare earth mining projects at various stages of agonisingly slow, but certain death.
France among nations eyeing Australia critical minerals investment, Australian minister says
France is among the countries poised to invest in Australian critical minerals projects, Australia's resources minister said on Thursday, as Canberra's framework deal with the U.S. prompts nations with advanced manufacturing sectors to secure access to supply.
It is really dangerous if you don’t know what products in what shape and form you actually need.
Perhaps offload part of the Iluka project to the French, so the Australian taxpayer may need to contribute less to solving other countries’ problems?
Foghorn with Chinese characteristics
China discovers massive rare-earth deposit in Sichuan Province
China's Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has revealed new mine exploration results showing significant rare-earth reserves in Maoniuping, Mianning County, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, the China Central Television (CCTV) Finance Channel reported on Tuesday.
The report cited mineral exploration results released by the MNR, stating that a total of 9.6656 million tons of rare-earth oxides, along with 27.1354 million tons of fluorite and 37.2277 million tons of barite, were found in the Maoniuping mining area.
The discovery of new rare earth oxide in the area represented an increase in reserves of over 300 percent, making it the world's second-largest light rare-earth mine after the Bayan Obo deposit in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to the report.
Enjoy with a grain of salt, preferably one the size of a brick.
Maoniuping has been explored for decades. It is highly unlikely that 10 mio t TREO of bastnaesite should have escaped them all these years.
Just look at the timing and what is happening in rare earths, then you know how to understand this article in China’s English language propaganda foghorn.
