Mission Critical: Beijing sanctions US rare earth rivals
China has blacklisted the two American rare earth firms Washington funded to reduce its reliance on Beijing, in a move analysts have described as largely symbolic. Azzet’s Mission Critical is a weekly column that lays out the ebbs and flows around critical minerals supply chains - from pricing, production, refinement and mergers & acquisitions, to energy, manufacturing and consumer products. China's Ministry of Commerce added mining companies' MP Materials and USA Rare Earth to its export control list on 22 June, naming both alongside eight other American companies drawn from aerospace, drones, radar and shipbuilding. The order bars Chinese suppliers from shipping dual-use goods to the listed firms, and extends further still by prohibiting any party, in any country, from passing Chinese-origin dual-use items to them. Both producers anchor Washington's drive to build a rare earth value chain that routes around China, which is the detail that makes the designation worth parsing rather than waving through. The two front-runners of American mineral independence have, in effect, been formally listed by the very country their public funding was meant to help them sidestep. Trading reaction stayed contained, and several
