China has suspended exports of a wide range of minerals and criticism magnets, threatening to stifle the supplies of central components from car manufacturers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military entrepreneurs from all over the world.
The expeditions of magnets, essential for assembling everything, from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been interrupted in many Chinese ports while the Chinese government wrote a new regulatory system. Once in place, the new system could permanently prevent supplies from reaching certain companies, including American military entrepreneurs.
Official repression is part of China’s reprisals for the sharp increase in President Trump’s prices which started on April 2.
On April 4, the Chinese government ordered restrictions on the export of six rare land metals, which were completely refined in China, as well as rare earth magnets, 90% of which are produced in China. The special metals and magnets made with them can now be shipped from China only with special export licenses.
But China has barely started creating a system to issue licenses. This caused dismay among industry leaders that the process could be extended and that current mineral and products outside China could be low.
If the Detroit factories and elsewhere are short of powerful rare earth magnets, this could prevent them from assembling cars and other products with electric motors that require these magnets. Companies vary considerably in size of their emergency stocks for such contingencies, so that the time of production disturbances is difficult to provide.
The so-called rare land metals and the export suspension are used in essential magnets for many types of electric motors. These engines are crucial components of electric cars, drones, robots, missiles and spaceships. Petrol cars also use electric motors with rare earth magnets for critical tasks such as management.
Metals also enter chemicals for the manufacture of jet engines, lasers, car headlights and certain candles. And these rare metals are vital ingredients in capacitors, which are electrical components of computer fleas which feed artificial intelligence servers and smartphones.
Michael Silver, president and chief executive officer of American Elements, a supplier of chemicals based in Los Angeles, said that his business had been informed that it would take 45 days before export licenses could be issued and that exports of rare metals and magnets will resume. Silver said his business increased his inventory last winter in anticipation of a trade war between the United States and China, and could respect its existing contracts while waiting for licenses.
Daniel Pickard, president of the Critical Mineral Consultative Committee for the Office of the Commercial Representative of the United States and the Ministry of Commerce, expressed his concern about the availability of Rare Lands.
“Do the export control or ban potentially prohibits serious effects in the United States? Yes,” he said. Mr. Pickard, head of international trade and national security practices at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney Law Firm, said that rapid resolution of the rare earth problem was necessary because a sustained disturbance in exports could harm China’s reputation as a reliable supplier.
In a potential complication, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, which has jointly published the new export restrictions with the General Customs Administration, prohibited Chinese companies from having a constantly evolving list of American companies, in particular military entrepreneurs.
An American Mines leader James Litinsky, executive president and chief executive officer of MP Materials, said that rare land supplies for military entrepreneurs were particularly worrying.
“Drones and robotics are largely considered to be the future of war, and on the basis of everything we see, the critical inputs of our future supply chain are closed,” he said. MP Materials has the only rare Earths mine in the United States, the Mountain Pass mine in the California desert near the Nevada border, and hopes to start the commercial production of magnets in Texas at the end of the year for General Motors and other manufacturers.
Some Japanese companies hold rare land inventories over a year old, having been injured in 2010, when China imposed a seven -week embargo on rare land exports to Japan during a territorial dispute.
But many American companies hold little or no inventory because they do not want to attach species in stock of expensive materials. One of the metals subjected to new controls, the oxide of dysprosium, is negotiated $ 204 per kilogram in Shanghai and much more outside China.
Laves in rare earths are a small part of China’s global exports to the United States and elsewhere. Therefore, interrupting expeditions causes minimum economic pain in China while holding the potential of major effects in the United States and elsewhere.
Chinese customs officials block exports of metal and heavy land magnets not only to the United States, but to any country, including Japan and Germany. The application of the new export license requirement, however, has been unequal so far among the various Chinese ports, have said leaders of the rare earth industry.
Most rare earth magnets, but not all, include rare earths, which are necessary to prevent magnets from losing their magnetism at high temperatures or in certain electric fields. Some rare earth magnets are only produced by rare light land and are not subject to export restrictions. Customs officials of a few Chinese ports tolerate the exports of magnets if they have only tiny traces of rare land metals, and if the magnets do not go to the United States.
Managers of other Chinese ports adopt a stricter position, however, demanding that exporters carry out tests to prove that all lots of magnets have no rare land metals before the magnets could be loaded on a ship for export.
Chinese export restrictions began to take effect before the Trump administration announced on Friday evening that it exempts many types of consumer electronics from China from its latest prices. Exports of magnets continue to be blocked this weekend, said five leaders in the rare land industry.
Like most of China’s goods, magnets are also subject to President Trump’s last rates when they arrive in American ports.
Until 2023, China produced 99% of the global supply of rare land metals, with a production net from a refinery in Vietnam. But this refinery has been closed in the past year due to a tax dispute, leaving China with a monopoly.
China also produces 90% of almost 200,000 tonnes in the world per year of rare land magnets, which are much more powerful than conventional iron magnets. Japan produces most of the others and Germany also produces a small quantity, but they depend on China for raw materials.
The Chinese trade ministry has not responded to a request for comments.
The richest deposits in the world of heavy rare earths are in a small wooded valley on the outskirts of Longnan in the red clay hills of the Jiangxi province in the South Center of China. And most Chinese refineries and magnet factories are in Longnan and Ganzhou or Ganzhou, a city about 80 miles away. The mines in the ore ore valley to refineries in Longnan, which eliminate contaminants and send rare earth to magnet factories in Ganzhou.
The most famous factory in China for these magnets is exploited by the Rare-Earth Company JL, whose headquarters are in Ganzhou.
The factory provides the two main producers of electric cars in the world, Tesla and Chinese byd, with the magnets who feed their cars, said leaders of the rare earth industry. Byd said that he buys some of the last most powerful magnets in the world of JL Mag, with 15 times the magnetic force per cubic inch of volume as a conventional iron magnet.
Xi Jinping, the senior Chinese leader, made a special inspection visit to the JL Mag factory in Ganzhou in 2019, in increased trade tensions in Mr. Trump’s first term. The trip was interpreted as an index that China was ready to use its control over the materials to disturb the American supply chains, a step which it did not do then but now.
China has interrupted the extraction of heavy rare earths near Longnan a few years ago because it caused serious chemical pollution.
Friday, on the site of a mine near Longnan, a diesel generator burst and the liquids gargouilla through plastic pipes, indicating that at least certain mining operations had probably taken up. Heavy rare earths are extracted by pouring strong chemical products in holes dug at the top of a hill. The chemicals dissolve the ore and dribble from the base of the hill, where they can be pumped towards nearby stands for initial treatment.
Li you contributed research.