China's rare earth export controls: a dated timeline from 2025 to 2027

In April 2025, China put 7 rare earth elements under export license: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium.¹ An exporter in China needs a license to ship any of them. That rule is still in force. The April controls were never part of the truce, and nothing announced at the September 2026 summit lifts them.²

Look at what those 7 have in common. Apart from samarium, they sit at the heavy end of the table. China has plenty of the light rare earths. It runs short of the heavy ones itself, because it gets much of them from Myanmar.³ China put export controls on exactly the elements it cannot fully supply from home.

You can see the license in the price. On 19 February 2026, a kilogram of dysprosium oxide cost $207 inside China and $1,125 in Europe, a premium of 443%. On the same table on the same day, the neodymium praseodymium oxide that makes up the body of the magnet carried a premium of 8%, which is shipping and paperwork.⁴ Neodymium is not on the April list, and Europe and China trade it as one market. Dysprosium is on the list, and you cannot buy it in China and ship it out without a license.

Two of the 7, dysprosium and terbium, are the ones that let a magnet in an electric motor survive heat. The geology and the price of that pair have their own article: dysprosium and terbium, the heavy rare earths that decide electric motors. If you want to know why 17 similar elements take so long to pull apart in the first place, read are rare earths rare?

In October 2025, China added europium, holmium, erbium, thulium and ytterbium to the list. It extended the controls to processing equipment and to the technology used to mine, separate and make magnets.⁵

It also added a rule that reaches into other countries. A product made anywhere needs a Chinese license if Chinese origin controlled rare earths are worth 0.1% or more of its value.⁶ The test is value. A product made outside China, with Chinese controlled rare earths inside it, could need a license from Beijing to be sold from one foreign country to another.

The 0.1% rule is suspended today. It is also the piece that comes back if the truce lapses.

In November 2025, China suspended the October package for one year, to 10 November 2026.⁷ The 5 added elements, the equipment and technology controls and the 0.1% rule all went on hold. The April controls stayed.²

On 24 September 2026, with President Xi at the White House, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two sides would extend that truce into January 2027.⁸ The suspension that was due to end on 10 November 2026 now runs into January 2027. The April controls still stay.

Both sides bought themselves a few months. The truce covers the measures China added in October 2025. It does nothing for a company that needs dysprosium or terbium from China today, because that license requirement dates from April.

Since the suspension, enforcement has tightened. China took 3 steps in 2026.

The 2026 licensing catalog brought samarium, gadolinium and lutetium compounds into the license net.⁹ These are 3 of the April elements, so the catalog widens the April rule to more product forms.

MOFCOM Announcement 26 of 2026 set up a public reporting mechanism. A person who turns in a company for exporting without the paperwork can be rewarded for it.¹⁰ MOFCOM is China's Ministry of Commerce, the body that issues these export rules.

On 22 June 2026, China added 10 American firms to its export control list, including MP Materials and USA Rare Earth.¹¹ Those are the 2 companies the Pentagon is funding to replace Chinese supply. Both appear in my article on rare earth companies outside China.

None of these 3 steps is part of the truce, and none is suspended.

The American rescue effort runs on the Defense Production Act, and that law has its own expiry date. It was due to expire on 30 September 2026.¹² Congress extended it by 10 weeks, to 11 December 2026, inside a stopgap funding bill.¹³ The bill to extend it by 5 years, H.R. 7688, has not passed.¹⁴

In July 2025, the Pentagon took $400 million of MP Materials preferred stock plus a warrant, together about 15% of the company, and guaranteed a price for what MP produces.¹⁵ A private company cannot lose money for 15 years to hold a strategic position, because its shareholders will not let it, so a government stepped in to break the standoff.

This matters for every producer outside China. Each one is exposed to a price China can move. The government's price floor exists to offset that: $110 per kilogram on MP Materials' neodymium praseodymium oxide, running from 1 October 2025 to 31 December 2035, with the government paying MP Materials the difference every quarter.¹⁵ That floor depends on the law Congress has been extending a few months at a time, most recently to 11 December 2026.

There is a second American date. From 1 January 2027, American defense contractors lose the practical route to using a Chinese magnet. Executive Order 14415 tells the Pentagon to stop issuing the waivers that allowed it when no domestic supply was available, unless the contractor files an accepted mitigation plan.¹⁶

Put 3 dates in your calendar.

11 December 2026

The Defense Production Act authorities expire again unless Congress acts. They were extended by 10 weeks in September inside a stopgap funding bill, and H.R. 7688, the 5 year extension, has not passed. The $110 floor and the rest of the American funding effort sit on this law.

January 2027

The truce that Bessent extended on 24 September runs out. If nobody renews it, China's suspension of the October package ends and the 0.1% rule comes back into force. The 5 elements added in October would need a license again, and products made outside China would come back inside Chinese export law.

1 January 2027

American defense contractors lose the practical route to using Chinese magnets. From that day the demand from defense primes has to find a source outside China, or a mitigation plan the Pentagon accepts.

What is still unknown is the exact day in January 2027 when the truce ends, and whether China renews it, rolls it over or lets the October package return. If your company buys magnets, motors or anything with a dysprosium or terbium content, check which of your suppliers ship under the April rule today. They are the ones the truce does not cover.