September 7, 2010. The East China Sea.

A Chinese fishing trawler rammed two Japanese coast guard cutters near a chain of disputed islands. Japan arrested the captain. Beijing demanded his release.

Tokyo refused.

Within two weeks, Chinese rare earth shipments to Japan stopped. No announcement. No press conference. The shipments just dried up. Toyota's purchasing managers found out the hard way. So did every electronics maker in the country. Over the following year, the price of dysprosium climbed from $90 a kilogram to more than $2,000. That was the first time the world watched China use rare earths as a weapon.

Japan eventually released the captain. The trade resumed. But the lesson everyone took home was that one country controlled the metals inside every modern motor — and could turn the tap off whenever it wanted.

That was sixteen years ago. Most people forgot.

This week, Reuters confirmed Beijing has been doing it again. Since December — five months ago — heavy rare earth shipments to Japan have stopped almost entirely. Dysprosium, terbium, yttrium oxide, gallium. All cut off, except for a few tiny yttrium shipments. The trigger this time wasn't a boat. It was Taiwan. A Japanese diplomatic position Beijing didn't like.

This round is worse than 2010. Shin-Etsu — Japan's largest magnet maker — has stopped taking new orders for dysprosium-containing magnets. The pipeline isn't refilling. And there is no quick fix anywhere on the planet. Lynas, the only major heavy rare earth producer outside China, made eight metric tons of dysprosium and terbium combined in the first quarter. China was shipping about fourteen tons a month to Japan alone in 2024. The gap is too big to close fast.

Lipi Sternheim runs an American processor called REalloys. He told Bloomberg Businessweek on Friday what every CEO in this industry already knows. "It used to be oil and OPEC," he said. "OPEC includes many countries, so there are checks and balances. Here you have China against everybody."

That is the line. OPEC had Saudi Arabia disagreeing with Iran. Iran disagreeing with Venezuela. Twelve countries, twelve agendas. No cartel ever holds together forever, and the old one didn't.

China holds together. One country, one party, one plan. There is no internal vote.

The metals Japan can't buy are the same ones the U.S. defense industry can't buy enough of. The same ones inside F-35 missile actuators and every EV motor that has to survive a desert summer. Terbium is up 103% on the year. Dysprosium is up 105%. That is what one country's export desk can do.

The Trump-Xi summit two weeks ago was supposed to fix this. The White House statement afterward said Beijing had agreed to "address" U.S. shortages of yttrium, scandium and neodymium. The Japan story is what "address" actually means. The freeze is still on.

MP Materials reported record numbers earlier this month. NdPr oxide production hit 917 metric tons in Q1, a 63% jump from a year ago. Sales more than doubled to 1,006 tons. Revenue rose 49% to $90.6 million and EPS came in at three cents against an expected loss. But the operational story matters more than the print. CEO James Litinsky told analysts the heavy rare earth separation circuit at Mountain Pass starts commissioning in the second quarter. That means dysprosium and terbium produced on American soil — the exact metals China just cut off from Japan.

On May 21, the EXIM Bank board unanimously approved a $2.9 billion senior secured loan for Perpetua Resources' Stibnite project in Idaho. It is the largest loan in the bank's Make More in America program and the fourth largest in EXIM's history. Stibnite is the only domestic reserve of antimony at any meaningful scale, and the company says it can supply 35% of U.S. demand in the first six years of production. Antimony is the metal inside armor-piercing rounds, night-vision optics, and semiconductor flame retardants. China restricted exports of it last year.

China's rare earth price index settled at 252.6 on May 21, well above the 150–180 range that held through 2024 and most of 2025. Inside China, NdPr oxide trades around $102–105 a kilogram and terbium oxide around $890. Outside China, where buyers compete for shrinking supply, the same metals cost multiples more. Strategic Metals Invest lists terbium at $4,029 per kilogram and dysprosium at $931, both up more than 100% on the year. The gap is the cost of being outside the Chinese system. Western magnet makers are paying it.

Jack Lifton, Co-Chair of the Critical Minerals Institute, InvestorNews
May 24, 2026

TERBIUM

You can build a strong magnet with neodymium alone. But the moment it heats up — inside an EV motor, inside a missile, inside a jet engine — it starts to lose its grip. Terbium fixes that. Add 1 to 2% of it to a magnet and the magnet keeps working past 200 degrees Celsius. China refines about 99% of the world's supply. The price climbed from $668 per kilogram in 2020 to $4,029 today. That is up 503% in six years. It is one of the metals China stopped shipping to Japan in December. And it is the heavy rare earth America has the least of.

Greenland Mines (NASDAQ: GRML) signed a $35 million agreement on May 21 to take over the Sarfartoq carbonatite complex in southwest Greenland from Neo Performance Materials. The deposit is rich in neodymium and praseodymium, which make up 25 to 40 percent of the rare earth oxides on the property. Neo keeps an equity stake and rights to up to 60% of future output. Greenland is now part of the ex-China supply story.

— PR Newswire / Greenland Mines Ltd.

Energy Fuels (NYSE: UUUU), better known as a uranium miner, has made about 40 kilograms of dysprosium at its White Mesa pilot facility in Utah since opening it last year. The first kilogram came in October. It is a tiny output next to global demand, but it is real metal, made in America, from a uranium company that pivoted into rare earths once federal money started flowing.

— Bloomberg

The DOE's new Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation announced $45.7 million on May 19 for 19 projects targeting U.S. supply chain gaps. The money funds pilot-scale facilities for processing magnesium and rare earth elements. Small money next to the China supply chain, but it moves a wide range of regional players forward at the same time.

— U.S. Department of Energy

The Financial Times reported on May 18 that the European Commission is preparing a rule that will require companies in strategic sectors to source a minimum share of their critical mineral components from non-Chinese suppliers. The aim is to give European processors and miners a market they can plan against. Details due before the summer recess.

— Financial Times via InvestorNews