🚨 In 66 days the Pentagon's magnet rule stops asking "where was it melted?" and starts asking "where was it mined?" 🧲 📜 Today (to 31 Dec 2026): DFARS 252.225-7052 only bars NdFeB magnets if the Nd-Fe-B alloy was melted, or the magnet made (powder → press → sinter → magnetise), in China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. ⛏️ From 1 Jan 2027: "the entire supply chain from mining of neodymium, iron, and boron through production of finished magnets." Mined, refined, separated, melted or produced in a covered country = cannot be delivered under a DoD contract. The clause flows down to every subcontract tier. 📊 The gap it lands on: US demand ~48,000 t of NdFeB in 2025 vs ~300 t domestic supply (Arthur D. Little via Reuters). Capacity on track for ~5,000 t by end-2026. ♻️ The one recycling carve-out: an NdFeB magnet made from recycled material is exempt only if the recycled material is milled AND the final magnet sintered in the United States. For recycled NdFeB processed anywhere else, the clause is silent on how the mine-origin test is applied. 🔓 Escape valves: COTS items under 50% covered material by weight, electronic devices, buys under the simplified acquisition threshold, and a written nonavailability determination if compliant magnets "cannot be procured as and when needed at a reasonable price." My read: that last one does a lot of work in 2027. 🗓️ The date has already slipped once (2026 → 2027 via FY2024 NDAA s.854), and contractors have reportedly lobbied for another delay. 👀 Bottom Line: 66 days from now, every NdFeB magnet in a US defence contract needs a paper trail back to the mine, in a market that supplied 300 t of its own 48,000 t last year. #RareEarths #NdFeB #Magnets #DFARS #CriticalMinerals #DefenseSupplyChain #Recycling #SupplyChain

🚨 China is selling the West its magnets and keeping the heavy rare earths that go inside them. Silverado's October trade report has the receipts: dysprosium exports to the world were 0.4 tonnes in September. Terbium about 1 tonne. Magnets to the US: 604 tonnes, right on the 2024 average. 🧵 📅 The setting In September, Washington and Beijing extended their trade truce to 10 January 2027. That keeps China's expanded October 2025 rare earth restrictions suspended, but the April 2025 export licensing on seven elements, dysprosium, terbium, yttrium, gadolinium, lutetium, samarium and scandium, stays in force. Silverado tracks what has actually crossed borders under that regime. This edition covers trade to September 2026, so it mostly shows the run-up to the Trump–Xi meeting of 23–25 September; the post-summit data arrive in late November. 📍Latest data show China still slow-rolling most critical mineral exports to the United States. Further Reading here, Siverado Policy Accelerator, Rare Earth Trade Report PDF👇 🔗cdn.sanity.io/files/0wfzc71x… 🧲 Dysprosium: the tap is almost closed 🇨🇳China's global dysprosium exports (metal, oxide, fluoride and other compounds) were 0.8 t in August and 0.4 t in September 2026. Through 2024 the monthly range was roughly 5 to 26 t, and as recently as August–September 2025 China shipped 16.7 and 18.0 t, almost all of it to Korea. 🇰🇷 Since the April 2025 controls China has exported no dysprosium at all to the United States; what the US has received has come from the European Union, Malaysia and the United Kingdom. (p. 20) 🧲 Terbium: zero from China to the US in 2026 China's global terbium exports were about 1 t in September, against 4 to 18 t a month through 2024; Japan, once the main buyer, has been cut to almost nothing since January's additional controls, and the largest September destination was Vietnam. (p. 22) US import data tell the same story from the other side: China shipped 11.1 t of terbium (oxide equivalent) to the US in 2025 and 0.0 t in 2026 to September. Total US terbium imports from all countries ran at 11.7 t in 2025 and about 1 t in 2026 to 15 October, every kilogram of it from Europe. (p. 35) Europe is the only non-China source the US has found for dysprosium, gadolinium and terbium, and even that is thinning: EU, UK and Turkish exports of the three to the US were 42 t in 2025 and 10 t in January–August 2026, on pace to fall. (p. 40) 🔬 Yttrium: a little more, still far less 🟨Yttrium is the element that put Japan "months" from running dry. China's global yttrium exports were 111 t in September 2026, down from 134 t in August and below every month of 2024, when 174 to 445 t a month went out. 🇯🇵 🇪🇺The EU is now the largest destination; Japan received its first yttrium in three months. (p. 16) US-bound shipments of all controlled compounds and metals jumped from 6 t in August to 38 t in September, driven by yttrium and lutetium oxide, which Silverado describes as the low end of pre-control monthly levels. (pp. 13–14) The annual picture: China's yttrium oxide exports to the US were 329 t in 2024, 84 t in 2025 and 136 t in January–September 2026. (p. 32) Yttrium carbonate, which China alone supplied in 2021–25, has not shipped to the US since the controls began and has no identified alternative source. (p. 33) Japan is paying for its access: its China-origin yttrium oxide now costs US$15 to 22/kg against US$7 to 9/kg before the January controls, while Korea's prices held steady. (p. 18) 🧲 Magnets: the finished product flows Here the picture inverts. China's rare earth magnet exports, only partially covered by the controls, returned to pre-control levels in July 2025 and stayed high. Exports to the US were 604 t in September and 647 t in July, both around the 2024 average, after a trough of 46 t in May 2025. Year to date the US is still below 2024, and it is the only major destination that is. (pp. 29–30, 43) US imports of sintered NdFeB magnets by weight for January–August 2026 were a little under 2024's level, with Japan and the EU partly filling the gap left by China, while the number of magnets imported rose: 🇺🇸The US is importing more, smaller magnets from China and larger ones from 🇰🇷Japan and 🇪🇺Europe. (pp. 44–45) Ferroalloy exports, the NdFeB alloy that feeds magnet makers, are on pace for typical levels, with Japan the largest buyer. (pp. 26–27) 👀 Bottom Line Read the four charts together and the policy is legible. China will sell magnets; it has largely stopped selling the dysprosium and terbium that make high-temperature magnets possible, and it rations yttrium by customer. 🟠🟡The only Dy and Tb reaching the United States from outside China comes from Europe, in single-digit tonnes, and the UK appears for the first time on Silverado's list of US dysprosium sources. Silverado does not name shippers; the only UK producer of separated dysprosium oxide on the public record is the Belfast demonstration plant, which shipped Dy oxide to a US defence magnet maker this year. ⚗️Separated heavy oxide outside China is now measured in tonnes, and that is the number to watch when the post-summit data land in late November. #RareEarths #Dysprosium #Terbium #Yttrium #PermanentMagnets #CriticalMinerals #RareEarthSeparation #MagnetManufacturing #SupplyChainSecurity #Trade #China #RareEarthExports #RareEarthMagnets