Yttrium's 125-Fold Price Gap Looms Over Trump-Xi Talks in Shenzhen

Résumé détaillé

China bought itself two more months on Monday by extending the pause on its sweeping October 2025 rare earth export controls to Jan. 10, Reuters reported, but the metal squeezing…

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China bought itself two more months on Monday by extending the pause on its sweeping October 2025 rare earth export controls to Jan. 10, Reuters reported, but the metal squeezing buyers hardest right now was never covered by it.

That metal is yttrium, which sits under a separate set of licensing rules Beijing imposed in April 2025 on seven medium and heavy rare earths. When the pause began last November, the law firm Pillsbury listed those April rules among the measures still in force, which makes the extension a cheap gift: the October measures have been frozen since then anyway. The shipment data show what the April rules mean in practice. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that China’s yttrium oxide exports are running at about two-fifths of their 2023-2024 average, with almost none going to Japan this year.

The same report cites Argus Media prices of about $1.15 million a ton in Europe against $9,144 in China, a 125-fold gap that barely existed before the curbs.

Japan has taken the worst of it, with Chinese customs data showing 4,000 kilograms of yttrium oxide arriving in September against 51,000 a year earlier, AFP reported last month. The Financial Times reported on Oct. 20 that Tokyo is months from running out and has asked Washington to lean on Beijing. A Japanese industry ministry official told AFP that global yttrium exports have stalled, causing a “supply-demand crunch.”

Yttrium also protects turbine blades in gas-fired power plants and jet engines, per Bloomberg, so the shortage reaches well beyond chipmaking. The IEA warned in July that full implementation of China’s expanded controls, the ones just re-paused, could put about $6.5 trillion a year of downstream production outside China at risk.

Trump is expected to meet Xi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shenzhen, set for Nov.

Supply from outside…

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