Morning Edition · Tuesday, June 23, 2026

China Blacklists United States Rare-Earth Miners in Retaliation for Pentagon List

Beijing barred exports of Chinese dual-use goods to MP Materials and USA Rare Earth and excluded dozens of American firms from government procurement.

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China Blacklists United States Rare-Earth Miners in Retaliation for Pentagon List

China's Ministry of Commerce placed 10 American companies on its export-control list on Monday, including the rare-earth miners MP Materials and USA Rare Earth. The order bars the export of any Chinese dual-use items to those companies, according to the South China Morning Post and Al Jazeera.

The measure targets the two companies central to Washington's effort to build a supply chain for critical minerals outside China. MP Materials operates the Mountain Pass mine in California and counts the United States Department of Defense as a shareholder. In a separate step, CNBC reported that China's Finance Ministry excluded 46 United States companies, most of them defense contractors, from government procurement.

Beijing described the action as a direct response to the Pentagon's recent update of its list of firms it judges to have aided China's military. That update added the e-commerce group Alibaba, the search company Baidu and the electric-vehicle maker BYD. Each government describes its own move as defensive and the other's as aggression.

Rare earths are essential to the magnets used in electric motors, wind turbines and precision weapons, and China controls most of their processing. The exchange of measures shows how export controls have become the main instrument of the rivalry between the United States and China. It is hardening a divide that pushes both governments to subsidize separate supply chains, a costly use of capital that an unrestricted market would not have chosen.

Part of a tracked trend

US-China Commercial and Tech Decoupling Deepens

Over the next 3-6 months Washington widens designations and restrictions on major Chinese firms—adding companies like Alibaba, Baidu and BYD to military-linked lists—accelerating a commercial and technological split between the world's two largest economies.

Veracity: Corroborated

93/100

If true, who benefits: Beijing's leverage narrative and China's domestic minerals-processing champions, plus the case for US taxpayer subsidies to MP Materials and USA Rare Earth.
The nuance: Multiple outlets call the listing largely symbolic because neither targeted miner depends on Chinese dual-use inputs, and each capital frames its own controls as defensive retaliation for the other's.

An open-source-intelligence read of how likely this story is true with its real nuance, not a judgment of any outlet. It assesses the claim, weighing independent and adversarial reporting. How we label confidence.

What this means

By targeting the very companies Washington is funding to reduce its dependence on Chinese minerals, Beijing signals that it will use its dominance in processing to raise the cost of separating the two economies. The result is a slow and expensive rebuilding of supply chains on both sides, paid for through subsidies and stockpiling rather than through efficiency.

What to watch

Whether the Pentagon accelerates stockpiling and direct investment in MP Materials and USA Rare Earth to offset the loss of Chinese inputs.
Any Chinese move to extend restrictions to finished rare-earth magnets, which would affect automakers and defense suppliers worldwide.

Observations to monitor, not financial advice.

3 sources

Synthesized from: South China Morning Post · Al Jazeera · CNBC