Overview

• The U.S. and China formally signed a June trade understanding obliging Beijing to resume rare earth exports and prompting Washington to lift countermeasures once shipments begin.
• Chinese regulators continue to drag out export license approvals, with processing times exceeding a month and companies forced to disclose sensitive information.
• U.S. countermeasures on materials such as ethane and chip software remain in place until China delivers the agreed shipments of rare earth elements.
• European manufacturers report critical shortages that have brought some production lines to a halt ahead of the EU-China summit in late July.
• India is engaging Beijing to streamline its rare earth supply and is accelerating plans to diversify sources and develop domestic processing capacity.