Submission statement: This is about China’s export controls on yttrium. Japan has asked the US to help convince Beijing to ease its chokehold on yttrium and avert a manufacturing shutdown. China’s yttrium exports to Japan have ground to a halt, and yttrium oxide prices outside China have skyrocketed to 179 times what they were 2 years ago ($1,150 per kilogramme outside China vs $9 per kilogramme in China). The US has complained that China is not fulfilling its pledge to ease rare earth controls under the trade truce the two sides reached last October, and urged China to increase the flow of rare earths.
>Unless Beijing changes tack or western allies find substitutes or additional stockpiles, shortages could emerge as early as the end of this year, Japanese government officials and trading house executives said.
>“It is rightful panic in Japan,” said Gracelin Baskaran, head of the critical minerals security programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They are probably going to have to suffer for the time being.”
But this also creates interesting complications for China.
>US officials have told Beijing that the US will not export jet engines needed for the Comac C919 — China’s first domestically made airliner — as production has been constrained by the lack of yttrium, which is critical to making turbines. China also agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets when Trump visited Beijing in May. But the deal has not been completed, partly due to complications related to critical minerals.
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Submission statement: This is about China’s export controls on yttrium. Japan has asked the US to help convince Beijing to ease its chokehold on yttrium and avert a manufacturing shutdown. China’s yttrium exports to Japan have ground to a halt, and yttrium oxide prices outside China have skyrocketed to 179 times what they were 2 years ago ($1,150 per kilogramme outside China vs $9 per kilogramme in China). The US has complained that China is not fulfilling its pledge to ease rare earth controls under the trade truce the two sides reached last October, and urged China to increase the flow of rare earths.
>Unless Beijing changes tack or western allies find substitutes or additional stockpiles, shortages could emerge as early as the end of this year, Japanese government officials and trading house executives said.
>“It is rightful panic in Japan,” said Gracelin Baskaran, head of the critical minerals security programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They are probably going to have to suffer for the time being.”
But this also creates interesting complications for China.
>US officials have told Beijing that the US will not export jet engines needed for the Comac C919 — China’s first domestically made airliner — as production has been constrained by the lack of yttrium, which is critical to making turbines. China also agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets when Trump visited Beijing in May. But the deal has not been completed, partly due to complications related to critical minerals.
Archive is not working, so here is a [freedium link](https://freedium-mirror.cfd/https://www.ft.com/content/ebd3244a-9120-4773-b55f-41df77f60c93).