🇨🇳 CHINA BANS EXPORT OF TECHNOLOGIES AND CARRIERS RELATED TO RARE EARTH MINING, REFINING, METAL SMELTING, MAGNET MANUFACTURING, AND RECYCLING

📝 Dean W. Ball: China has asserted sweeping control over the entire global semiconductor supply chain, putting export license requirements on all rare earths used to manufacture advanced chips. If enforced aggressively, this policy could mean "lights out" for the US AI boom, and likely lead to a recession/economic crisis in the US in the short term.

🔗 Dean W. Ball

📝 Arnaud Bertrand: This is actually big, potentially huge, notably because China's new rare earth export controls include a provision (point 4 here: https://mofcom.gov.cn/zwgk/zcfb/art/2025/art_7fc9bff0fb4546ecb02f66ee77d0e5f6.html) whereby anyone using rare earths to develop advanced semiconductors (defined as 14nm-and-below) will require case-by-case approval.

Which effectively gives China de-facto veto power over the entire advanced semi-conductor supply chain as rare earths are used at critical steps throughout - from ASML (who use rare earths for magnets in their lithography machines: https://asml.com/en/news/stories/2023/6-ingredients-robust-supply-chain) to TSMC.

The export controls are also extra-territorial: foreign entities must obtain Chinese export licenses before re-exporting products manufactured abroad if they contain Chinese rare earth materials comprising 0.1% or more of the product's value.

So China is effectively mirroring the US semiconductor export controls that were used against them, with its own comprehensive extraterritorial control regime, except with rare earths.

🔗 Arnaud Bertrand