US mineral stocks soar on lack of full rollback of China’s rare earth export curbs

There’s a silver lining for US mineral stocks even after US President Donald Trump rated his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in South Korea a “12 out of 10.”

China is delaying the imposition of its planned onerous restrictions on rare earth shipments, which had caused Trump to countenance a “massive increase” in tariffs on Chinese imports earlier this month. However, there seems to be no full rollback of China’s rare earths curbs, as measures announced in April that limited the flow of seven rare earth minerals by requiring export licenses appear to remain in effect, per Reuters.

Shares of Critical Metals, USA Rare Earth, MP Materials, Lithium Americas, and United States Antimony Corp. are all meaningfully in the green in premarket trading. This group had come under severe pressure on Monday after top US and Chinese trade negotiators said they made substantial progress on ironing out some thorny issues, teeing up a positive result for the Trump-Xi meeting.

Andrew Bishop, global head of policy research at Signum Global Advisors, believes that China came out ahead in this trade deal as Xi “traded tangibles for intangibles,” writing that Beijing’s latest step-up on this file were “never-planned-to-be-enforced rare earth controls.”