Highlights
- SMM reports a slight increase in Pr-Nd alloy prices following the Labor Day holiday, driven by elevated raw material costs.
- Market demonstrates a pronounced wait-and-see sentiment amid escalating U.S.-China trade tensions and potential export restrictions.
- Weak pricing for dysprosium and terbium suggests tepid end-market demand and strategic market positioning by Chinese producers.
Shanghai Metals Market (SMM) reports (opens in a new tab) a slight uptick in praseodymium-neodymium (Pr-Nd) alloy prices following China’s Labor Day holiday, driven by elevated raw material costs and modest downstream stockpiling. Yet the broader tone across China’s rare earth supply chain is anything but bullish. From oxides to NdFeB blanks, suppliers and buyers alike exhibit a pronounced wait-and-see posture—a signal of latent uncertainty amid a rapidly evolving trade and geopolitical climate. Prices for dysprosium and terbium remain weak, with minimal movement in transaction volumes.
Although Chinese metal producers largely continued operations through the holiday, there has been no post-holiday rebound in active procurement or price momentum. This suggests tepid end-market demand and hesitancy from buyers wary of macroeconomic or regulatory shifts.
Critically, this muted trading behavior arrives in the context of escalating U.S.-China trade tensions, a brewing tariff war, and tightening U.S. restrictions on Chinese technology access. Not to mention Chinese restrictions on rare earth exports to America.
For global investors and Western downstream buyers—especially those dependent on magnet-grade rare earths—the “market calm” in China could be strategic opacity. Are Chinese firms conserving inventory for internal high-tech sectors such as EVs and robotics, or bracing for prolonged export controls? With Pr-Nd alloy now at 504,000–506,000 yuan/mt and recycled NdFeB scrap values also ticking upward, Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) urges stakeholders to monitor not just price signals, but also opaque supply dynamics, regulatory tightening, and the broader risk of asymmetric escalation in the rare earths theater of the trade war.
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