Yttrium's 125-Fold Price Gap Looms Over Trump-Xi Talks in Shenzhen

China bought itself two more months on Monday by extending the pause on its sweeping October 2025 rare earth export controls to Jan. 10, Reuters reported, but the metal squeezing buyers hardest right now was never covered by it.That metal is yttrium, which sits under a separate set of licensing rules Beijing imposed in April 2025 on seven medium and heavy rare earths. When the pause began last November, the law firm Pillsbury listed those April rules among the measures still in force, which makes the extension a cheap gift: the October measures have been frozen since then anyway. The shipment data show what the April rules mean in practice. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that China’s yttrium oxide exports are running at about two-fifths of their 2023-2024 average, with almost none going to Japan this year.The same report cites Argus Media prices of about $1.15 million a ton in Europe against $9,144 in China, a 125-fold gap that barely existed before the curbs.Japan has taken the worst of it, with Chinese customs data showing 4,000 kilograms of yttrium oxide arriving in September against 51,000 a year earlier, AFP reported last month. The Financial Times reported on Oct. 20 that Tokyo is months from running out and has asked Washington to lean on Beijing. A Japanese industry ministry official told AFP that global yttrium exports have stalled, causing a “supply-demand crunch.”Yttrium also protects turbine blades in gas-fired power plants and jet engines, per Bloomberg, so the shortage reaches well beyond chipmaking. The IEA warned in July that full implementation of China’s expanded controls, the ones just re-paused, could put about $6.5 trillion a year of downstream production outside China at risk.Trump is expected to meet Xi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shenzhen, set for Nov. 18-19, and Washington’s complaint is that the rare earths aren’t flowing at the promised pace. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer used a recent video call with Vice Premier He Lifeng to ask for “concrete actions,” and a former senior U.S. official told The National that some inside the administration believe China has “overpromised and underdelivered.”Supply from outside China is slow to arrive, with Lynas Rare Earths not due to begin yttrium output at its Malaysian plant until 2028, Bloomberg reported, and USA Rare Earth saying this week it has delivered its first yttrium oxide samples, from a demonstration plant in Colorado, to an unnamed customer for testing, Metal Tech News reported.Chi Hin Ling, head of metals pricing for Asia at Argus, told Bloomberg that nobody has a clear view of how much is sitting in warehouses, because global stockpiles of critical minerals aren’t transparent. “We always think the market is quite thin,” he said. “Then, all of a sudden, someone will be like: ‘Oh hang on, actually I’ve got about 100 tons left in my warehouse – but I’m going to sell it to you for $1 million a ton.’”By Michael Kern for Oilprice.comMore Top Reads From Oilprice.comOil Prices Rise as Iran Peace Optimism FadesEuropean Gas Prices Rebound on Iran War UncertaintyBurnham Heads to COP31 Torn Between Cheaper Power and Net Zero