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The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 (P.L. 119-60), signed into law on 18 December 2025, expands the Department of Defense's existing "covered materials" domestic- sourcing restriction (which already barred DoD contracting for SmCo/NdFeB magnets, tantalum and tungsten sourced from China, Russia, Iran or North Korea) to add gallium, germanium and molybdenum under Section 844. Restrictions on materials "melted or produced" in a covered nation take effect 31 December 2026, widening on 1 January 2027 to also cover materials "mined, refined, or separated" in a covered nation; the gallium/germanium additions specifically phase in on 18 December 2027. The same NDAA bundles two related supply-chain provisions: Section 867 gives DoD broader authority (contracts, grants, other-transaction agreements, equity-style investments, and anti-market-manipulation subsidies) to invest in the domestic industrial base for critical minerals, microelectronics, machine tools and other defense-relevant capacity, and Section 842 bars DoD from procuring advanced batteries whose cells or key components are owned, sourced, refined or produced by a foreign entity of concern, phased in 2028-2031.

China's Ministry of Commerce on 9 October 2025 issued Announcements No. 61 and No. 62, jointly constituting the largest single architectural escalation of PRC export controls to date. No. 61 expands the controlled rare-earth list from 7 to 12 of 17 elements (adding holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, ytterbium) and — for the first time — imposes extraterritorial application via a 0.1% de-minimis rule, a foreign-direct-product (FDP) rule, and a 50%-affiliate rule, directly mirroring US BIS architecture. No. 62 places rare-earth extraction, smelting, separation, magnet manufacturing, and recycling technologies (including IP licensing, investment, and provision to foreign persons) under export licensing. PRC-direct exports were controlled from publication; the de-minimis and FDP offshore-items provisions were due to take effect 1 December 2025. On 7 November 2025 MOFCOM Announcement No. 70 suspended both measures until 10 November 2026 as part of the post-APEC Trump-Xi tariff detente — see amendments block.

China's Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs announced on 4 April 2025 export licensing requirements on seven medium and heavy rare-earth elements: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium. Exporters must apply for individual licences citing the end-user and end-use, with licences granted at MOFCOM's discretion. The announcement came two days after the 2 April Trump reciprocal-tariff package and was widely interpreted as a proportional response. Unlike the December 2024 Ga/Ge/Sb ban this is not US-specific on its face — but in practice licence approvals through April-June 2025 were heavily skewed away from US-bound shipments.