Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The US Department of Commerce's CHIPS Program Office, invoking authority under the CHIPS and Science Act, signed a non-binding letter of intent on 2026-01-26 to provide USA Rare Earth with up to $277 million in direct federal funding and a $1.3 billion senior secured loan. The funding backs a "mine-to-magnet" vertically integrated supply chain: a rare earth mine at Round Top, Texas (commercial production targeted 2028) and a neodymium-iron-boron magnet and rare-earth-metals manufacturing facility in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In exchange, Commerce receives roughly 16.1 million USAR common shares and warrants for a further 17.6 million shares. The agreements were finalized as definitive on 2026-06-03, unlocking access to up to $1.6 billion combined with the federal award, alongside a separately raised $1.5 billion in private capital.

MIIT, NDRC and MNR jointly issued the Interim Measures for Total Volume Control of Rare Earth Mining and Rare Earth Smelting and Separation on August 22, 2025, the first implementing regulation under State Council Order No. 785. The measures establish annual national production ceilings (for both mining and smelting/separation), distributed directly to designated enterprises at the start of each year, and — in the most novel provision — extend quota controls to rare-earth content in imported raw materials (e.g. Myanmar concentrate, Kazakh monazite, Guinea feedstocks) for the first time. Enterprises must report monthly output against quotas to local authorities and submit the prior month's flow data to an MIIT-operated traceability platform by the 10th of each month.

Order of the State Council No. 785, adopted at the 31st executive meeting on April 26, 2024 and effective October 1, 2024, is the first comprehensive statutory regulation governing China's entire rare earth industry chain — from mining and smelting through product circulation and import/export. It replaces the 2012 administrative-regulation framework with higher-authority State Council instruments, centralising quota allocation under MIIT+NDRC+MNR, establishing a mandatory national rare earth traceability platform, and extending domestic controls to foreign-origin feedstock refined in China. This regulation is the umbrella enabling instrument for all downstream MOFCOM and MIIT rare earth export-control measures enacted from 2024 onward.

Presidential Resolution No. PP-319 of 14 July 2022 directed Navoiuran State Enterprise to more than double uranium output from approximately 3,500 tU/year to 7,100 tU/year by 2030, expand the national uranium reserve base to 100,000 tonnes through new exploration, and develop domestic nuclear-fuel-cycle conversion capacity alongside rare-metal co-extraction. The resolution simultaneously reorganised the uranium and rare-earth sector into a vertically integrated state enterprise — Navoiuran — spun out of the former Navoiy MMC JSC, placing the full extraction-to-conversion chain under state control.

Royal Decree No. M/140, dated 19 Shawwal 1441H (11 June 2020), promulgated Saudi Arabia's Mining Investment Law, replacing the 2004 Mining Investment Law (Royal Decree M/47). The law establishes a modern licensing framework under the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources (MIM) and the Saudi Geological Survey (SGS), introduces five license categories (reconnaissance, exploration, exploitation, small-mine, building-materials quarry), permits 100% foreign ownership in mining, and sets out royalty and fiscal terms aligned with Vision 2030's goal of developing an estimated $1.3 trillion in identified mineral wealth. The law took effect on 1 January 2021 and serves as the statutory parent of every Saudi mining licensing round and strategic minerals initiative launched since that date.