Sydney, May 16, 2026, 07:05 (AEST)
- Lynas shares ended Friday at A$17.95 after a sharp Thursday sell-off.
- U.S. trade chief Jamieson Greer said China’s rare earth exports are improving, but some approvals remain slow.
- Prediction markets show low odds of quick rare-earth relief from the Trump-Xi talks.
Lynas Rare Earths Limited was pulled back into the centre of the China supply-chain trade after U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said rare earth shipments from China were improving but Beijing still “drags its feet” on some export licences. Lynas shares closed at A$17.95 on Friday, unchanged after a 9.8% slide the previous day, market data showed. Reuters
Why it matters: rare earths, a group of 17 metals used in magnets, electric vehicles, electronics and defence equipment, remain one of the hardest points in the U.S.-China trade fight. Reuters reported this week that Chinese exports of heavy rare earths including yttrium, dysprosium and terbium were still down about 50% from pre-control levels, even as overall rare earth exports had rebounded.
For Lynas, the setup cuts both ways. Tight Chinese licensing supports the case for non-China supply, but a durable U.S.-China thaw could weaken the scarcity premium that has helped rare-earth stocks. Polymarket contracts put the odds of China announcing rare-earth export relief for the United States by May 22 at 18%, and a broader U.S.-China tariff agreement by May 31 at 21%.
Lynas is the world’s biggest rare earths producer outside China, with mining in Australia and processing in Malaysia. CEO Amanda Lacaze said earlier this month that new U.S. and European rules were already changing customer behaviour, saying Lynas was seeing “changed purchasing decisions” as buyers sought to comply with sourcing rules. Reuters
The company’s latest reported quarter gives investors a cleaner operating base than last year. Lynas posted gross sales revenue of A$265 million for the three months to March 31, more than double a year earlier, while total rare earth oxide production rose more than 69% to 3,233 metric tons. Neodymium-praseodymium, or NdPr, is a rare earth oxide used in high-strength magnets; Lynas said its average selling price rose 25% from the previous quarter.
The competitive read is mostly policy-driven. MP Materials, the key U.S. peer, controls the only rare earths mine in North America and has U.S. government price support, while Lynas already has a larger ex-China separation business feeding Asian and Western customers.
Lynas has also locked in government-backed demand. In March, its U.S. unit signed a binding letter of intent for a Pentagon-backed rare earth oxide supply agreement, including about $96 million of purchases and a $110 per kg floor price for NdPr oxide.
Japan is another anchor. Lynas revamped its agreement with Japan Australia Rare Earths to secure a firm annual commitment for 5,000 tonnes of NdPr and to set aside 75% of its heavy rare earth oxide output for Japanese industry, with a supply framework running through 2038.
The risk is that politics moves faster than capacity. If China gives real export relief, prices could ease before Lynas gets full benefit from its expansion work; if it does not, customers may keep paying up, but material costs and execution risk remain. Malaysia has also renewed Lynas’ operating licence for 10 years, while ordering the company to stop producing radioactive waste by 2031, a condition that keeps regulatory risk on the file.
The market is not trading Lynas only as a miner now. It is trading it as a test of whether governments can pay enough, and customers can wait long enough, to build a rare earth supply chain that does not run through China.
