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RALLIES IN RARE EARTH METALS & THEIR NON CHINESE PRODUCING COMPANIES JUST STARTING

ADMIN || 15th October 2025

With China seemingly digging in for a protracted trade war, the surge in rare-earth metal prices & associated equities across Asia has potential to extend. As Korea Zinc’s 50% surge this week highlights, the scarcity of non-Chinese sources for these materials in the short term at the very least means a drastic rerating for existing suppliers.

The key is that there’s a substantial lag before any new output can come online. That underscores China’s leverage and the allure of Korea Zinc and others, like Australia’s rallying group of miners.

Australia announced a $700m+ strategic reserve with the US but that will only be ready by 2H 2026. Watch out for more details when Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets President Trump next week.

China has repeatedly stated that it views its rare Earth trade controls simply as retaliation for US actions. The country has 70% of global mining capacity and 90% of processing capacity for rare earths. As the rest of the world races to catch up, watch out for the rare earth sector to stay on a sustainable bull run in Asia.

Commodity-linked emerging-market currencies stand to benefit as their ties to copper, gold and oil tighten.

As we have noted earlier, in the current situation the US administration doesn’t necessarily have much leverage, in contrast to all of the previous tariff-tantrum episodes. Simply put, without the sort of rare earths that China is restricting access to, US does not really have the capacity to make advanced chips and thus an AI investment boom. Currently we are a long way from rare-earth access becoming a legitimate choke point, and a number of firms have stockpiled inventory after China started rumbling about restricting access earlier this year.  But the hunt for RREs as well as non Chinese companies producing them will ensure that this rally is just starting.

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