Rare earth stocks’ performance was mixed in the first minutes of Thursday’s trading session as the market digested the news out of South Korea that President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping reached a deal that would delay implementation of Beijing’s rare earths export controls by at least a year.
MP Materials (MP), which operates the only commercial-scale rare earth mine in the US, fell by more than 1% before recovering to a gain of more than 0.8%.
USA Rare Earth (USAR) lost more than 2.8%, remaining red, while NioCorp Developments (NB) lost more than 2.5% before boomeranging back to a gain of more than 4%.
The leaders of the world’s two largest economies met in South Korea late Wednesday night, capping off a week of US trade policy negotiations with Asian and Southeast Asian countries.
Under the agreement reached between Trump and Xi, the United States will cut its tariffs on Chinese goods related to fentanyl to 10% from 20%, while Xi will work “very hard to stop the flow” of fentanyl, Trump said.
China’s new export controls on rare earths, announced in early October and which rattled the market over their severity, tamping down exports of products containing even trace amounts of the minerals, were set to be a key focus of the summit.
Beijing has now agreed to hold off on implementing the export controls, which, among other policies, completely banned exports for weapons development applications for at least a year.
“They’re not going to impose the rare earth controls,” Trump said to a press gaggle aboard Air Force One Thursday morning.
China boosted its own mining and refining of a group of metals that includes rare earths by 14% year over year for the first quarter through the third quarter, according to numbers published Tuesday.