A handful of Chinese suppliers have stopped shipping rare earths to American customers. The measure that stopped them was aimed at an American nonprofit that writes audit standards.
Reuters reported the refusals on Friday and dated them to early August. On August 5, China's Ministry of Commerce issued Order No. 2 of 2026, putting six American entities on its countermeasure list under the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, which bars everyone in China from transactions or cooperation with them. One of the six is the Responsible Business Alliance.
The RBA is an industry coalition, and through its Responsible Minerals Initiative it runs the assurance process that certifies the smelters and refiners handling tin, tantalum, tungsten, gold and battery minerals. Western buyers use those certificates to show their supply chains are free of forced labour. A large share of the world's critical mineral processing happens in China.
The order never named the Responsible Minerals Initiative. The day after it took effect, the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters told its members to stop RMI audits, training, fee payments and data submissions, and to treat existing audit results with caution. Which leaves a Chinese processor in a specific position: its own government forbids dealing with the auditor, and its American customer requires the audit. Not shipping breaks neither rule.
This is not the main constraint on the trade. Exports of most rare earths and magnets have recovered since China's April 2025 restrictions. Reuters could not establish how many suppliers had refused. Some had already stopped for a different reason: one source described four cases of firms declining to send material for fear it would be resold to a banned user. And the heavier drag is licences, not audits — some American companies have been waiting more than six months.
Beijing gave its reason. On July 31 the United States added 43 Chinese companies to its forced labour entity list; five days later the commerce ministry called its order a countermeasure against American sanctions imposed under the pretext of forced labour. The alliance it named has more than 600 member companies, and its minerals assurance process is the only due diligence scheme the European Union has formally recognised under its conflict minerals rules. Meanwhile yttrium, indium phosphide and tungsten sit near record prices, yttrium exports to the United States are running at about half their 2024 level, and Xi Jinping arrives in Washington on September 24.
An export ban is a visible thing. It has a list, a date, and a negotiating table. A prohibition on cooperating with an auditor has none of that, and some of the same shipments stop anyway — one supplier at a time, for reasons that never appear in a trade statistic.
Not shipping breaks neither rule.
