US rare earths flow to Japan and South Korea as domestic magnet demand lags

US producers MP Materials, Energy Fuels, and Phoenix Tailings, backed by billions in federal support, are selling their rare earths mainly to Japan and South Korea, where magnet manufacturing runs at a scale US plants have yet to reach. The gap is structural: Washington funded extraction but not the downstream demand, so subsidized supply flows to the same Asian buyers the policy meant to route around, with MP's NdPr reaching Japan through Sumitomo.

Source: arstechnica.com ↗