Rare Earth Magnet Export Compliance in 2026: What Buyers Must Verify Before They Order

A buyer shipped a batch of magnets he’d ordered for three years straight, declared as ordinary NdFeB. Customs pulled it, tested it, found 1.2% dysprosium — and the shipment was no longer “ordinary.” It was a controlled dual-use item that should have moved under an export licence. The fine landed at roughly 4.5 times the value of the cargo.

I’ve watched buyers walk into this exact wall through 2026, almost always because they trusted a grade name on a datasheet instead of verifying what was actually inside the magnet. China’s rare earth export controls don’t ban the magnets you need — they just punish moving them blind. Here’s what’s controlled, what’s paused, and what to demand from your supplier before you place the order.

Rare earth magnets are not banned. Magnets containing controlled heavy rare earths — chiefly dysprosium (Dy) and terbium (Tb) — are dual-use items that require a Chinese export licence. The real risk for buyers is sourcing from a supplier who can’t prove, by testing, exactly what’s inside.

This isn’t a disruption you can wait out. China spent two years building a whole-chain control framework — products, technology, and even Chinese-origin material made abroad — and has shown it can switch the strictest parts on and off. Its leverage is structural: the IEA estimates China performs about 91% of global rare earth refining and separation and 94% of sintered permanent-magnet production¹. Two of the toughest measures are paused right now, but only until 10 November 2026. I’ll take you through it with the real enforcement case at the center, a 30-second self-check, and a supplier vetting checklist. (For the full policy timeline, our comprehensive guide to importing sintered NdFeB magnets under the 2025 controls² is the pillar reference; this article assumes you know the basics.)

What’s Actually in Force Right Now — and What’s Paused

The biggest source of confusion is that several measures were announced in October 2025 and suspended within weeks. Here’s the clean picture.

China’s baseline controls — Announcement No. 18, in force since April 2025 — require an export licence for seven medium and heavy rare earths and for NdFeB magnets containing terbium or dysprosium. The broader technology and extraterritorial measures, Announcements 61 and 62, are suspended only until 10 November 2026.

In force today. Announcement No. 18³, effective April 2025, requires an export licence for seven medium and heavy rare earths. As CSIS notes, this April regime was never suspended⁴ — it remains fully operative. China’s dual-use items catalogue also captures sintered NdFeB magnets containing terbium or dysprosium, so those magnets need a licence to leave the country. Our plain-language explainer of the 2025 magnet controls for global buyers⁵ breaks down the rollout month by month.

Paused until 10 November 2026. Announcements No. 61 and No. 62⁶ (both October 2025) were suspended by Announcement No. 70⁷ on 7 November 2025. No. 62 extends controls to rare earth technology; No. 61 extends them extraterritorially, to Chinese-origin rare earth content even in goods produced outside China.

The suspension is a phase in ongoing trade negotiations, not a change of direction. The framework has been written, published, and shown to work — which is why prudent buyers treat the pause as a deadline rather than a reprieve.

Is Your Magnet Controlled? A 30-Second Self-Check

Before anything else, find out whether your part is even in scope. Most buyers can answer this in under a minute.

To check whether your magnet is controlled, confirm three things: the alloy (NdFeB or SmCo), the grade suffix (SH, UH, EH and AH grades rely on dysprosium or terbium), and the measured Dy/Tb content. If any controlled element is present, the magnet needs a Chinese export licence.

Work through it in order:

1. Alloy. Neodymium (NdFeB) and samarium-cobalt (SmCo) are the two sintered rare earth magnet families. SmCo always contains samarium, a controlled element. NdFeB depends on its grade.
2. Grade suffix. Standard NdFeB (N35–N52, and many M / H grades) usually carries little or no heavy rare earth. The high-coercivity suffixes — SH, UH, EH, AH — are where dysprosium and terbium are added to survive heat and reverse fields. Those are the controlled grades. Our NdFeB grade selection guide⁸ explains why coercivity (Hcj), not just remanence (Br), drives that choice.
3. Measured content. Don’t trust the suffix alone. The enforcement case below turned on a magnet declared as plain NdFeB that actually held 1.2% dysprosium. Composition has to be confirmed by testing.

For reference, sintered rare earth permanent magnets are typically classified under HS heading 8505.11 — but the control trigger is the element content, not the HS code, so correct classification still depends on knowing what’s in the alloy.

From “Products” to “Technology” — Why This Shift Is Hard to Design Around

Product controls can sometimes be managed by re-routing or reformulating. Technology and origin controls are far stickier — and that’s the direction China has taken.

Announcement No. 62 controls the manufacturing know-how itself, while No. 61 reaches Chinese-origin rare earth content above 0.1% by value in finished goods made abroad. Products can be substituted, but capability and material origin can’t easily be removed from a global supply chain.

No. 62 covers mining, smelting and separation, metal smelting, magnet manufacturing and recycling technology — plus the assembly, commissioning, maintenance, and upgrading of production lines. It also applies a “knowing” standard: even exporting a non-controlled good, technology, or service can require a licence if the exporter knows it will support overseas rare earth activity.

No. 61 is the bigger structural shift. As White & Case observed, it was the first time MOFCOM exercised extraterritorial jurisdiction in its export-control regime⁹ — a Chinese answer to the US Foreign Direct Product Rule. Jones Day’s analysis¹⁰ sets out the mechanics: a foreign-made magnet in which Chinese-origin rare earth content reaches or exceeds 0.1% by value falls within China’s licensing requirements, even when the finished item is built entirely outside China by a non-Chinese company. The old escape routes — substitute the product, assemble abroad — no longer reliably remove a shipment from scope.

Which Elements and Which Magnets Are Affected

If you buy magnets, your exposure comes down to one thing: composition.

China controls seven medium and heavy rare earths — samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium. The most exposed magnets are high-coercivity NdFeB grades (SH / UH / EH / AH) that rely on dysprosium or terbium, plus samarium-cobalt (SmCo) magnets.

High-coercivity NdFeB grades use Dy and Tb to hold magnetic performance under heat — the grades specified for EV traction motors, wind generators, pumps, aerospace, and defence. Standard low-temperature NdFeB without Dy or Tb is far less exposed, but the content must be verified, not assumed.

The direction of travel is wider, not narrower. The suspended October package already named five additional elements — holmium (Ho), erbium (Er), thulium (Tm), europium (Eu) and ytterbium (Yb). The IEA flagged the inclusion of holmium as especially significant, because many magnet makers had been switching to holmium to design around the elements restricted in April¹¹ — closing exactly that workaround.

The Enforcement Reality: “We Didn’t Know” Is Not a Defence

The risk isn’t theoretical, and it isn’t future-tense. The case I opened with is real, and it surfaced in May 2026.

A listed Chinese manufacturer was fined about RMB 910,000 — roughly 4.5 times the cargo value — after customs tested a shipment declared as ordinary NdFeB, found 1.2% dysprosium, and reclassified it as a controlled item exported without a licence.

The company had declared neodymium 11–26%, iron 50–70%, boron 0.8–1.2% — a textbook NdFeB profile — at a value of about US$28,000. The duty to correctly identify and declare composition sits with the exporter¹², and a wrong call — even an unmeasured trace — can halt a shipment or trigger a penalty.

As a buyer, you don’t escape that risk; you inherit it, as delays, stranded orders, and disrupted production. Your defence isn’t your own paperwork. It’s the discipline of your supplier. If you decide the licensed-export route is right for you, our step-by-step dual-use export controls compliance guide¹³ walks through the licence process.

The Countdown to November 2026

When the suspension expires on 10 November 2026, the controls could resume as written, resume in stricter form, or be reshaped through further negotiation. No honest supplier or analyst can promise which.

Because the policy direction hasn’t changed, the months before 10 November 2026 are a planning window: export licences are more straightforward to obtain while the strictest measures are paused, and the classification and documentation discipline that protects a shipment takes time to build.

Buyers who treat this as preparation time — rather than waiting for the next announcement — are the ones who won’t have a shipment stranded if the rules tighten overnight. The framework has already moved under buyers mid-project once. The European Parliament’s research service¹⁴ captured how sharp the earlier shock was: after the April controls, the IEA reported rare earth prices in the EU running as much as six times higher, with the automotive sector reporting disruption. Plan with a 12-month horizon, not a next-shipment one.

How to Source Rare Earth Magnets Outside China — and Why It’s Hard

It’s the first question most buyers ask. For now, the honest answer is: not for most of you.

China still handles the large majority of the world’s heavy rare earth separation and magnet-grade processing — about 91% of refining and 94% of sintered magnet output — so for most buyers the realistic near-term path is not avoiding Chinese material but sourcing it compliantly and transparently.

New projects in the United States, Europe, and allied countries are advancing, but the CSIS one-year assessment¹⁵ makes the timeline plain: capacity is years from covering global heavy-rare-earth demand at scale, and much of it still depends on Chinese-processed feedstock somewhere in the chain. Diversification belongs in your long-term plan; compliance belongs in your next purchase order. Where your application can tolerate lower coercivity, designing toward our heavy-rare-earth-reduced NdFeB line¹⁶ is a parallel way to cut exposure — though, as the holmium move shows, “design around it” is a moving target.

What a Compliant Magnet Supply Chain Looks Like

If compliance is the gateway rather than the obstacle, the question becomes: what should you demand from a supplier?

A compliant magnet supplier verifies composition by testing, classifies items correctly, obtains dual-use export licences before shipping, supplies documentation that survives a customs query, and built this discipline in before the 2025 controls rather than scrambling afterward.

A trader can’t credibly offer all five — only a manufacturer that owns its production can. If you’re still building a shortlist, our guide to the top neodymium magnet manufacturers in China¹⁷ is a starting point for comparing real producers against brokers.

This is the standard MainRich Magnets has worked to. Founded in 1992, MainRich treats compliance as the gateway to uninterrupted, lawful supply, and built end-to-end export compliance into its process ahead of the 2025 controls — so when the rules shifted, customers worldwide kept receiving their magnets under proper licence instead of scrambling to catch up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are rare earth magnets banned from export from China?
No. Rare earth magnets are not banned. Magnets containing controlled heavy rare earths such as dysprosium or terbium are dual-use items that require an export licence. Properly identified, declared, and licensed shipments continue to move.

Do NdFeB magnets need an export licence?
Standard NdFeB without controlled heavy rare earths generally does not. High-coercivity grades (SH, UH, EH, AH) containing Dy or Tb are controlled and require a dual-use licence. Verify composition by testing — don’t assume it from a grade name.

Which rare earth elements are under Chinese export control?
Seven since April 2025: samarium (Sm), gadolinium (Gd), terbium (Tb), dysprosium (Dy), lutetium (Lu), scandium (Sc), and yttrium (Y). Five more — holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, and ytterbium — were named in the suspended October package and would be added if those measures resume.

What is Announcement No. 62?
A Ministry of Commerce measure from October 2025 controlling the export of rare earth technology — mining, smelting and separation, metal smelting, magnet manufacturing and recycling know-how, plus production-line assembly, commissioning, and maintenance. It is suspended until 10 November 2026.

What’s the difference between Announcements 18, 61, and 62?
No. 18 (April 2025) controls the rare earth materials and magnets themselves. No. 61 extends control extraterritorially to Chinese-origin content abroad via a 0.1%-by-value de minimis rule. No. 62 controls the technology and know-how. Only No. 18 is currently in force; 61 and 62 are paused until November 2026.

What is the 0.1% rule?
Under Announcement No. 61, a foreign-made magnet can fall within China’s controls if Chinese-origin rare earth content reaches or exceeds 0.1% by value — a de minimis threshold designed to follow Chinese material through global supply chains, even into goods made entirely outside China.

Can I still import neodymium magnets from China to the US or EU?
Yes, where the goods are properly licensed and declared on the Chinese side. Controlled grades require a Chinese export licence; standard grades generally don’t. Always confirm your own country’s import requirements separately.

Is the suspension permanent?
No. Announcement No. 70 suspended the technology and extraterritorial measures only until 10 November 2026. The policy direction is unchanged, so the controls are widely expected to resume — possibly stricter.

Conclusion

The magnets aren’t banned. The risk is buying them blind. For a meaningful share of buyers in 2026, the difference between a shipping product and a stranded one comes down to whether their supplier can prove — by testing, classification, and licensing — exactly what’s in the magnet and how to move it lawfully.

If you want to know whether your current supply is exposed, send us your magnet specifications and target application through our inquiry form¹⁸. We’ll tell you honestly whether your parts are controlled, what classification and documentation they need, and how to keep them moving — before the next change lands.

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