China's MOFCOM Adds 10 US Firms — Including Rare-Earth Miners MP Materials, USA Rare Earth — to Export Control List in Retaliation for Pentagon Blacklist

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) added 10 US companies to its export control list on June 22, prohibiting exports of dual-use items to the named firms with immediate effect, Al Jazeera and the Washington Post reported. The list includes rare-earth and magnet developers MP Materials — operator of the Mountain Pass mine in California, the only scaled rare-earth mining operation in the US — and USA Rare Earth, alongside eight defense-related firms (Aveox, Red Cat Holdings, Teal Drones, IMSAR, Jaia Robotics, Ball Aerospace, Oshkosh Defense, L3Harris Maritime Services). Beijing characterized the move as retaliation for the Pentagon's expansion of its 'Chinese military-industrial entity' list to roughly 80 firms earlier in June. Analysts described the measure as largely symbolic in immediate supply-chain terms — entity-specific rather than a blanket restriction — but it extends the pattern of tit-for-tat tech/materials sanctions that has run in parallel with the broader chip export control dispute. China separately widened rare-earth export controls to 14 EU firms in July, even as its October 2025 blanket rare-earth control suspension (agreed at the Xi-Trump summit) remains in effect until November 2026.