After China doubled import duties on rare-earth concentrates to 25% as a result of the US-China trade war, MP Materials said, in May 2019, it will start its own partial processing operation in the United States by 2020, though full processing operations without Shenghe Resources have been delayed to 2022. (published 05-26-2019) According to Bloomberg, China in 2019 established a plan for restricting U.S. access to Chinese heavy rare earth elements, should the punitive step be deemed necessary. In 2022, the company announced that it had secured Department of Defense grants to support both light rare-earth elements (LREEs) and heavy rare earth elements (HREEs).
