China has announced that it intends to ban the export of the technology required to produce permanent rare earth magnets. This is on top of its reaffirmation to an older ban concerning the processing of rare earth oxides into usable materials. This is what we would consider the third major step in recent memory relating to China’s protectionist moves surrounding green supply chains, the first being germanium and gallium exports targeted at the semiconductor and automotive industries, the second being export restrictions for certain graphite products that are heavily used within the battery supply chain. China could do this because it owns close to 100% of both of the above supply chains, in the case of Germanium production being literally…