# Market Thesis Research Bundle

Question: Given China's rare-earth export controls and the IEA warning on downstream exposure, will a major Western auto, aerospace, or defense OEM sign a long-term non-Chinese rare-earth offtake, refining, or processing partnership by year-end 2026?

What this bundle is: a reasoning and monitoring scaffold. It organizes public evidence into observations, claims, uncertainty branches, thresholds, and a watch plan.

What this bundle is not: primary evidence, live market data, trade advice, or a substitute for official, live, or current web sources.

Core tension: Given China's rare-earth export controls and the IEA warning on downstream exposure, will a major Western auto, aerospace, or defense OEM sign a long-term non-Chinese rare-earth offtake, refining, or processing partnership by year-end 2026?

Current inference to verify: {'label': 'yes', 'status': 'already_satisfied_by_cutoff', 'confidence': 0.98, 'interpretation': 'The event condition appears already met before the cutoff because General Motors, a major Western auto OEM, publicly disclosed a binding long-term non-Chinese rare-earth supply agreement with MP Materials in 2021.', 'verification_note': "If the intended reading is instead 'a newly signed public deal after 2026-08-16,' the public record in the supplied pack is incomplete and the answer is less certain."} Treat this as a hypothesis that must be refreshed against live official sources, not as a signal.

How to use: read `source_priority.json` first, refresh sources in `live_verification_plan.json`, then use `fact_inference_split.json`, `thresholds.json`, and `watch_schedule.json` to decide what changed. Do not infer buy/sell/hold, position sizing, execution, or asset-price direction from this artifact.