Breaking China’s Rare Earth Stranglehold on the US Military

Samples of rare earth minerals on display at a firm in Mountain Pass, Calif., in a file photo. David Becker/Reuters

Commentary

For decades, politicians stood by and did nothing as China used predatory trade practices to destroy the once thriving U.S. rare earth mining and refining industry.

With a stranglehold on rare earth elements (REEs), China moved on to gain a stranglehold on the rare earth element magnets, without which our military would be crippled and unable to defend U.S. interests.

Components dependent on rare earths that are critical for our military include the high-performance rare-earth magnets that power F-35 fighters, radars, precision-guided munitions, electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, semiconductors, and countless defense and commercial systems.

Beijing’s near-total control, roughly 80 percent to 90 percent of global processing and magnet production, is a clear and present danger to American security and economic sovereignty.

Adding to the threat is that even as U.S. policymakers allowed China to destroy the U.S. REE industry, China’s growing dominance in mining and manufacturing led to China’s coming to dominate REE research.

But recent government actions show that the United States is finally addressing the warning contained in U.S. President Donald Trump’s first-term executive order declaring U.S. dependence on China for rare earth elements as a national security threat.

Achieving REE Independence

True independence requires more than isolated projects carried out by a few companies.

It demands full vertical integration from the domestic mining of both light and heavy rare earth ores, through the complete separation and refining of all 17 rare earth elements (with special focus on the four critical magnetic REEs: neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium), to the production of rare earth metals and alloys, and finally to the sintering and manufacturing of every type of high-performance magnet (NdFeB, SmCo, and specialized variants) required by the U.S. military and industry.

This full end-to-end chain from mine to magnet to recycling is the only way to eliminate Beijing’s leverage and secure supply against future weaponization. Only a concerted effort over the next 10 years has any chance of achieving this.

A Bipartisan Consensus

A bipartisan consensus comes from Republican and Democratic agreement that REE dependence on China is a national security threat, along with the fact that REE-related mining and manufacturing by China ends up dumping a whole lot more pollution into the environment. This has led to a series of legislative actions.

The Rare Earth Magnet Market Revitalization Act (H.R. 7563) was introduced on Feb. 12 by Reps. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) and Neal Dunn (R-Fla.). It prohibits the importation of certain rare earth magnets from covered nations and mandates domestic or allied sourcing for critical sectors while authorizing government-backed price guarantees.

Other legislative actions include the Rare Earth Magnet Security Act (REMSA) (H.R. 1496), introduced Feb. 21, 2025, which establishes $20- to $30-per-kilogram production tax credits for magnets manufactured in the United States without Chinese feedstock.

The bipartisan Critical Minerals Security Act in the Senate (S. 789), introduced Feb. 27, 2025, focuses on securing the entire mining-to-refining supply chain. Complementing these are executive orders and actions.

Trump’s Jan. 14 Section 232 proclamation directs negotiations to adjust imports of processed critical minerals and derivatives, including potential price floors, to counter national security threats.

Earlier, the March 2025 executive order on immediate measures to increase U.S. mineral production delegates Defense Production Act Title III authority to the war secretary and other agencies for equity investments, funding, and permitting reform, directly enabling the War Department’s $400 million equity stake in MP Materials (July 2025) and $1.6 billion investment in USA Rare Earth (January 2026).

Project Vault, unveiled Feb. 2, and federal loans for HREE separation provide durable backstops. Government equity stakes further de-risk the full chain. Only aggressive, decade-long execution of these tools will deliver true self-reliance while providing the REE-magnets so critical to U.S. defense and other U.S. industries.

The numbers tell the story. U.S. annual need for rare earth magnets is projected to grow rapidly. While the United States has made encouraging initial moves to get out from under China’s thumb, reliance on China and indirect sources remains a dangerous vulnerability.

Only by aggressively implementing the enabling legislation and Trump-era executive orders over the next decade will the United States be assured of gaining self-reliance for this critical national security resource:

Hurdles Remain

Scaling the separation and refining facilities necessary to produce REEs at industrial volumes, achieving metallurgical consistency for alloy production, and ramping up every type of magnet manufacturing will require relentless execution and political will.

As shown in the table, it will not happen overnight. For years to come, China will remain the dominant supplier of REE-related goods.

Yet, each and every year, the United States is on the path to becoming less dependent on China.

Some Good First Steps

The United States has taken some substantial steps to fight back against China’s incredibly successful use of predatory trade practices to corner the world market on REEs that put U.S. military power at severe risk.

The kind of government support that is now necessary to reestablish U.S. REE production capabilities would not have been necessary if U.S. policymakers had not given China free rein to gut U.S. industry and had been willing to fight back against China’s unfair government-supported trade practices and IP theft.

Let’s hope recent positive steps for REE independence are indicative that the haplessness that put the United States at the mercy of China is now a thing of the past. And let’s hope that shifting REE-related mining and manufacturing leads to a REE-related research resurgence at U.S. universities and companies.

Conservatively, if all goes as planned, by 2034, the United States and its close allies should achieve independence from China in terms of rare earth elements mining, separating, and refining. And by 2038, the domestic and allied production of permanent rare earth magnets should be able to meet all defense, aerospace, and EV requirements.

If things go really well, we can reduce the time to independence for both REE mining and REE-related manufacturing by about four years. That is a goal worth working to bring to realization.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.