Rare earth elements (REEs) – a group of 17 metals economically found in bastnaesite, monazite, loparite and lateritic ion-adsorption clays – featured heavily in trade relations during the first year of Donald Trumps’ second term as US president.
Soon after he was sworn in last January, the minerals, which are crucial to the US economy and defence, but of which roughly 70% is mined and 90% processed in China, took centre stage in an ongoing trade war between the countries, ultimately restricting the US’ access to its supply and related technology.
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While experts and industry have been raising the alarm about the US’– and more broadly, the West’s – overreliance on China’s REEs for decades, last year’s developments appeared to spur renewed vigour in the US government’s intentions to counter China’s dominance of the market.
In a surprise move in July 2025, the Trump administration became the largest shareholder of the US’ only active REE miner, MP Materials, announced $134m in funds for domestic projects and began bolstering supply chains by securing access through partners in Australia, Japan, Malaysia and Thailand.
The moves appear to be having an initial impact. A recent Reuters analysis of International Energy Agency data suggests that a multi-billion-dollar pipeline of rare earth projects around the world, including on US soil, is set to partly wean the US off Chinese rare earths. While China would still supply roughly 60% of the world’s key magnet-making rare earths, including Neodymium, Praseodymium, Dysprosium and Terbium, by 2030, the US is on course to meet about 95% of its own demand domestically.
However, there is a big caveat to these positive projections; they assume today’s pipeline of projects are built and scaled on schedule – something experts are sceptical the US will achieve in this timeframe.
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By GlobalDataRamping up US-based REE projects
At the centre of US efforts is MP Material’s Mountain Pass mine, the largest REE mine in the US. Since late 2023 the mine has produced, separated and refined praseodymium-neodymium oxide, cerium chloride, lanthanum carbonate and its heavy rare earth concentrate, containing a variety of medium and heavy rare earth elements which it sells only to customers outside of China since the Chinese tariffs imposed last year.
The company operates a metal and magnet manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, which only started trial production last year, but has a capacity of 1,000 million tonnes of neodymium-iron-boron magnets per annum. It’s also currently building a second magnet facility, pursuant to a July agreement with the Pentagon whereby it will receive a minimum price of $110 per kilogram for its neodymium and praseodymium output (two of the most in-demand of the 17 different rare earths). Named “10X”, the facility, will scale the company’s magnet output tenfold – from 1,000 to 10,000 metric tonnes annually by 2028, when it is anticipated to enter commissioning.
Other projects in the pipeline include American Rare Earths’ Halleck Creek (Wyoming), which is considered to be one of the biggest finds in the US; US Critical Materials’ Sheep Creek (Montana), which has confirmed high-grade REE and gallium; Ramaco Resources’ Brook Mine, which is exploring coal-hosted REEs; Graphic One’s Graphite Creek Project (Alaska), where rare earths were found alongside its graphite deposit; and Ionic Mineral Technologies’ recent discovery of rare earths and critical minerals in Silicon Ridge (Utah).
The promise of permitting reforms
These new projects have been in part bolstered by the potential of permitting reforms. Permitting requirements have previously prohibited new mines in the US – unlike in China where a higher tolerance for pollution has helped it secure its market lead.
Ashley Burke, senior vice president of communications at the US’ National Mining Association, tells Mining Technology permitting reform is “key to turning ambition into reality”, adding the industry has “never been closer to a deal [on this]”.
“Given how long it takes to bring a mine online in the US, and the immediate minerals demands now at our doorstep, we need to act quickly,” she says.
Graphite One’s senior vice president of mining Mike Schaffner concurs with this new sense of optimism. “Ten years ago, it was very difficult to permit a mine,” he says. This started to improve under the Biden administration, which funded Graphite One’s feasibility study for $37.5m.
Just as importantly, the industry is now seeing more favourable outcomes in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where environmental legal challenges are often brought against mines, he adds, pointing to the court’s decision in 2023 to deny a last ditch legal effort to block construction of Lithium Nevada’s Thacker Pass mine.
“There’s definitely been a change of attitude there – I think now if the environmental groups had a valid cause for objecting a mine, rather than simply objecting each one, it would be heard, but it must be an actual valid cause – that’s a bit of a pendulum swing force.”
Low-grade projects and light REE mines
Yet, permitting is far from the biggest issue facing the development of the US’ REE pipeline, say the experts.
“There’s been much hype around rare earths in the US,” says Simon Jowitt, director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology at the University of Nevada, Reno. “There are many projects that may or may not come onstream, but nothing I’ve seen strikes me as the next big REE mine or deposit.”
Some projects do not stand up to scrutiny and are low-grade, he says.
“Ramaco Resources’ grade calculations are done on an ash basis [At Ramaco coal will be burned first and the ash then processed]; you’re talking tiny amounts of a concentration 100 times less than at Mountain Pass, which means you have to move 100 times more material to get the REEs out – and even then, the processing routes aren’t guaranteed,” he explains.
Other deposits such as monazite, a key source for REEs, are problematic because they contain thorium, a weakly radioactive, silvery-white metal, production of which is strictly controlled.
In addition, critics say some deposits are the “wrong” types of rare earths, such as lanthanum and cerium, instead of heavy rare earths, such as neodymium, dysprosium, holmium and ytterbium – the latter of which is used in semiconductors and catalysts, and for which the US is entirely dependent on imports. The Reuters analysis notes that China is set to continue dominating processing of heavy rare earths even in 2030, by around 91%, as it controls approximately 99% of the world’s processing and separation capacity for these elements.
Jim Kennedy, president of ThREE Consulting, says that if the US government fails to grasp the importance of heavy rare earths, it will “only be making magnets for toys and novelty items”.
“Opening five light rare earth mines is a distraction; it sends false signals to everyone, and you completely lose the game,” he stresses.
The cost of processing and refining
However, processing and refining are perhaps the biggest issues of all. Extracting REEs is a challenging process that requires advanced chemical engineering which Chinese manufacturers have perfected over the years at a cost advantage likely unmatchable in the US and elsewhere.
“The reason China is ahead on rare earths is they’re recovering them all in secondary processes. For example, they’re putting in zinc smelters and recovering the gallium and the germanium as a co-product; they don’t have to have specific rare earth facilities,” explains Schaffner.
“REEs are not rare – they’re just not found in really high levels and concentrations,” he adds, making the US’ strategy of trying to develop value chains in isolation as pure REEs problematic.
“We have [at Graphite Creek] REEs in garnets at 0.1% level once the garnet is concentrated – but in the past the value of the REEs would not pay to ship garnets unless you had a use for the garnet such as sandpaper or abrasives. Currently, we are working with the National Labs (government-funded research centres) to determine if we can economically recover the REEs with new technologies,” he says.
“Each [REE] facility will probably require a slightly different process based on where those REEs are contained. Ours are in these garnets, and it’s incredibly challenging to get them out. We need to decide if we can economically ship that product to a smelter where it would be refined further or if we can develop a process to further refine the REEs at site.”
Jowitt echoes that the US won’t have a secure supply chain unless it has it in its entirety, including refining and processing capabilities.
Over the years US refinery build-out has been stonewalled due to environmental challenges, lack of feedstock and rising costs. The Trump administration has intervened to support new facilities, including giving MP Materials a $150m loan to expand its processing facility to handle the likes of samarium – an element critical to the military but almost exclusively processed in China.
In November 2025, it gave a $620m direct loan to VulcanElements to build and operate a 10,000 metric tonne magnet facility in North Carolina. The company was controversially invested in by Donald Trump Junior’s investment firm, 1789, just before the deal was inked. In addition, US based rare earth refiner ReElement Technologies, which has agreed to a partnership with Vulcan, will receive an $80m direct loan from the Office of Strategic Capital to expand its recycling and processing capabilities.
Meanwhile, Australia based Lynas Rare Earths, the largest REEs supplier outside China, is building a refinery in Texas, but is seeking government support for rising costs – highlighting the challenges these projects face.
However, Jowitt says the government could eventually decide to force consumers to buy locally with tariffs once capacity is built up.
“I think the US government isn’t afraid right now of using either the carrot or the stick. We’re already seeing that as China starts to improve their standard of living, their costs could increase, levelling the playing field slightly.”
