China controls over 90 percent of the world’s rare-earth materials foundational to America’s military readiness, economic leadership, and national security. That near-monopoly puts the United States and its allies at a serious, and growing, disadvantage.
China’s imposition of export restrictions on rare-earth materials disrupts defense production, distorts markets, and threatens our freedom. This fact is the singular result of the U.S. and our allies’ limited access to these critical materials.
Even after President Trump negotiated a deal to lift the export controls, China continued to restrict these elements. Beijing's attack on our defense capabilities couples with deliberate price manipulation and efforts to flood global markets, drive prices below sustainable levels, and make it near-impossible for private capital to fund investments to divest the west from Chinese rare-earths.
As demand for rare-earth powered technologies grows each year China cannot be allowed to maintain this monopoly. If they do, next-generation defense systems like drones and autonomous defense platforms will be out of our reach.
We need an "all-in" effort from the U.S. government to free us from our reliance on a single, adversarial supplier of these critical resources. With total domestic military and civilian demand for rare-earth magnets is up to 40,000 metric tons per year, with no signs of a downward trend, our military, industrial, and economic future depends on us acting now.
Thankfully, the Trump Administration has finally identified and is addressing this critical need. They are taking major steps to reshape rare-earth supply chains. To date, these moves have focused on upstream investments, such as mining and initial processing. The government’s significant stake in MP Materials, for example, to mine and separate rare earth minerals is a noteworthy example.
These are critical steps, but they alone are not sufficient. Without adequate capacity to turn mined rare earths into finished components, the supply chain becomes lopsided. Our national security and economic prosperity cannot rest on a single company or pressure point.
This moment requires the Administration and the Department of War (DoW) to activate an “all of the above” approach to quickly, and securely, build a Western mine-to-magnet supply chain. The greatest investment opportunity lies downstream, where rare earths are manufactured into the high-performance permanent magnets powering 78 percent of U.S. weapons programs.
Downstream is also where the greatest threats lie. According to a recent International Energy Agency report, China currently accounts for around 60 percent of global mining of rare earths. But they control 91 percent of downstream separation and refining. Left unchallenged, this effective monopoly will leave America vulnerable for generations to come.
Several American companies represent the industrial diversity needed to build a resilient downstream manufacturing infrastructure. They include Noveon Magnetics, USA Rare Earth, Vulcan Elements, and e-VAC Magnetics – the latter of which is the only producer of rare-earth magnets at scale outside of Asia. e-VAC recently shipped the first permanent magnet from its $500 million South Carolina facility.
While American institutions like General Motors (GM) and JPMorgan invest billions of dollars into America’s rare-earth supply chain, this sector needs federal support to move at “wartime speed” that War Secretary Hegseth espoused. It is how we close the existential gap in rare earths as quickly as possible.
The Trump administration can also support several policies to rapidly increase domestic mid-stream and downstream production. The administration could offer price floor mechanisms to all manufacturers, like the DoW’s $110/kg guarantee for certain MP Materials-produced materials, allowing them to weather Chinese market manipulation efforts as they scale.
The stakes could not be higher. For decades, American leaders stood by and let China manufacture and acquire rare-earth-powered weapons systems at a rate five to six times faster than the U.S., putting us at a grave disadvantage. That complacency was a mistake, but it is one President Trump is actively trying to reverse before it is too late.
To remain the leader of the free world, America needs to lead in every aspect of rare-earth magnet production. Onshoring our rare-earth production, from mine to finished product, will reduce adversarial leverage, bolster our defense industrial base, and reinforce our status as the global superpower. The administration has made great strides, but they cannot rest on their laurels. Investment and partnership must continue not just in promising startups like MP but in American companies that can produce finished products that keep the homeland safe.
Thomas Garrett is a former Member of the United States House of Representatives (VA-5) and former Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, former Captain in the United States Army with extensive military and civilian work in Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, and Bosnia.
