Next Steps for DoD to End U.S. Reliance on China for Rare Earth Elements

Jeffrey Jeb Nadaner

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In becoming a majority shareholder of MP Materials, the Trump administration demonstrated the salutary thought that no radical free-market orthodoxy should prevent the United States from taking decisive action, including direct investment of taxpayer dollars, to secure domestic sources of industrial materials vital to our national defense. It is encouraging that Apple, long known for its Chinese assembly operations, followed up with a $100 billion investment in U.S.-based supply chains, including a significant expansion of MP Materials to furnish magnets for Apple production.

These public-private actions are beginning to remedy a glaring weakness in American industrial infrastructure. MP Materials operates what had been the only significant U.S. mine and processing center for rare earth elements. These are the seventeen indispensable critical minerals essential to multiple major U.S. military weapons systems, plus manufacturing, medicine, infrastructure, and other essential functions of modern American life.

Consistent with being America’s first true “builder” commander-in-chief, President Trump can further reduce America’s rare earth vulnerability by using his executive authorities to grow a finished rare earth element stockpile and begin the construction of processing plants within the United States.

America received its wake-up call on rare earths in April, when China imposed restrictions on the export of several rare earths. China accounts for more than 60 percent of rare earth production and, most alarmingly, over 90 percent of the rare earth processing — the indispensable phase of the mineral supply chain that turns mined raw materials into usable and essential industrial products.

Without rare earth magnets used in brakes, steering, and fuel injectors, U.S. automobile production would stall in a scenario far more damaging than the relatively brief COVID-era semiconductor shortages. Neither the civilian nor military sectors can function without access to the seventeen rare earth elements on the periodic chart – from Cerium (Number 58) to Ytrium (Number 70).