Trump Wants Rare Earths. But Challenging China's Dominance Will Take More Than Tariffs

Time​ Magazine

5 hours ago

When, in December 1953, Dragnet became the first American television show to broadcast in color, few fans knew they had a dusty nook on the California-Nevada border to thank for bringing it to polychromatic life. But every early cathode-ray tube color television owed its screen's red hue to europium, a rare earth element excavated and processed exclusively at the Mountain Pass Mine in San Bernardino County.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, Mountain Pass produced practically all known quantities of europium, as well as over 90% across the spectrum of rare earth minerals worldwide. Back then, of course, uses were limited: apart from europium adding vibrancy to L.A. cop procedurals, cerium was used as a glass polishing agent, while lanthanum was—and still is—crucial for oil cracking, or turning crude into gasoline and other lighter fuels.
Today, however, the picture is very different. Rare earth materials are vital for myriad industries, from advanced weaponry to wind turbines and robotics. But far from the U.S. having a monopoly on production, now some 96% of rare earth minerals are sourced from China, propelling these arcane materials into center stage in the escalating trade war between the world's top two economies.
In response to President Donald Trump imposing tariffs of 145% on Chinese goods, as well as curbing the sale of strategic U.S. technology including semiconductor chips, China hit back by restricting the export of rare earth elements. Auto manufacturers across the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Germany and India have warned the shortages may force factories to halt production.
The spat prompted Trump to hit out at China for reneging on a nascent trade deal between the superpowers. Then, last week, Trump revealed a 'framework' struck in London that supposedly will ease U.S. access to China's rare earth minerals and magnets in exchange for setting tariffs on Chinese exports at 55% and a relaxing of curbs on Chinese students' access to U.S. colleges. 'Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China,' Trump posted on Truth Social.
But reports from Washington suggest that the deal will expire in just six months, and with U.S.-China relations continuing to spiral, how America and its allies can break itself free of its Chinese rare earth dependency is a geopolitical priority. While it's a question with sweeping economic ramifications, it's also one with no easy answer.
'Everybody wants to just snap their fingers and start producing heavy rare earth elements,' says Mark Smith, CEO of rare earths firm NioCorp, who has worked in the industry for almost four decades. 'But it's a very long, hard process. And the longer we wait, the further China gets ahead.'
China has bet on rare earths for a long time. Back in 1992, reformist leader Deng Xiaoping declared: 'The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths.'
China accompanied this strategic focus with billions of dollars of investment in mines and processing facilities to monopolize the market. Just like countless strategic industries, China wielded huge state subsidies, and little concern for environmental or safety standards, to produce rare earths at a fraction of the cost of Western competitors.
As a result, in 1998, Mountain Pass' separation plant ceased producing refined rare earth compounds. Four years later, a toxic waste spill led the mine to close altogether, and intense Chinese competition impelled the decision not to reopen.
At the same time, uses of rare earths were just ramping up. Today, yttrium is used in lighting and flat screens; ytterbium in cancer treatments and earthquake monitoring; erbium in lasers and fiberoptic cables. But particularly important are permanent rare earth magnets, which account for a quarter of total rare earths consumption and are a vital component in actuators, or devices that turn a control signal into mechanical motion. These could be robot arms on assembly lines, the fins of a ballistic missile or stealth bomber, or any of the multiple motors of an electric vehicle.
But it's not just EVs that rely on actuators and, by extension, permanent rare earth magnets. Conventional internal combustion engine vehicles are also heavily reliant on these materials. That is how, in 2010, China managed to bring Japan's auto industry to the brink of collapse by halting exports of rare earth materials amid a territorial spat in the East China Sea.
In the following year, prices of rare earths soared by 10 times and the incident served as a wake-up call that was only partly heeded. Japan invested in alternative sources, particularly in Australia, though remains heavily dependent on Chinese supplies. That September, the U.S. House passed the Rare Earths and Critical Materials Revitalization Act to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry, including reopening Mountain Pass, which resumed production in 2012 only to fall into bankruptcy three years later. Today, under the new ownership of MP Materials, it remains the only functioning American rare earth mine.
Crucially, however, not all rare earths are created equal. What are termed rare earths are in fact a 'basket' of 17 elements with overlapping but ultimately unique properties. Regarding permanent rare earth magnets for actuators, the most common element is neodymium, which can be sourced from Mountain Pass. The problem is that for actuators to work at high temperatures—like those found under a car's hood—the neodymium needs to be mixed with either dysprosium or terbium, distinct rare earth minerals which are not significantly present in the Mountain Pass ore body.
In fact, China controls practically 100% of global supply of dysprosium and terbium and added both to export controls on April 4. Tellingly, Beijing didn't bother restricting sales of neodymium, cognizant of alternative sources—and the fact they are largely useless without their heat-resistant siblings.
So where can American firms source dysprosium and terbium—and fast?
At the Lynas rare earth mine in Mount Weld, Western Australia, yellow diggers scoop the tawny earth and dump it into soot-stained trucks. Following on-site concentration, the semi-refined ore is then taken on a four-hour drive to processing facilities in nearby Kalgoorlie, or loaded on ships to Malaysia, where in the seaside town of Kuantan Lynas operates the world's largest rare earth processing plant. Crucially, in May the Kuantan plant produced its first batch of dysprosium and is expecting its first terbium this month.
'This is an exciting achievement for Lynas and for manufacturers keen to secure a resilient supply of separated rare earths products,' Amanda Lacaze, CEO and managing director of Lynas Rare Earths, tells TIME. 'We have stated our intention to meet the needs of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base on a priority basis.'
It's a great start, but given the insatiable global appetite for rare earths, many more sources will ultimately be needed. And other options are years from fruition.
It was with great fanfare that Trump signed a deal with Ukraine in March that ostensibly handed half the war-torn nation's future oil, gas, and mineral wealth—including rare earths—to the U.S. The only problem is that Ukraine may have abundant reserves of lithium and titanium, but it doesn't actually have rare earths in any sizable deposits worthy of exploitation.
What about Greenland? Trump has repeatedly touted buying or even invading the semi-autonomous Danish province, citing its mineral wealth. In March, Vice President J.D. Vance led a U.S. delegation including National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright to Greenland. But while Greenland does boast 18% of the world's total rare earth reserves, accessing them is extremely problematic, owing to freezing temperatures and a thick layer of silica. Chinese, American, and European prospectors have spent decades trying to figure out how to extract these resources without any success. Today, Greenland has no functioning rare earth mines.
Other options are more feasible. Brazil has the world's third largest reserves of rare earths and is aggressively exploring this space, while Saudi Arabia also boasts significant deposits and signed a cooperation agreement with the U.S. on critical minerals during Trump's visit in May. MP Materials and Saudi Arabia's national mining company, Maaden, also signed a MoU to collaborate on establishing a rare earth supply chain in the Gulf state.
Meanwhile, Japan's state-owned energy firm JOGMEC and gas firm Iwatani have unveiled plans to invest up to $120 million in a French rare earths refining project.
And with Africa boasting four of the top 10 nations for rare earth exploration last year—namely South Africa, Namibia, Uganda, and Malawi—the continent stands to play a huge role in future supply chains.
But there are also options closer to home. Other than Mountain Pass, Lynas has secured $258 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to build a heavy rare earth refinement facility in Seadrift, Texas. 'The U.S. facility has been designed with the capability to process feedstock from other sources as and when they become available and are qualified,' says Lacaze.
Meanwhile, NioCorp has the permits to build a rare earth processing facility at its Elk Creek Mine in Nebraska and is currently waiting on a $780 million financing agreement with the U.S. Export–Import Bank for the $1.2 billion project, which will take around three years to get online. Smith, the NioCorp CEO, says he is currently 2.5 steps through a four-step approval process, which if greenlighted will provide up to 1,500 jobs during construction followed by a 450-strong full-time crew. Although Smith predicts Elk Creek could service all Department of Defense dysprosium and terbium needs, he's under no illusions about the scale of the challenge.
'One thing absolutely for sure is that NioCorp, by itself, is not the whole answer to the problem,' he says. 'So we're rooting for anybody to be an additional part of the solution. We need to put all the parts together to really be formidable against China.'
Unfortunately, simply seeding projects in friendly countries doesn't solve the problem. For one, China controls the separation and refining equipment market and placed export controls on those technologies in December 2023. Today, the rare earth refining industry is scrambling to reverse engineer Chinese technologies or innovate entirely new ones.
There is also the matter of expertise. Refining rare earths is 'a whole new art unto itself,' says Smith. Heavy rare earth elements are extremely close to each other in terms of their atomic weights, making the process to separate each from the other at sufficient purity levels for commercial or military applications extremely taxing.
'There's chemical engineering involved, there's physics, there's kinetics,' says Smith. 'It takes a whole bunch of knowhow, practice, and art to get heavy rare earths into their final purified oxide form. As well as a big investment.'
The cash injections needed keep on growing. Lynas's Texas project, for one, is currently stalled as the firm seeks more government funding on top of the nine figures already pledged. 'Following design changes to accommodate local permitting, additional CAPEX will be required, and Lynas is in discussion with the U.S. government with respect to this funding,' says Lacaze.
But even if all these new rare earth projects are realized across the globe, challenging Chinese dominance must still overcome its toughest obstacle: price.
China has spent decades building out massive capacity for rare earth minerals, so all other competitors operate at a huge disadvantage. 'The inside China price is used by outside China customers as a benchmark,' says Lacaze. 'We have not observed any intent from the majority of non-Chinese consumers to pay a significant premium to the inside China price.'
Moreover, China's massive processing capacity means it just opens the spigot whenever a potential competitor emerges to price them out of the market. The Chinese state has no problem eating any short-term losses to maintain key strategic levers over the global economy. It's a similar dynamic for many different minerals, including cobalt, nickel, and titanium. Today, neodymium oxide costs less than $60 per kilogram—around half its 2023 cost—and is forecast to get even cheaper.
'One of the biggest challenges we face is that rare earth prices are very low,' says Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'And a lot of that has been achieved through market manipulation by China increasing and increasing production.'
The cost issue looks frankly impossible to solve. Other than technical challenges, refining rare earth minerals uses a huge amount of water. Back when China was first ramping up its rare earth industry, wastewater was just discharged into the nearest river, although environmental standards have tightened considerably in recent years. In the U.S. or other developed economies, wastewater must be evaporated in huge kilns to isolate and dispose of pollutants—though this is a very energy intensive and thus costly process. 'And it's not something that China has to do,' shrugs Smith.
So, the big question is how American—or Saudi or African—rare earths can survive in such a cost-competitive marketplace. Various mechanisms have been considered: One is a Contract for Difference model, which is common in agriculture and says that if prices fall below a certain point the government will pay the difference. Another option is having the government serve as an Offtaker of Last Resort, agreeing to buy minerals at a certain price if nobody wants them on the open market.
However, 'in the U.S., at least in an era of DOGE, putting in an indefinite OPEX subsidy is quite politically unpalatable,' says Baskaran. 'But it is what China will do, so how do we compete against a country that's willing to inject fiscal support at any part of the supply chain to retain their dominance?'
Another potential solution is one very close to Trump's heart: tariffs. By hiking levies on Chinese rare earths, the U.S. could strongarm firms to source from preferred friendly nations. But this essentially shifts the cost burden from government to businesses, undermining their global competitiveness with unknown ramifications down the line.
For Smith, tariffs are merely a stop-gap solution. 'The answer cannot be for President Trump to issue a tariff,' he says. 'We need to be competitive with or without tariffs by increasing our technology, improving our processes, using more robotics. But we must have a legitimate business at the end of the day.'