America’s Rare Earth Minerals Challenge Is A Tough Nut to Crack

Currently, the United States relies on supply chains controlled by China for the vast majority of its supply of rare earth minerals. This has been a known problem for more than 30 years, yet president after president have failed to address it. Now, with China imposing export restrictions on these minerals, on which it holds a near-monopoly for refining them, it falls to the Trump administration to take action.

On April 15, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to investigate the national security risks of relying on imported critical minerals, including rare earths.

America is home to significant known resources of both critical energy minerals like lithium and cobalt, as well as rare earth minerals. But the US government makes the permitting of mines to produce these known reserves near- impossible to achieve, choosing instead to rely on importing them from other countries. This is highly risky in a geopolitical sense given that the supply chains for these minerals are dominated by one country: China.