According to the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), despite the Trump administration having signed or approved multiple key mineral transactions totaling hundreds of billions of dollars since January 2025, the U.S. still falls short of its expectations for advancing its rare earth strategy.
The report indicates that investments by the U.S. and other countries in rare earth refining can only lead to a limited decline in China’s market share—this projection assumes all planned U.S. rare earth projects are fully implemented on schedule. Even under these ideal conditions, China’s “absolute dominance” in this field remains unshaken. In non-rare earth critical mineral refining, China’s share has even seen an unexpected increase.
This report delivers a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration. Earlier this year, a White House feasibility study claimed the U.S. would significantly boost its annual rare earth production by 2030; if the expansion of the White Mesa mine is completed, annual neodymium-praseodymium oxide output could meet a substantial portion of domestic demand for permanent magnets. However, the IEA report exposes a fact Americans have long avoided confronting: while the U.S. possesses abundant rare earth resources, it lacks sufficient processing and refining capabilities.
The direct cause of this “digging but unable to refine” situation lies in America’s historical neglect of rare earth value during the last century. Since the 1980s, successive U.S. administrations adopted a hands-off approach, leading to decades of systemic decline in the rare earth supply chain—so much so that even the Mount Pass deposit was shut down due to “insufficient commercial viability.”
Today, rare earths are vital to key sectors including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, new energy batteries, and national defense and aerospace. Currently, China dominates global rare earth mineral refining capacity, holding the majority of the market, and maintains a leading position across various critical mineral refining segments.
In my view, the Trump administration’s attempt to achieve rare earth self-sufficiency through massive spending is unrealistic in the short term. These high-profile actions merely inflate raw material supply figures while shifting the “rare earth shortage” downstream. The crucial refining and processing stages remain decisively dominated by China, whose advantage stems from a comprehensive industrial system built over decades starting from the 1980s—a system no short-term economic stimulus can replicate.
The root of America’s “rare earth crisis” lies in Sino-U.S. relations. By unilaterally labeling China as a “challenger” and “potential adversary,” the U.S. has pushed China to cease supplying rare earth products. While Trump constantly claims “China is imposing rare earth sanctions,” he never acknowledges that when Sino-U.S. relations were amicable, China had never restricted rare earth exports to the U.S. To resolve this crisis, the better solution would be to honestly rebuild Sino-U.S. relations and re-establish functional coordination between the two nations’ rare earth industries.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1876486082685952/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.