Trump pushes for global mineral deals to boost US security—but still faces a China bottleneck

US President Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump is ramping up efforts to secure access to the minerals the US needs for smartphones, electric vehicles, and advanced military equipment, focusing on resource-rich regions like Ukraine, Greenland and even Russia, the Wall Street Journal reports. In his recent address to the US Congress, Trump called rare earth elements essential to national security and vowed “historic action” to boost domestic production and reduce reliance on foreign adversaries.

US mines the minerals—but sends them to China

While the US already mines around 12% of the world’s rare earth elements—largely from the Mountain Pass mine in California—it lacks the capacity to process them. As a result, the majority of these materials are shipped to China, which dominates refining, holding an estimated 85% of global capacity. That paradox—mining at home only to ship to a geopolitical rival—has become one of the most pressing challenges for US supply chain security.

“We very much need rare earth. They have great rare earth,” Trump said of Ukraine during a cabinet meeting, signalling his interest in locking down new supplies abroad. But as experts point out, access to raw minerals is only part of the equation. “Drill baby drill is not the right focus,” said rare-earth consultant John Ormerod. “It’s processing that’s the chokepoint.”

The refining gap

China’s refining dominance is rooted in decades of investment, cheap labour, and looser environmental regulations. As US manufacturing shrank in the 1990s and 2000s, so too did domestic refining capacity. Today, even the country’s only nickel mine must send concentrate to Canada, while significant copper and cobalt reserves are exported for processing in China.

According to Morgan Bazilian of the Colorado School of Mines, China’s grip on refining is unlikely to loosen any time soon. “That midstream piece of processing and refining ores into chemicals and metals is really important and dominated by China,” he said.

Cost and red tape slow US efforts

China’s scale gives it a clear advantage: building a refinery in China costs roughly a third of what it does in the US Meanwhile, American efforts have been bogged down by environmental concerns and permitting delays. A nickel plant planned in Minnesota was relocated to North Dakota due to community opposition. Despite $114 million in government backing, the project remains unbuilt.

Permitting challenges have also delayed a $258 million Pentagon-backed rare earth facility in Texas, led by Australian firm Lynas Rare Earths. The facility, key to rebuilding domestic magnet-making capacity, has yet to break ground due to wastewater treatment issues.

Some progress—but China still dominates

There are glimmers of domestic revival. MP Materials, which operates the Mountain Pass mine, is building out its own refining and magnet-manufacturing infrastructure. The company recently began commercial production of rare earth metals and expects to start delivering magnets to General Motors later this year.

Still, two-thirds of MP Materials’ output is currently shipped to China—a stark reminder of the country’s entrenched position in global mineral supply chains.