United States Rare Earths Plan Faces Long Road Ahead

Originally published December 18, 2025
Updated by Kym Bolado on December 22, 2025

The Trump administration has emphasized the need to develop the United States’ critical mineral and rare earths production capacity to decrease dependence on China and boost national security. 

Securing a Critical Minerals and Materials Supply Chain

In August, the Trump administration announced plans to issue notices of funding opportunities totaling nearly $1 billion to advance and scale mining, processing, and manufacturing technologies across key stages of the critical minerals and materials supply chains, in line with President Trump’s Executive Order Unleashing American Energy.

“For too long, the United States has relied on foreign actors to supply and process the critical materials that are essential to modern life and our national security,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, the Energy Department will play a leading role in reshoring the processing of critical materials and expanding our domestic supply of these indispensable resources.”

The Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains will provide up to $135 million of funding to enhance domestic supply chains for rare earth elements (REEs), aimed at reducing dependence on foreign sources of REEs by demonstrating the commercial viability of methods for domestically refining and recovering REEs.

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements, including 15 silvery-white metals called lanthanides, or lanthanoids, plus scandium and yttrium. They are a vital component of magnets, which are used in a range of technologies, from smartphones to military and medical equipment, and electric vehicles. When rare earths shortages arise, supply chains quickly become disrupted, as seen earlier in the year when several automakers were forced to halt production due to stricter limits on Chinese exports of the REEs.

From Ore to Pure Compounds: The Rare Earths Journey

So, how do we get from chunks of raw rare earth ore buried deep underground to the ultra-pure compounds needed for our favorite tech gadgets and advanced military systems? It’s a multi-step process that requires precision and innovation at every turn.

1. Extraction:
   The journey begins with mining. Rare earth ores are excavated from the earth’s crust, often from some of the richest deposits in regions like Mountain Pass, California, or Bayan Obo, China. These mining operations carefully balance efficiency and sustainability while minimizing harm to the surrounding environment.
2. Beneficiation:
   Once extracted, the ore isn’t quite ready for the spotlight. It undergoes beneficiation—think of it as an industrial makeover. Through techniques such as crushing, grinding, and flotation, the ore is upgraded to create a concentrate packed with rare earth minerals. This concentrate streamlines the next steps and reduces waste.
3. Separation and Refining:
   Here’s where science gets technical. The concentrate is subjected to advanced chemical processes designed to tease apart the 17 rare earth elements—no small feat, considering how chemically similar they are. Solvent extraction and ion exchange processes are just some of the tools scientists employ to achieve high-purity separation.

After rigorous purification, these elements are converted into compounds—often oxides or metals—with purity levels that can exceed 99.9%. The finished materials are then packaged and shipped off, ready to become the building blocks of everything from electric motors to MRI machines.

This ambitious process, now increasingly reshored to the U.S., is critical not only for meeting domestic demand but also for building a resilient, secure supply chain in an era of global uncertainty.

In Unleashing American Energy, a policy is introduced to “establish our position as the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals, including rare earth minerals, which will create jobs and prosperity at home, strengthen supply chains for the United States and its allies, and reduce the global influence of malign and adversarial states.

Key Processes Behind Rare Earth Production

Behind every ounce of refined rare earth, there’s a carefully orchestrated series of steps and specialized equipment operating in concert—think of it as a finely tuned relay race for minerals.

The journey starts with crushing, where raw ore is mechanically broken down for easier handling. Next, milling operations further grind the ore into fine particles, improving the efficiency of subsequent separation techniques.

After milling, the material moves to froth flotation—a process that uses chemicals and air bubbles to distinguish valuable rare earth minerals from the surrounding rock. Once concentrated, the rare earths undergo roasting, a high-temperature treatment that helps liberate minerals in preparation for extraction.

Leaching follows, where chemical solutions extract the desired elements into a liquid form. From here, the solution heads to the solvent extraction process, in which rare earths are separated and purified using liquid-liquid techniques to obtain high-purity products.

Supporting these core stages is a modern water treatment facility, ensuring that ultra-pure water is available for sensitive extraction and refining steps. Finally, a radial stacker comes into play—this dynamic machine evenly distributes processed ore, maintaining consistent stockpiles and streamlining the overall workflow.

By integrating these cutting-edge processes and equipment, rare earth facilities maximize both efficiency and output while minimizing waste, keeping critical material supply chains moving even as global demand continues to surge.

Integrated Rare Earth Production: Building Efficiency and Scale

A crucial factor in strengthening the domestic rare earth supply chain is the ability to operate an integrated facility—one that brings mining, milling, flotation, separation, refining, and finishing all under a single roof. This streamlined approach reduces the need for transporting materials between separate locations, slashing time, costs, and the risk of loss or contamination at each transfer point.

By housing each step—from extracting ore to producing finished rare earth materials—in one continuous process, operators can not only accelerate production timelines but also tightly control quality. This integration leads to economies of scale, as resources and labor are more efficiently utilized, and bottlenecks are minimized. It’s a model long used by industry leaders in countries like Australia and Japan, and is recognized as a best practice for modernizing domestic rare earth production.

Through integrating these vital processes, the United States can move closer to building a robust, self-sufficient rare earth supply chain—one capable of supporting everything from clean energy projects to advanced defense technologies.”

China’s Dominance of the Industry

At present, China dominates the global REEs industry. According to the International Energy Agency, “China dominates the mining (60%) and refining (90%) of rare earth elements used in magnets for large onshore and offshore wind turbines. In addition, around 90% of rare earth magnet production is also located in China.” For certain rare earths, such as dysprosium, which is used in microchip production, and samarium, essential to military applications, Chinese refinement dominance increases to 99%.

“The US currently imports around 10,000 metric tons of rare earth magnets annually from China; Europe imports more than 25,000 metric tons,” stated Ryan Castilloux, the managing director of Adamas Intelligence. “In both regions, demand for magnets is growing strongly – these figures will grow by multiples over the next 10 years.”

Reducing Dependency on China

Trump is battling to reduce U.S. dependence on China across a range of industries, particularly critical minerals and rare earths, which are viewed as key to national security. To access rare earth deposits, Trump has discussed the potential of taking over Greenland, which has vast reserves of the metals, as well as developing production in Brazil.

In the U.S., there are rare earth deposits in California, Wyoming, and Missouri, totaling an estimated 3.6 million tons. Meanwhile, China holds around 44 million tons of rare earths.

Currently, the largest operational mine is in Mountain Pass, California.

Mountain Pass: A Pillar in Rare Earths History

The Mountain Pass site in California has played a storied role in the development of the rare earths industry worldwide. Discovered in the 1940s and coming online for commercial production in the late 1950s, Mountain Pass quickly became a driving force behind Western access to rare earth elements. Through the latter half of the 20th century, it was responsible for supplying the majority of the world’s rare earth materials, powering technological advancements and serving as the backbone for U.S. and allied industries long before China’s market dominance.

Over the decades, Mountain Pass faced its share of challenges—from tightening environmental regulations to fierce international price competition, particularly as China expanded its own capabilities. Despite periodic shutdowns and changing ownership, the mine’s legacy as a linchpin in the global rare earth supply chain remains significant, especially as the U.S. government and private sector now look to revive domestic production and reduce reliance on overseas sourcing.

The Uniqueness of Mountain Pass

What sets the Mountain Pass mine apart in the rare earth industry is both its scale and strategic significance. As the only large-scale rare earth mining and processing operation in the Western Hemisphere, Mountain Pass is not just another pit in the ground—it is a linchpin for U.S. ambitions to establish a self-sufficient rare earth supply chain.

Unlike other deposits, Mountain Pass boasts exceptionally rich concentrations of rare earth elements, enabling domestic production without the overseas shipping and refining bottlenecks that currently dominate the sector. The facility’s integrated operations mean that both extraction and initial processing take place on-site, allowing for greater efficiency and cost control.

On the environmental front, Mountain Pass sets itself apart by actively investing in waste reduction, responsible water use, and recycling initiatives. These efforts are designed to minimize environmental disturbances, protect the local ecosystem, and address longstanding concerns about the ecological footprint of rare earth mining—a sharp contrast to less regulated operations abroad. However, the country’s rare earths production and refining capacity is practically non-existent at present, suggesting the need to build the industry from the ground up.

However, even if the U.S. can develop its rare earths production and processing capacity, this will likely take years, during which time the country will continue to be heavily dependent on China.

Development Could Take Years

In July, the Pentagon became the biggest shareholder in MP Materials, which operates the California mine. At the time, the government said it was necessary to establish new rules setting minimum U.S. market prices for certain metals and minerals to protect MP from Chinese competitors, who it said set their goods at artificially low prices.

While rare earths are abundant, they can be extremely complicated to extract, separate, and refine on a commercial scale. It is also difficult to find large concentrations of them, particularly without the necessary infrastructure and technical know-how.

The Process: From Ore to High-Purity Rare Earths

To understand how the U.S. might build up its rare earth supply chain, it’s helpful to consider what actually happens at sites like Mountain Pass. Extracting rare earths isn’t as simple as shoveling dirt into a truck. Instead, the process unfolds through several complex, high-stakes steps:

• Extraction: The journey begins with mining the ore from deposits—often using open-pit methods—to access rock rich in rare earth minerals. Here in the U.S., this typically involves moving massive volumes of earth while taking precautions to limit local environmental disruption, not unlike comparable mining projects in Australia and Canada overseen by the likes of Lynas or Avalon.
• Beneficiation: Once extracted, the raw ore goes through beneficiation, which is basically industry-speak for sorting the wheat from the chaff. Through a combination of crushing, grinding, and flotation (where minerals are separated based on how they interact with water and chemicals), operators concentrate the valuable rare earth content and produce a mineral concentrate. This step is critical because it determines how efficiently the site can harvest usable materials and how much potential waste must be responsibly managed.
• Separation and Refining: The concentrated ore then enters the most technically demanding stage: separation and refining. Using precise chemical treatments—often involving solvents, ion exchange, or acid baths—the different rare earth elements are isolated and purified. It can take dozens of rounds of separation to tease out high-purity elements like neodymium, praseodymium, or dysprosium, each destined for advanced applications. Only after this painstaking refinement are the rare earth compounds packaged and prepared for delivery to domestic factories or international buyers.

In short, creating a U.S.-based rare earth supply isn’t just about digging and shipping—it’s about mastering each link in a demanding, technology-heavy chain.

Even if the government supports the development of the rare earths sector, the U.S. will likely need to partner with other countries to develop its supply chains.

Environmental Approaches at Mountain Pass

Despite the technical hurdles, the Mountain Pass facility has implemented a variety of measures to reduce the environmental footprint commonly associated with rare earth mining and processing. Rather than relying solely on external resources, it generates its own electricity and heat on-site, lowering transmission loss and overall energy demand. Water use is also carefully managed: the operation draws from self-contained wells, minimizing competition with surrounding communities and natural ecosystems.

To limit waste and safeguard surrounding land, tailings (the waste material left after ore extraction) are handled directly at the site, minimizing the possibility of contamination or accidental release. The facility operates as a zero-net-discharge site, ensuring that water used in processing is recycled and not released into the environment.

Additionally, advanced beneficiation techniques, including sophisticated milling and flotation processes, allow for the recovery of valuable minerals while keeping waste to a minimum. These practices reflect a growing trend in the industry to balance necessary resource extraction with protection of local environments—an approach increasingly expected by both regulators and a public plugging in more electric vehicles and wind turbines every year.

Even if the government supports the development of the rare earths sector, the U.S. will likely need to partner with other countries to develop its supply chains.

“The Trump administration is leaving no tool off the table to safeguard our national and economic security,” the White House told reporters.

Those in the industry believe that while the U.S. and allies could begin to reduce Chinese market control in the next five years, it will take at least a decade to fully eliminate the global dependence on China. In addition, the U.S. must gain the trust of partnering countries to assure them that it will commit to the project for the long haul to make headway.

Facility Self-Sufficiency: Energy, Water, and Waste

Mountain Pass operates with a notable focus on self-sufficiency, which is crucial when developing a supply chain less reliant on overseas partners. The facility doesn’t just extract rare earth materials; it manages the entire process onsite—from initial mining through refinement—reducing the need to ship partially processed materials abroad.

To keep the lights on (and the drills turning), the site generates its own electricity and heat through on-premises systems. This closed-loop approach reduces dependence on local utilities and insulates the operation from outside disruptions, much like how Iceland’s geothermal plants support their aluminum industry.

When it comes to water, the facility taps into its own self-contained wells. This independence ensures that critical processes aren’t subject to regional water shortages or municipal restrictions, and water is recycled within their operations to further limit environmental impact.

Waste management is handled entirely onsite as well. Instead of transporting tailings—those leftover bits post-extraction—offsite, the facility contains and manages them within its own boundaries. This minimizes the environmental footprint and aligns well with industry best practices for sustainability, echoing models seen in places like Australia’s Pilbara mines.

All told, Mountain Pass’s approach to energy, water, and waste underscores a broader effort to build a resilient, responsible rare earths supply chain on U.S. soil.

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