China suspends rare earth exports, kneecapping US

Daily News Article — Posted on April 16, 2025

(by Caitlin Dornbos, NY Post) – China has stopped shipping some heavy rare earth metals and magnets critical to US production of everything from cellphones to fighter jets as Beijing’s trade war with Washington simmers, leaving American industry in a bind.

Effective April 3, China is no longer exporting seven heavy rare earth metals processed exclusively in that [country], as well as heavy rare earth magnets — of which about 90% of the world’s supply are also synthesized [produced; refined] in China. [At present China produces 60 percent of the world’s rare earths but processes nearly 90 percent, which means that it is importing rare earths from other countries and processing them. This has given China a near monopoly].

The export halt applies to all countries, but access to elements like dysprosium and yttrium is critical to US industry — especially in the tech, electric vehicle, aircraft and defense sectors, according to Drew Horn, who served as the top US official on strategic minerals and energy supply chain development in President Trump’s first administration.

“Rare earths are in everything,” he told The Post Monday, singling out “the EV and auto space … [and] everything from cellphones, defense key components, [and] space travel.”

“China,” Horn added, “has essentially created an all-powerful monopoly with them.” …

“The Chinese have been threatening this because they do have that leverage to basically cut us off and cut the world off, which essentially cuts us off through all sorts of different means, and now they’re doing it,” said Horn, whose consulting firm GreenMet Advisory works to expand the US mining industry.

Beijing had previously threatened to stop shipping the rare earth elements during Trump’s first administration, with President Xi Jinping making a public visit to a magnet factory in Ganzhou during a time of tense US trade relations in 2019.

Nearly a decade earlier, in 2010, China did suspend the export of heavy rare earths to Japan during a territorial dispute.

“Beijing’s rare earth play is a card they’ve used before — and overplayed,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The US response this time is less panic, more resolve. Washington sees these latest moves as further justification to fast-track domestic production and friend-shoring strategies, thereby reducing China’s ability to escalate today’s tariff fight to other domains, like rare earths, where it has leverage.”

Becoming independent of — or at least less reliant on — China for rare earths has been a growing interest of Trump’s since before he took office a second time this past January.

His recent pursuits of both a mineral deal with Ukraine and a partnership or takeover of resource-rich Greenland have been motivated by an understanding of over-reliance on China for key manufacturing components, insiders have told The Post.

[Last month, the president signed an executive order that directed federal agencies to identify mines and government-owned land that could help increase rare earth production.

The Trump administration is also drafting another executive order to clear the way for stockpiling deep-sea metals to offset China’s control of rare earth supply chains, sources told the Financial Times.]

But even if the US [acquired] the pure rare earths, experts say it would still need to build facilities to process the elements, which could take years.

“In a lot of ways, the midstream processing is the most difficult to do, not necessarily from a technology perspective, but because China owns all of it, or controls all of it,” Horn said. “So even if you dig it up, you have to ship to [Chinese refineries] exclusively.”

Still, Horn believes that processing facilities could be up and running before 2026 if action is taken now.

“I think there needs to be industry support and buy-in,” he said. “I’m not an advocate of eternal government subsidies or artificial industries, but what I think needs to be done is, there needs to be a variety of incentives, protective measures, tax incentives, funding grants, loan guarantees, etc., to allow some of these new — honestly better, cleaner, more innovative solutions to get up and running in the United States.”

Horn warned such incentives and safeguards are needed to shield potential American competitors and their customers from Chinese retaliation.

“If we went to Boeing and said, ‘OK, you need to source exclusively from us or from non-Chinese sources,’” he said, “the retaliatory actions [by Beijing] would basically be to go through the entire Boeing supply chain, throughout their entire ecosystem, and basically cut them off.”

Published at NYPost .com on April 14. Reprinted here for educational purposes only. May not be reproduced on other websites without permission.

Background

Could the United States have seen this coming?

Yes. A number of policies have foreshadowed that REE [rare earth elements] export restrictions were on the horizon.
China first weaponized rare earths in 2010 when it banned exports to Japan over a fishing trawler dispute.
Between 2023 and 2025, China began imposing export restrictions of strategic materials to the United States, including gallium, germanium, antimony, graphite, and tungsten.
In 2023, a U.S. congressional committee published a report recommending that “Congress should incentivize the production of rare earth element magnets, which are the principal end-use for rare earth elements and used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, wireless technology, and countless other products.” Specifically, it advocated for Congress to establish tax incentives to promote U.S. manufacturing. (from the CSIS report)

The below is a portion of the answer to the question to Grok AI: "What did Trump do in his first term about mining rare earth in the U.S.":

During his first term (2017–2021), President Donald Trump took several actions to promote rare earth mining in the United States, focusing on reducing regulatory barriers and securing domestic supply chains for critical minerals. Here’s a concise overview of his key efforts:

1. Executive Order 13817 (December 2017):

Titled "A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals," this order identified rare earths as critical to national security and economic prosperity.
Directed federal agencies to streamline permitting processes for mining projects, reduce regulatory burdens, and prioritize domestic production to decrease reliance on imports, particularly from China.
Resulted in a 2018 Department of the Interior report listing 35 critical minerals, including rare earth elements, and recommending faster environmental reviews.

2. Permitting and Regulatory Reforms:

Pushed for faster implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews to shorten the timeline for mining project approvals. In 2020, NEPA rules were revised to limit the scope of environmental impact assessments and set time limits (1–2 years) for reviews, though these changes faced legal challenges.
Directed the Department of the Interior to simplify leasing and permitting on federal lands, where many rare earth deposits are located, to encourage exploration and development.

3. Support for Domestic Projects:

Provided federal backing for the Mountain Pass mine in California, the only operational rare earth mine in the U.S. at the time. In 2018, the Department of Defense (DoD) considered funding to restart and expand Mountain Pass operations.
Allocated DoD grants in 2020 to MP Materials (Mountain Pass operator) and Lynas Corporation to develop rare earth processing facilities in the U.S., aiming to reduce dependence on Chinese processing.

.....

5. Defense Production Act (DPA): Invoked the DPA in 2019 and 2020 to prioritize rare earth projects, designating them as essential for national defense. This included funding for separation technologies to process rare earths domestically.

Impact:

These actions revived interest in U.S. rare earth mining, with Mountain Pass resuming full operations by 2018 after years of dormancy.
Permitting remained a bottleneck, as NEPA reforms faced resistance from environmental groups, and new mines still took years to develop.
Dependence on Chinese rare earths dropped slightly (from 80% of U.S. imports in 2017 to about 74% by 2020), but significant gaps in domestic processing capacity persisted.

**Critical Note**: Trump’s policies prioritized economic and security goals, often clashing with environmental concerns. Critics argued that loosening regulations risked ecological damage, while supporters saw it as essential to counter China’s dominance (60% of global mining, 85% of processing). The groundwork laid helped later administrations, but no new major rare earth mines opened during his term due to long lead times. For more details, check the Department of the Interior’s critical minerals reports at www.doi.gov or the 2017 Executive Order at federalregister.gov.

Read a March 26 article "Trump orders increased production of critical minerals"