America’s rare-earth comeback: Uncle Sam’s cash and new tech try to close China’s lead

The original story by Scott Neuman for NPR.

Rare-earth elements have names like neodymium and dysprosium, which makes them sound like something you’d find in a sci-fi lab. And for years, the “rare” part helped build this aura of scarcity and mystery. But here’s the twist: they aren’t actually that rare. They’re just a pain to dig out and refine.

Still, these metals are everywhere in modern life. Your phone, EV motors, wind turbines, MRI machines — all rely on them. And demand is only going up.

The real bottleneck isn’t mining so much as what comes after: processing and refining. That step is technically tricky, environmentally messy, and exactly where the US fell behind. China didn’t. Today, Beijing controls close to 90% of global rare-earth refining, giving it enormous leverage over the supply chain.

Why the rush now? Two big reasons: electric vehicles and national defense. EV makers want high-torque motors that are small but powerful. Those depend on rare-earth magnets that are three to four times stronger than old-school magnets, and production of these motors is growing by roughly a third every year. The military side is just as hungry — a RAND estimate says a single F-35 contains more than 900 pounds of rare-earth material in its engines and electronics. In other words: this is about cars, climate, and combat jets all at once.

To loosen China’s grip, the White House is pushing hard for US self-sufficiency, and it’s doing it in a way that looks… pretty un-American by old standards. Under President Trump, the federal government has leaned into a public-private playbook more like China’s: hundreds of millions in loans, and even direct government stakes in key mines and startups. The idea is simple: don’t wait for the market to fix it. Build the industry on purpose.

One company riding that wave is Indiana-based ReElement Technologies. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a partnership linking the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), ReElement, and magnet maker Vulcan Elements. Vulcan, based in North Carolina, supplies rare-earth magnets for military uses.

ReElement says its edge is a cleaner, more efficient processing and recycling method based on chromatography — basically using specialized columns to separate and purify metals. It already runs a commercialization plant in Noblesville, Indiana, and is building a bigger production facility in Marion that’s expected to come online next year. CEO Mark Jensen is betting big, saying ReElement will be the largest US producer of rare-earth oxides by the end of 2026.

Even so, the US isn’t pretending it’ll flip the global table overnight. China’s lead is so huge that America’s definition of “success” is basically: get a meaningful slice of the action. ReElement and Vulcan aim to produce 10,000 metric tons of neodymium-iron-boron magnets over the next few years. That sounds massive until you stack it against the global market — about 230,000 tons in 2024.

William Blair analyst Bert Donnes puts it bluntly: ReElement’s operation is ambitious but not enormous. And that’s partly the point. Compared to traditional giant refineries, the setup is compact, which helps dodge “not-in-my-backyard” blowback. Fewer acres, less visible pollution, fewer neighbors showing up with protest signs.

Back in the 1980s, China started sprinting ahead in rare earths just as the US was getting tangled in environmental trouble at Mountain Pass, California — then America’s only major rare-earth mine. Refining there produced radioactive and toxic wastewater, and spills triggered repeated shutdowns. The mine changed hands, went bankrupt, then got revived in 2017 when MP Materials bought it and restarted production.

But the damage was done. While the US hesitated, China scaled up hard — right as global demand was spiking. Today, China produces around 60% of the world’s rare-earth supply. It also holds about a third of proven reserves, though the US and other countries have plenty too. The difference isn’t geology. It’s industrial muscle.

Trump’s trade war made the weak spot more painful. Even after Mountain Pass reopened, MP Materials still had to ship ore to China for refining because America didn’t have enough domestic processing capacity. Now that pipeline is tightening. China recently expanded export controls, requiring foreign firms to get licenses to sell products abroad if they include Chinese-sourced rare earths.

Environmental experts say the US can’t just copy-paste China’s approach. Earthworks policy director Aaron Mintzes argues processing has to be cleaner — less energy-hungry, less water-intensive, and less toxic. University of Texas geologist Brent Elliott agrees the US has enough resources; the real issue is extracting and refining them in a way that doesn’t wreck communities or ecosystems. China got ahead partly because it was willing to absorb environmental damage the US won’t tolerate.

Geologists also point out that having reserves isn’t enough. You need transportation, concentration, and the full refining chain. Miss one link, and the “deposit” is basically useless.

This is where the fresh federal cash comes in. The One Big Beautiful Bill passed in July set aside $7.5 billion for critical minerals. Days later, the Pentagon’s OSC dropped a $400 million investment into MP Materials, making the US government its biggest shareholder. More defense-focused investments are lined up.

ReElement’s deal is similarly chunky: Vulcan Elements gets a $620 million OSC loan plus another $50 million from the Commerce Department via the CHIPS and Science Act. ReElement itself lands an $80 million loan to expand recycling and processing.

Jensen says his technology is a deliberate break from the old solvent-extraction model used widely in China — a method he calls environmentally ugly and tough to scale. He’s not trying to “beat” China at its own game, he says. The goal is simpler: produce enough at home to break the monopoly and keep US industries — and the military — from being stuck waiting on Beijing.

And for the first time in a long while, people in the field sound optimistic.

“We’re making big strides now because of the grants,” Elliott says.

If the tech works at scale, and the money keeps flowing, the US might not dominate rare earths anytime soon — but it could finally stop being dependent on someone who already does.