Decades ago, the United States recognized that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was subsidizing China’s mining and processing industries, allowing them to expand massively and manipulate global mineral and metal markets, thus dominating the global manufacturing supply chain.
In response, in 1980, the U.S. Congress passed the National Materials and Minerals Policy, Research, and Development Act, declaring “strengthening America’s materials research, development, production capacity, and performance” as an urgent priority.
However, a record titled Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 released in January by the U.S. Geological Survey revealed that over the past half-century, including domestic manufacturers in defense industries, the United States has increasingly relied on imported minerals and processed metals, falling under the influence of CCP market manipulation.
This vulnerability has been long-standing. During the “rare earth crisis” in 2010 when China restricted global rare earth exports, this fragility became evident. In 2023, China restricted exports to the U.S. of gallium, germanium, and graphite, and in April this year, China expanded restrictions to include gadolinium, dysprosium, lutetium, samarium, holmium, thulium, and yttrium.
Exiger, a supply chain risk management company based in New York, stated that the U.S. is 100% reliant on imports for all these rare earth elements, with China controlling at least 75% of processing capacity for 30 major minerals globally. Exiger developed a proprietary artificial intelligence platform using predictive signal intelligence to identify supply chain risks.
Derek Lemke, Senior Vice President of Exiger, remarked that with China adding seven rare earth elements to their export control list in April, this long-standing and unresolved urgent issue has become a survival threat to the U.S.
“The reality is, this is no longer a hypothetical risk. It’s a real, quantifiable supply chain bottleneck,” he told The Epoch Times. “We are witnessing the weaponization of the periodic table.”
To address the industry decline spanning decades, U.S. President Donald Trump in his second term is responding in a traditional American way—by revitalizing the mining and refining industries to regain self-sufficiency.
Steve Christensen, Executive Director of the Responsible Battery Coalition (RBC), noted, “This process has been gradually progressing over the past few years. However, in the last seven to eight months, President Trump has prioritized critical minerals.” The RBC, based in Washington, includes members such as Honda, FedEx, Clarios, and Entek, warning since its establishment in 2017 about U.S. reliance on Chinese mineral resources.
“I think President Trump may understand this issue better than any other president in recent history,” Christensen told The Epoch Times.
Nevertheless, reviving the U.S. mining industry and restoring metal processing capabilities to ensure sufficient resources to resist CCP market interference may require several years, even decades.
Rahman Butts, owner of the Gold and Precious Metals Brokerage company Bullion Hub in Melbourne, Australia, indicated that during this process, the U.S. needs to coordinate efforts with ally countries.
“Our direction is clear. The U.S. is reaching agreements with Canada, Australia, and parts of South America to diversify mineral supply risks,” he told The Epoch Times. “The current issue lies in speed. New refineries take years to plan, finance, and construct, so China won’t lose its lead in metal processing in the short term.”
Avadh Nagaralawala, a mining automation consultant from Arizona, emphasized that foundations for short-term measures have been laid.
“The transition to electric vehicles, modernizing the power grid, and national security priorities have created an unprecedented sense of urgency,” he told The Epoch Times.
Nagaralawala cited initiatives such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, the CHIPS & Science Act of 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Defense Production Act funds initiated during the Obama era to subsidize MP Materials Corp in reopening the Mountain Pass mine in California, the only rare earth mine in the U.S. until this summer, as crucial early deployments.
“Nevertheless, we still face significant obstacles,” he said. “The U.S. lacks not resources but the refining and recycling capabilities of minerals, and permit approval speed. This is the key to winning this race.”
It wasn’t until President Trump’s first term that the federal government explicitly prioritized defining, procuring, and developing critical mineral supply chains immune to CCP market manipulation.
In December 2017, President Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to focus on minerals and metals necessary for economic development and national defense.
This directive was driven by a 2017 report from the U.S. Geological Survey titled “U.S. Minerals Import Reliance Reaches Record Level in 2017, Underscoring the Need for Permitting Reform, Improved Land Access,” indicating that the U.S. depended 100% on imports for 20 minerals, 2.5 times more than in 1954.
The Trump administration instructed the USGS to clearly define critical minerals and explain how domestic industries needed these minerals and where they could be mined and processed.
In 2018, the USGS released the first Critical Minerals List, identifying 35 minerals “crucial to the U.S. economy and national security.”
In September 2020, President Trump declared a national state of emergency due to “reliance on certain critical minerals by foreign adversaries (particularly the CCP),” instructing agencies to ensure domestic supply chain security.
In December 2020, the U.S. Congress passed The Energy Act of 2020, defining “critical minerals” as minerals essential to the U.S. economy or national security, easily disrupted in their supply chain, and causing severe consequences if missing.
This act required the USGS to update the Critical Minerals List every three years starting from 2022 and instructed the Department of the Interior to track the U.S.’s “dependence on foreign adversaries’ critical mineral resources” after releasing the preliminary findings following the 2020 executive order.
Despite President Joe Biden revoking 72 of the 220 executive orders issued by President Trump during his tenure, he retained the actions taken by the Trump administration on critical minerals.
In 2022, the USGS released the first updated Critical Minerals List. The number of minerals the U.S. relies on imports for increased from 35 in 2018 to 50.
In 2024, the Department of the Interior issued the first import reliance report as required by President Trump’s 2020 executive order. The report showed that the U.S. needed to rely on imports for 80% of rare earths, 100% of gallium and graphite, and up to 76% of lithium, nickel, and cobalt.
In August, the Department of Energy announced in a statement titled “Energy Department Announces Actions to Secure American Critical Minerals and Materials Supply Chain,” that President Trump declared a national energy emergency after winning the 2024 election, and subsequently issued the “Unleashing American Energy” executive order to ensure a more secure, predictable, and affordable critical minerals and materials supply.
President Trump then issued an executive order in March, directing agencies to accelerate projects by simplifying permitting processes, opening more federal land for mining, and developing critical minerals under the Defense Production Act.
In April, he signed an executive order initiating deep-sea mining in U.S. waters and directed the Department of the Interior to establish permitting and licensing procedures.
On August 26, the USGS released the second updated Critical Minerals List. The proposed new version added six minerals to the list of 50 commodities from the 2022 list, removing arsenic and tellurium, bringing the total to 54.
Lemke of Exiger pointed out that this year’s new list marks the first significant modifications involving the addition of copper, potassium, silver, silicon, radium, and lead after years, signifying collaboration between the USGS and the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) in developing a clear “whole-of-government list.”
Nagaralawala said, “Classification of the list is a good starting point.”
“However, the ability to refine minerals and materials to the level required for high-tech applications will determine whether this policy shift brings actual energy and security resilience,” he said.
To achieve this goal, Lemke emphasized the need for a collective “whole-of-industry” investment approach. Simultaneously, the government must commit to supporting markets that can withstand CCP manipulation, even if direct subsidies are not provided.
“We are exploring how to achieve this goal,” he said, mentioning the demand for antimony. Antimony is a vital battery mineral, which the U.S. has not mined since 1982, with China’s processing industries controlling a significant portion of the global antimony market.
“So how do we break free from this level of control?” Lemke asked. “I know some people in government and industry are asking, ‘How do we build this market here?’ We are currently supporting some of that work.”
Established in 2013, Exiger is the U.S. government’s “largest supply chain technology provider” and a major participant in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Open Price Exploration for National Security (OPEN) project.
“We are using artificial intelligence to study price models of these minerals, production costs in China, and production costs in the U.S.,” Lemke said.
He believes the core issue is identifying successful areas for U.S. industries or U.S. allies in emerging markets not easily influenced by the CCP.
The OPEN project, organized by the Critical Minerals Forum established in November 2024 and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency until 2029, has over thirty mining companies, manufacturers, and investors participating.
“We will start to see an industry that isn’t controlled by the government but supported by the government,” Lemke said, pointing out that while MP Materials received subsidies from the Pentagon for operations at Mountain Pass, burgeoning industry investment has emerged, such as Apple “investing $500 million in mineral procurement.”
Since July, government support has transitioned beyond subsidies. The U.S. Department of War has set a minimum price for minerals and materials needed for manufacturing magnets and invested $400 million in MP Materials to open a second processing facility in Texas.
One of Exiger’s responsibilities is identifying weaknesses in current supply chains and potential vulnerabilities under different circumstances.
“Do we have enough diversified, multi-channel resources to refine these products to the levels required for certain high-tech applications?” Lemke asked. “In other words, we not only need the capability to refine copper but to refine it to specific grades required for various applications.”
He stated that this requires concerted efforts from the government and the industry to provide a clear “traceability process from high-tech components back to underground mineral extraction.” The lack of this clear concept has been a bottleneck in investments.
Under President Trump’s leadership, substantial funding is injected into existing projects, including the Defense Industrial Base Consortium, the U.S. Permitting Council, and the Critical Minerals and Materials Accelerator of the Department of Energy.
In August, the Department of Energy proposed allocating $1 billion from relevant projects in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act for critical mineral projects.
On August 13, the Department of Energy announced allocating up to $50 million for “industry-led partnerships focusing on prototyping critical materials processing technologies”; $250 million for “valuable mineral byproduct production”; $135 million for “demonstration projects enhancing domestic rare earth supply chains”; up to $500 million for critical minerals and materials projects; and $36 million for recovering critical minerals from industrial wastewater.
Many question whether these measures can break the CCP’s market dominance without providing direct subsidies. Even Christensen expressed doubts.
“I think these things need to be explored because our opponents aren’t constrained by market forces. (The CCP) will manipulate the prices of their own products just to enter the market, just to exclude other countries,” he said.
“If we abide by market rules, stick to the rules we learned in Economics 101, in our first commerce course in high school, and the CCP isn’t bound by these rules… then we’re always going to fail.”
On this issue, Lemke is more optimistic.
“The fastest way to drive industry development is to convene major corporations, have them quantify their needs first and then, through a top-down process of capital flow, hoping that the demand signal will trickle down,” he said.
This is a survival challenge understood by only a few Americans.
“This battle doesn’t just happen on highways and streets,” Lemke stated. “It’s also happening in alleys, involving every aspect of daily life.”