From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

Hardly anyone in 1972 saw President Nixon’s decision to reopen diplomatic relations with the Peoples’ Republic of China as the beginning of a half-century of America surrendering its mining and manufacturing superiority to the fledgling Communist regime.

Successive administrations did little or nothing to halt the export of American skilled labor jobs, or even to promote skilled American labor as vital to national security. Unlike his predecessors, President Trump determined to promote American labor and restore mining and manufacturing as the pathway to a stronger nation and a prosperous economy.

On March 20, President Trump signed Executive Order 14241, Immediate Measures To Increase American Mineral Production, in which he identified “overbearing Federal regulation” as a key factor in eroding the nation’s minerals production. Since then, he has traveled the world seeking binational partnerships to mine and process rare-earth metals critical to 21^st century technologies.

In July, the Department of War entered a public-private partnership with Nevada-based MP Materials to build a domestic supply chain for rare-earth magnets. The DoW investment of $400 million is part of a broader package aimed at reducing America’s reliance on China.

Since 2017, MP Materials has operated the nation’s only — and the world’s second largest — rare-earth mine at Mountain Pass, Nevada. MP began refining operations in 2023 and will soon begin supplying rare-earth magnets to General Motors. The company is also commissioning a new magnetics plant in Texas to anchor its downstream operations.

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence rare-earths research manager Neha Mukherjee said that the MP-DoW deal “isn’t just a one-off. It’s a template for industrial policy, a national security investment, and a clear signal [that] the West is finally serious about rare-earth resilience.”

In another step to a sounder industrial policy, one day after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged to invest $1 trillion in the U.S., the DoW, and MP entered into a joint venture with a Saudi mining company, Maaden, to develop rare earths supply chain from mining to magnet production.

In October, the U.S. Export-Import Bank issued a $200 million letter of interest to REAlloys, a rare-earth company developing North America’s first fully integrated mine-to-magnet supply chain — with mining at Hoidas Lake in Saskatchewan, processing at the Saskatchewan Research Council’s new separation facility, and magnet manufacturing at a facility in Euclid, Ohio.

On October 20, President Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese committed to investing over $3 billion in joint critical minerals mining and processing projects in Australia to help with production of critical minerals for manufacturing and defense. While Australia is rich in rare-earth metals and other critical minerals, it lacks any rare-earth processing facilities.

The action builds on a $120 million contract signed in 2020 between the Department of Defense and Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths to build separation facilities in Port Lavaca, Texas, for both heavy and light rare-earth products — the first heavy rare-earth processing facility in the U.S.

An updated contract in 2023 more than doubled the U.S. commitment to $258 million. The Texas facility, which will serve the DoW and commercial customers, is nearing startup of operations. Feedstock will come from Lynas’ Mt. Weld deposit and Kalgoorlie facility in Western Australia.

Another hotbed for America’s rare-earth renaissance is Louisiana, with one plant already operational and seven more under construction that have received a collective $1 billion plus in federal and state grants, loans, and tax credits. The Vidalia graphic processing plant, which Syrah Technologies brought online in 2024, is the first U.S.-based supplier to refine graphite to the 99.5% purity level required for industrial and military users.

Ucore North America Rare Metals Inc. began construction in May at England Airpark in Alexandria on a plant that will separate rare-earth metals from oxides shipped via the Port of New Orleans. Ucore expects to begin processing in June 2026 and scale up to 12,000 tons per year by 2027.

Just this month, the Trump administration announced a $1.4 billion partnership between the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, ReElement Technologies, and North Carolina-based Vulcan Elements. The goal is to expand the vertically integrated, domestic magnet supply chain for rare-earth magnets.

Vulcan will get a $620 million loan from the Pentagon’s OSC, with an additional $50 million provided by the Department of Commerce. ReElement Technologies will receive an $80 million loan to support the expansion of its recycling and processing operations.

Under the agreement, Vulcan will build a $1 billion facility in Benson, North Carolina, with a magnet manufacturing capacity of 10,000 tonnes, which is expected to create over a thousand jobs by 2029 — with construction set to begin in 2026.

ReElement, which operates a commercialization facility in Noblesville, Indiana, and a production site in Marion, Indiana, uses a method of rare-earth processing and recycling that involves chromatography. CEO Mark Jensen predicts that, by the end of 2026, “we’ll be the largest producer of rare earth oxides in the United States.”

Also in November, U.S.-based rare-earth developer Critical Metals secured approvals for geochemical test work and mine closure from the Environment Agency for Mineral Resource Activities for its Tanbreez project in southern Greenland.

The Tanbreez project is among the world’s largest rare-earth projects, with a resource base of at least 45 million tonnes from two deposit zones. About a third of the resource is “heavy” rare earths, which are widely used in high-performance applications such as clean energy and defense.

Critical Minerals plans initial production of about 85,000 tonnes per year of rare-earth oxides and scaling up to 425,000 tonnes per year. The Tanbreez project will only mine 1% of the 4.7-billion-tonne host rock, and Critical Minerals is conducting exploration to see whether other portions of the 8- by 5-kilometer orebody might also have minable deposits.

These and other projects are clear evidence that President Trump’s industrial policy is moving forward. But there are some speedbumps, most notably in Malaysia, which inked a trade deal with the U.S. in October that U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said would ensure that trade investment in critical minerals between the two nations “can be as free as possible and as resilient as possible.”

Malaysia had to suspend operations at a rare-earth mining site in western Perak state following an investigation into complaints that a stretch of the Perak River had turned bright blue — matching the color of discharges from a site operated by MCRE Resources that utilizes an in-situ leaching technology shared by Chinese rare-earth firms.

Meanwhile, China has agreed to wait another year to impose its moratorium on foreign shipments of processed rare-earth metals, and the U.S. is taking full advantage. Exports to the U.S. jumped by 56.1% from September to October, to 656 tons, even as China’s total exports remained stagnant.

With the Chinese export ban due to kick in next year (barring further trade deals), the U.S. push to rebuild its mining and manufacturing of rare-earth metals and other critical minerals is more urgent than ever.

The same obstructionists who left American workers unemployed and their communities hollowed out remain relentless in their campaign for an industry-free America. They may well succeed if the public remains unaware or unappreciative of its first true attempt at a national industrial and national security program.