Even though Trump says “all of the rare earth has been settled,” analysts say the U.S. remains overly reliant on China for strategically crucial rare earth materials and that it will take years to address that.
“Building new mines and, especially, expanding processing capacity — which is the real bottleneck — requires years of sustained effort and substantial investment,” Patrik Andersson, an analyst at the Swedish National China Centre at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, told NBC News.
Mining the minerals and their processing is a highly specialized and environmentally toxic process — one that China has honed over decades, resulting in a near monopoly on the global supply.
There is also the matter of ensuring there is enough demand to counter China’s overcapacities, said John Seaman, a research fellow at the French Institute of International Relations. “We’ll need to see more coherent industrial policies and greater policy coordination across jurisdictions,” he said.
