What does the recent U.S. interest in Greenland have to do with a Fort Worth factory manufacturing magnets?
A lot, explains Bo Kabala, assistant professor of political science at Tarleton State University in Stephenville.
“It all starts with the critical minerals issue,” he said.
Critical minerals come from rare earth mines and are used in a variety of high-tech applications, from cell phones to electric vehicles to defense systems, including Lockheed’s Fort Worth-built F-35.
“There is only one critical minerals mining company in the United States, and it’s the one that has a factory here in Fort Worth,” Kabala said. “There’s a vulnerability there that’s pretty profound from a national security perspective and from an economic security perspective to not be so dependent on one source, particularly when it is China.”
MP Materials began when its founders acquired a rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, in 2017. By 2021, the company announced it was building an integrated magnet manufacturing plant in Fort Worth.
Aside from local interest, the 2025 opening of the $700 million plant caused barely a ripple nationally.
Now federal officials are working to secure more domestic and reliable sources for the critical minerals. The Fort Worth plant is one way, while Greenland could be another, Kabala said.
The island nation has an abundance of these critical minerals.
President Donald Trump caused consternation among U.S. allies over threats to take Greenland despite it being a self-governing territory of Denmark.
Some of the ruffled feathers were smoothed over on Jan. 21, when Trump told attendees at a World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the United States won’t use military force to take Greenland but demanded immediate negotiations on a bigger role for America in the country.
Greenland, the world’s largest island, lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans just east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. It is covered by glaciers and tundra with an average temperature that never exceeds 42 degrees.
But as global warming reduces the ice sheet that covers much of the island, there has been renewed interest in extracting critical minerals from the country, said Nathan Brown, an assistant professor of geology at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Greenland also has been integral to the national security of the United States in the past because it is so close to our borders, Brown said.
During the Cold War, the United States built, initially secretly, an air base at Thule to house bombers, fighters, nuclear missiles and more than 10,000 soldiers, Brown said.
Even during World War II, the weather station in Greenland played a decisive role in the D-Day invasion, providing critical information to Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the allied forces.
The Fort Worth connection
Under the first Trump administration, Congress passed a little-noticed critical minerals legislation to increase the country’s supplies. Another event brought the issue back to the front burner, said Ralph Carter, a political science professor at Texas Christian University.
The COVID-19 crisis spurred federal officials to reconsider the country’s supply chains, particularly for products key to defense industries, he said.
“We are dependent on magnets and batteries and electric vehicles and everything that uses semiconductors, seemingly,” Carter said. “We realized that when China’s economy slumped because of COVID, suddenly our supply of critical minerals slumped. The Biden administration realized there was a vulnerability there that’s pretty profound.”
The result is that U.S. officials have since pursued a more aggressive defense industrial policy, he said.
“If you go back to as far as Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 ‘Report on the Subject of Manufactures,’ that discusses protecting key industries, then the need for these critical minerals and magnets are part of that conversation,” Carter said.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration impacted North Texas with the CHIPS and Science Act, which invested nearly $53 billion to bring semiconductor supply chains back to the United States.
A $1.6 billion Texas Instruments semiconductor plant in Sherman was one of the beneficiaries of the act. Texas passed its own version of the CHIPS act, pumping $1.4 billion to create the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, seeking more industry and government investment.
Those defense industrial policy efforts only increased under the second Trump administration, Kabala said.
“Some of this began under the Biden administration, but Trump has really put it on steroids,” he said.
Meanwhile, MP Materials stayed under the radar, even as it began operations in Fort Worth armed with supply deals with blue chip companies GM and Sumitomo.
But people paid attention — particularly investors — in July when it received a $400 million investment from the Department of Defense as part of this focus on defense industrial policy. At the same time, the company received a $500 million contract with Apple to supply the company with American-made rare earth magnets.
As a result, the company’s stock price has seen significant improvement. After trading around $20 per share, it has traded as high as $100. On Jan. 20, it was trading for $67.58.
The MP Materials plant is a start, but it can only supply a small amount of the materials needed to ensure a reliable supply, Kabala said.
“Manufacturing takes time and when you haven’t been making these products for a while, building that expertise is not easy,” he said.
Greenland may have many of those rare earth minerals sought by the administration, but don’t count on getting them out easily, said Brown.
“The environment there is not very forgiving even as the ice sheet melts,” he said. “A lot of people have tried this in the past and not been very successful.”
While MP Materials can only supply a small amount of the materials needed domestically, it is already planning to expand.
MP Materials officials announced they were expanding its production at the Fort Worth plant.
Company leaders also signaled they are “strongly considering” a site in Northlake for a second, $1.2 billion next-generation manufacturing plant that will significantly increase production.
“Northlake is among the finalist communities being considered for this long-term strategic investment,” said Matt Sloustcher, vice president of corporate affairs for Las Vegas-based MP Materials, told the Fort Worth Report on Jan. 5.
Northlake, located just north of Fort Worth, approved a tax abatement agreement for an entity associated with MP Materials during a City Council meeting on Jan. 22. Though no amount was listed on the agenda, it does stipulate that the tax abatement is contingent upon the approval of economic incentives from the state.
Bob Francis is business editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org.
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