![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/RJC6A7B37BJQVHZTBFTW6RMWCQ.jpg\")
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A rare earth minerals mine in China’s Jiangsu province, photographed in 2010.<\/p>\n
\u200e \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
With names like neodymium and dysprosium, rare-earth elements sound exotic \u2014 and their perceived scarcity has only added to the mystique.<\/p>\n
In reality, rare earths aren\u2019t that rare, but just difficult to extract and refine. Yet they\u2019ve become indispensable to modern life, embedded in everything from our smartphones and electric-vehicle motors to wind turbines and medical imaging machines.<\/p>\n
And demand is climbing.<\/p>\n
The real choke point is processing and refining \u2014 a complex and environmentally sensitive step that the U.S. has lagged behind in and that China now dominates, controlling nearly 90%<\/a> of global output.<\/p>\n The need for high-torque, compact EV motors \u2014 which use rare-earth magnets that are three to four times stronger than conventional magnets \u2014 is helping drive demand. Production of these motors is soaring by roughly a third each year<\/a>. Military aircraft also rely heavily on these elements; one RAND<\/a> estimate suggests an F-35 contains over 900 pounds of rare-earth materials in its engines and electronics.<\/p>\n Taking a private-public approach<\/p>\n To reduce reliance on foreign supply, the White House is pursuing U.S. self-sufficiency in rare-earth production. The federal government under President Trump has supported the sector in ways that depart from traditional free-market principles. Rather than relying solely on private industry, the federal government has followed a strategy similar to China\u2019s, providing hundreds of millions in loans and even taking stakes in key mines and startups.<\/p>\n Indiana-based ReElement Technologies is among the beneficiaries of this government backing. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a partnership between the Pentagon, via its Office of Strategic Capital<\/a> (OSC), ReElement and Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina based firm that produces rare-earth magnets for military applications.<\/p>\n ReElement says it has developed a more efficient, environmentally friendly method of rare-earth processing and recycling that involves chromatography. The company operates a commercialization facility in Noblesville, Ind., with a larger production site in Marion, Ind., slated to come online next year.<\/p>\n Stacks separate rare earths at ReElement’s Noblesville, Ind., plant.<\/p>\n ReElement Technologies CEO Mark Jensen says confidently that by the end of 2026, \u201cwe\u2019ll be the largest producer of rare earth oxides in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n Because China\u2019s dominance in refining is so great, the U.S. benchmark for success is modest, according to Bert Donnes, a research analyst at investment banking firm William Blair.<\/p>\n ReElement, in partnership with Vulcan Elements, aims in the next few years to produce 10,000 metric tons of neodymium-iron-boron magnets used not only in EVs, but also wind-turbine generators, hard-disk drives and MRI machines. Even that ambitious target is a fraction of the approximately 230,000 tons produced globally in 2024, according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers<\/a>, or IEEE.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say if you see those numbers, you think this is going to be a massive facility,\u201d says Donnes of ReElement\u2019s current operation. \u201cIt isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Compared to a traditional processing facility, ReElement\u2019s operation is compact, he says, helping avoid any \u201cnot-in-my-backyard\u201d (NIMBY) backlash. \u201cSo it\u2019s not like people are scared of this process. Maybe they don\u2019t know about it as much because you can keep the process so small,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n How the U.S. lost its lead<\/p>\n Starting in the 1980s, China began surging ahead<\/a> of the U.S. and the rest of the world in rare earth production. Around the same time, environmental concerns mounted at the only major U.S. rare earth mine, Mountain Pass in California, where spills of radioactive and toxic wastewater \u2014 byproducts of refining \u2014 raised alarms.<\/p>\n Mountain Pass is an open-cut mine where they \u201cdrill and blast, blend their types and locations in the pit\u201d before grinding the solid materials into smaller particles, according to Kelton Smith, a lead process engineer for mining at Tetra Tech, a global consulting and engineering services firm. A flotation process then concentrates the rare earths that are in turn leached with hydrochloric acid.<\/p>\n The California mine had to halt production multiple times over the years due to environmental concerns. During that time, it changed ownership and ultimately filed for bankruptcy protection before being acquired by MP Materials in 2017, which reopened the mine.<\/p>\n The troubles at Mountain Pass helped China to gain a foothold and eventually overtake the U.S. in rare earths \u2014 just as demand for them was rising. Beijing now produces about 60% of the world\u2019s supply of these substances, according to the International Energy Agency<\/a>. China also holds a substantial amount of the world\u2019s proven reserves of the ores that contain these elements \u2014 roughly 34%, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, but several other countries \u2014 including the U.S. \u2014 have substantial reserves as well.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s trade war with China has made the squeeze in rare earths even more acute. Because the U.S. lacks the ability to process rare earths on a large scale, MP Materials has had to send its ore from Mountain Pass to China for refining. But no more<\/a>. Instead, the company is having to ramp up its limited capability to process the ore on-site.<\/p>\n Further complicating the issue are expanded export controls that Beijing announced last month<\/a> that require foreign companies to obtain a license in order to sell products overseas that contain Chinese-sourced rare earths.<\/p>\n Aaron Mintzes is deputy policy director and counsel at Earthworks, a national group focused on preventing the adverse impacts of mineral and energy development. \u201cWhat we\u2019re urging \u2026 is to do that processing in ways that reduce energy and water intensity and toxicity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Brent Elliott, a research associate professor of geology at the University of Texas, estimates the U.S. has sufficient resources to meet demand. \u201cIt\u2019s about the extraction potential and the logistics of getting it out of the ground in a way that is environmentally sensitive but also socially responsible,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Partly because it is environmentally messy, with toxic byproducts, Beijing has gained an advantage by ignoring those consequences. \u201cChina can do it faster and better because they don\u2019t have the environmental concerns that we have,\u201d Elliott says.<\/p>\n Many experts agree that the U.S. has enough reserves but lacks the processing capability to go along with it. Simon Jowitt, a geologist and the director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, says there are a number of rare earth deposits in the U.S. that have potential, but it\u2019s rarely a straightforward proposition.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need a source of the rare earths, some way of transporting the rare earths, some way of concentrating the rare earths, and some way of putting those rare earths into a form that they can then be extracted,\u201d Jowitt says. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have one of those, then you end up with something that isn\u2019t a mineral deposit and you\u2019ll never get anything out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, China decreed new regulations<\/a> for rare earth processing that include strict environmental and safety regulations, but it remains to be seen how stringent enforcement will be.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, it not only processes its own ore, but it imports raw ore from places like Southeast Asia and Africa. It\u2019s part of a broader strategy by China to set itself up as a global hub for rare earths, according to Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/p>\n \u201cThey put a lot of state resources behind building processing capabilities, such that the minerals come from different places and then they get sent to China for refining,\u201d Baskaran says. \u201cWhat China has been extraordinarily good at is connecting their foreign policy to secure rare earths from around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n A new process and federal investments<\/p>\n Refining is where ReElement comes in. The company uses large columns in a specialized filtration process developed at Purdue University to extract and purify valuable metals from raw ore, but also recycled rare earths from old magnets. The process is more efficient and less environmentally damaging than older methods, such as those used by China.<\/p>\n Jensen, the ReElement CEO, says that method, known as solvent extraction, is \u201cecologically challenging\u201d and difficult to scale. \u201cIt\u2019s a dead technology,\u201d he says, adding that his company\u2019s ultimate goal isn\u2019t necessarily to achieve U.S. dominance, but to produce enough rare earths domestically to break China\u2019s monopoly.<\/p>\n The One Big Beautiful Bill passed in July appropriated $7.5 billion<\/a> toward securing critical minerals. Days later, the Pentagon\u2019s Office of Strategic Capital announced a $400 million investment in MP Materials<\/a>, making the U.S. government the company\u2019s largest shareholder. The Pentagon agency plans<\/a> further investments in \u201c[c]ritical components, raw materials, and rare earth elements utilized in microelectronic manufacturing.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Stacks](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SNFUBEYAZJOVBB2WAE6RQCGFPA.jpg\")
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