Trump scrambles for minerals to break dependence on China
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Look under almost every element of President Trump's second-term foreign policy — from the trade war with China, to peace in Ukraine, to annexing Greenland — and you'll find critical minerals.
Why it matters: China has the U.S. in a bind when it comes to supplies of rare earths and other scarce minerals, and President Xi Jinping has proved he's willing to squeeze. That's why Trump was so intent on signing a one-year trade truce with Beijing, and why he's scouring the world for alternative sources.
The big picture: The U.S. needs rare earth magnets to build everything from fighter jets to wind turbines. Virtually all global output runs through China.
- Beijing responded to Trump's tariffs with export controls on rare earths, leaving Trump with little option but to cut a deal. Xi agreed to pause the latest restrictions for a year, though previous truces have broken down ahead of schedule.
- The rare earths standoff was a major source of behind-the-scenes anxiety at the White House, and supercharged the mission to search the world for minerals.
- "Minerals have really become the most powerful form of currency when it comes to foreign policy now," says Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Driving the news: Trump signed three agreements on critical minerals during his Asia swing even before he sat down with Xi, then invited five leaders from resource-rich Central Asia to meet him at the White House when he returned.
- Just in the past 72 hours, the administration announced a $1.2 billion investment in two rare earths startups and unveiled a critical minerals deal with Kazakhstan, which has an abundance of minerals and recently announced a massive rare earths find.
- Rare earths have come up in Trump's debt swap talks with Argentina, peace talks with Ukraine and in trade negotiations with countries including Australia, Brazil and Japan. They were on the agenda when Trump visited Saudi Arabia and when African leaders visited him in D.C.
- Trump's insistence that the U.S. must control Greenland is also based largely on a desire to tap the Arctic territory's immense mineral wealth.
Breaking it down: China is the sole or dominant source of eight of the nine minerals for which a supply disruption would be most damaging to the U.S. economy, according to the 2025 U.S. Geological Survey.
- Topping the list is samarium, a key element for magnets used in jets and missiles. As with other rare earths, China dominates all aspects of the supply chain — from mining, to separation, to manufacturing the magnets.
- The U.S. government became the primary shareholder in the only U.S. rare earths mine earlier this year and is trying, along with allies like Australia, to break China's stranglehold on processing rare earths and producing magnets.
Reality check: Those strides would have been "unforeseeable" until recently, but "we are not going to be anywhere near self-sufficient in a year," says Baskaran.
Zoom in: Minerals are central to another dispute the U.S. is mediating, between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The conflict zone in eastern Congo is rich in metals including Tungsten, on which the U.S. is heavily reliant on China.
- The Trump administration pushed for minerals to be wrapped into the peace talks and wants to line up opportunities for U.S. companies, a source familiar with the talks told Axios.
Zoom out: Trump's not alone. Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia would unveil a plan to produce rare earths domestically.
- Meanwhile, the EU is negotiating with Beijing to ensure it won't be cut off.
What to watch: This issue isn't going away. Xi will have the critical minerals card to play for as long as the U.S. remains reliant on China — and Trump will keep pulling whatever levers he can to break that dependence.
