China has established itself as a rare-earth leader with a near monopoly. President Trump has taken numerous steps to break China’s grip, including a rare-earth deal with Kazakhstan and increased investment in Canada to strengthen U.S. independence. Now, U.S. interventions under Trump in Latin America are also reducing China’s access to rare earths, extending the competition into the Western Hemisphere.
China controls approximately 70% of rare-earth mining and 90% of refining. Tim Johnson, a technical advisor to REalloys (NASDAQ: $ALOY) and a ten-year veteran in the field of rare earth minerals, told The Gateway Pundit, “100% of all production today relies on some Chinese nexus, whether or not that’s technology, procurement of equipment, supplies, or reagents.”
China did not always hold this position. After U.S. prospectors discovered rare earths at Mountain Pass, California, in 1949, China sent delegations to study the technology in the 1980s and 1990s, replicated and improved it using cheap electricity, and built a domestic industry that was both lucrative and environmentally destructive. Chinese state media compared the industry at its worst to drug trafficking
Beijing imposed export quotas in the 1990s and launched what it internally called a “secret war” of consolidation starting in 2011, reducing hundreds of firms to six state-backed giants. After losing a WTO challenge in 2014, China shifted from controlling output volume to controlling which firms could operate, creating a more durable form of dominance. Today, Chinese state-backed monopolies control roughly 89% of global refining and nearly every stage of the high-performance magnet supply chain.
China escalated further in April 2025 when the Ministry of Commerce imposed national-security-based export licenses on seven elements, including dysprosium and terbium. Export volumes fell sharply, forcing U.S. and European manufacturers to cut production. Prices in Europe rose to as much as six times those inside China.
On October 9, 2025, Beijing expanded controls across the entire supply chain, applying extraterritorial rules to transactions between third countries and restricting exports to companies linked to foreign militaries. Beginning December 1, 2025, military-related applications were effectively cut off.