I. What are Critical Minerals? 

Critical minerals have been a central issue amidst President Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025. Under his second administration, he adopted an “America First” foreign policy approach, prioritizing American resilience, economic prosperity, and global market dominance. However, the United States’ heavy reliance on China’s rare earth industry directly exposes its national security to supply chain disruptions and external shocks (Roy 2025). 

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) defines critical minerals as non-fuel materials that are essential to the country’s national and economic security for manufacturing, technology, and defense, and whose supply chains are vulnerable to volatile disruptions (USGS 2025). Multiple agencies, including the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy (DOE), and USGS, have their own critical minerals lists tailored to their department and agency priorities (Khan 2024). There are significant overlaps across these agencies’ lists which include cobalt, graphite, lithium, and nickel — all have significant strategic value for national security, energy, and electric vehicle production (Piasecki 2025). 

This overlap underscores the U.S.’ vulnerability in its heavy dependence on a narrow set of minerals sourced and processed abroad. As a result, its civilian and military reliance on critical minerals remain vulnerable to external coercion that risks the stability of American national security. 

A country must have advantages or specialization in geographic or geopolitical reserve access, mineral processing, or export capability to be a strategic contender in the rare earth industry (Piasecki 2025). While the U.S. has geological access through imports for several critical minerals, it lacks sufficient processing and refining capabilities. 

For example, the U.S.’ only active rare earth mine, in Mountain Pass, California, is heavily reliant on foreign processing, limiting its strategic ability to compete with China’s integrated supply chains. China dominates not only because of its resource access but also its control over global processing and refining capacity in Africa and Latin America. U.S. dependence creates a structural vulnerability where any supply chain disruption will negatively impact defense readiness, industrial production, and technological innovation. This industrial imbalance highlights the urgent need to develop a comprehensive national strategy to secure an independent critical mineral supply chain to weaken China’s global advantage. 

II. Significance & Ramifications 

Securing critical minerals further exceeds the United States’ assurance for affordability, sustainability, efficiency, and independence (DOE n.d.). Critical minerals underpin sectors including defense, energy, and manufacturing, making them indispensable for military and civilian use. From a national security perspective, supply chain disruptions pose direct threats to the production and development of vital defense weapons including missile warheads, fighter jets, guidance systems, communications systems, and more. 

As critical minerals are foundational building blocks to several DOD weapons systems and clean energy accessibility, dependence on the supply chain of a peer competitor — who has the advantage of leveraging their dominance over the U.S. — risks catastrophic national security disasters (GAO 2024). As geopolitical tensions intensify — be it in Taiwan, diplomatic shifts in the Middle East, natural disasters, or pandemics — the risk of China banning, limiting exports, or imposing tariffs threatens U.S. military readiness. Supply chain disruptions would cause a global ripple effect across the economy, increasing production costs, slowing technological innovation, and destabilizing manufacturing industries reliant on raw materials. 

China’s ability to threaten withholding certain critical minerals to the U.S. underscores its strategic dominance and leverage it has over global powers and markets. Beijing has a strategic advantage in all three production areas: discovery, processing and refinement, and global large-scale exports. China recently required foreign companies to obtain an import license for five additional critical minerals essential for magnet manufacturing (IEA 2025). This licensing demonstrates China’s willingness to use these resources as geopolitical tools. 

Given that China has foreign and domestic access, it is essential the U.S. secure allied mineral supplies, reducing dependence on an opportunistic peer adversary. Without diversifying its supply chain, the U.S. risks undermining its foreign policy influence, alliances, and economic leverage.

III. Current Political Landscape 

In January 2025, when Trump started his second term, he tariffed nearly all imports to the country. He argued that the tariffs will reduce the U.S. trade deficit and increase domestic investment and production of goods. These tariffs applied to the U.S.’ top trading partners, including Canada, Mexico, and China. President Trump specifically implemented a 145% tariff on Chinese goods. In response, China imposed reciprocal tariffs on American goods (Grantham-Philips 2025). This tit-for-tat risks American security for the sake of equalizing the U.S. trade deficit. China’s new licensing system could incentivize the U.S. and other trading partners to follow their trade demands if they do not want supply disruptions. 

In early 2026, expanding on his tariffs, Trump introduced an Executive Order (EO) emphasizing international cooperation on mineral processing, refining, and extraction (Baskalan 2026). The EO likely orders several agencies, including DOD, DOE, National Security Council (NSC), and Department of State, to collaborate on diplomatic and security alignment with allies to secure diversified U.S.’ critical mineral supply chains. This signals a shift from the administration towards an alliance-based economic strategy (Baskalan 2026).

Between 2023 and 2025, China imposed restrictions on several critical minerals, including antimony, allium, germanium, graphite, and tungsten, specifically singling out the U.S (Baskalan and Schwartz 2025). Antimony, in particular, has severely impacted dual use technologies as it is used to make batteries, gasoline powered vehicles, and defense equipment (Burton 2025). Such restrictions demonstrate the need for the U.S. to invest in allied partners invulnerable to foreign licensing or control.

Surprise restrictions expose dangerous vulnerabilities in U.S. manufacturing and underscores the risks of dependence on a supplier willing to abruptly cut off imports. However, as of November 1, 2025, Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping reached a trade and economic deal that would effectively suspend the ban of critical minerals until November 27, 2026 (Yao and Jackson 2025). While this agreement temporarily eases tensions with China, it also highlights the U.S.’ efforts to diversify their supply chain through new critical mineral partnerships with Asian allies. 

President Trump struck strategic agreements with Australia, Cambodia, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand regarding critical minerals during the October 2025 ASEAN Summit in Malaysia (Kwan et al. 2025). This strategic bloc could create an effective imposition on China’s processing and refining industry stronghold. President Trump established several Memorandums of Understandings (MOU) establishing that the U.S. and the participating country can cooperatively explore, extract, mine, and process any minerals for their mutual economic and resource security benefit, ensuring these countries are integrated into the supply chain (The White House 2025a). 

Beyond the diplomatic intent of these MOUs, these strategic relationships are instrumental for challenging China’s supply chain in the future, as these partnerships require long-term commitment and investment. These partnerships signal that the United States is willing to support multilateral development in exchange for secure and transparent access to critical minerals. The U.S. reduces its strategic vulnerability and incentivizes industrial and economic relationships that strengthen diplomatic ties. 

These efforts have further expanded its alliance-based international negotiations into 2026 with plurilateral trade agreements, the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), and discussions on price floor controls (Baskalan and Schwartz 2026). This bloc also holds geopolitical weight. If successful, the multi-year agreements will eventually constrain China’s ability to monopolize the critical mineral industry and export supply routes, weakening their global leveraging dominance. However, expanding mineral extraction has historically resulted in significant environmental harm, and current U.S.-backed mining projects have already faced strong opposition from environmental groups and local communities. 

IV. Environmental Implications 

China began processing rare earth minerals in the 1970s, but did not begin dominating the industry until the 1990s when its production accounted for more than half the globe’s mineral production (Shen 2020, 1). Mining production skyrocketed in the Jiangxi province where extraction boomed with the popularity of new technology, electric vehicles, and alternative forms of energy (Standaert 2019). Contrary to its name, critical minerals and rare earth elements are not inherently scarce, but the lack of mining oversight and extraction led to a proliferation of illegal operations in Jiangxi. 

Unregulated operations led to leaks from acid ponds and dumping of excess chemicals into ground and surface water, causing extreme environmental degradation in the surrounding communities. In response to the scale of illegal mining and an environmental crisis, China imposed extraction quotas, tightened government controls on mining rights and locations, and introduced a foreign import license in October 2025 (MIIT 2012). Such environmental regulations are critical to a high demand industry that has a large potential for detrimental impacts.

China’s experience in this industry demonstrates how quickly intensive mineral extraction can trigger severe environmental and health damage when unregulated. A similar debate has recently re-emerged in the United States: President Trump’s approval of the Ambler Road Project connecting the 211-mile long Dalton highway to the Ambler Mining District in Alaska (The White House 2025b). Under the Defense Production Act (DPA), the administration is focusing on increasing domestic critical mineral supply chain access to turn away from foreign imports (The White House 2025c). Granting approval to move forward with the infrastructure project is a strategic move for domestic defense and national security, while simultaneously growing Alaska’s economic welfare. 

The mine enables the U.S. access to an untapped supply of cobalt, copper, gallium, and germanium, some of which the Chinese government has restricted. However, this reversal in approval under the new administration does not go without consequence. The initial block of the project under former President Biden was to protect national lands and wildlife, local communities, and indigenous people. While the Trump administration argues the project is necessary for securing a critical mineral supply chain, there is no guarantee that the mine’s expansion will not negatively affect local ecosystems and surrounding communities.

V. Policy Recommendation

The United States government must take a three-pronged approach to limit its dependencies and contain China. First, the United States must prioritize the strategic security of its critical mineral supply by reducing reliance on China and establishing a diversified supply chain. Depending on a geopolitical rival creates a structural security vulnerability, since these minerals underpin major sources of U.S. power from weaponry, intelligence technologies, clean-energy, and manufacturing. Second, the United States should establish another unilateral partnership with India to create a more effective blockade on China’s supply chain. 

Third, the United States should bolster its partnerships formed during the 2025 ASEAN Summit by expanding its friend-shoring initiatives and strengthening cooperative oversight measures to secure its critical mineral initiatives. Expanding unilateral relations with Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific will diversify the critical mineral supply chain and effectively contain China’s dominating influence. 

To prioritize the strategic security of the United States, critical minerals should be embedded in a greater strategy of decoupling in states surrounding China. While full separation is neither feasible nor advantageous in the short-term, the United States can reduce long-term dependence by investing more in its economic statecraft. Since the U.S. has established MOUs with partnerships from the ASEAN Summit, the following government agencies should do the following to secure critical minerals:

National Security Council (NSC) 

The National Security Advisor (NSA) should issue a National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDA) directing an interagency approach to strengthen supply chain resilience across the Southeast Asian and Indo-Pacific bloc to formally reduce U.S. and partnership dependence on China. The economic reduction reemphasizes the situation into a long-term diversification objective, acknowledging that critical mineral discovery, mining, processing, and exportation require sustained U.S. investment. An abrupt decoupling could threaten China to react prematurely, retaliate economically, and disrupt the supply chain altogether. By establishing critical mineral security as a top national security priority, the NSA can ensure it fully integrates into the NSC agenda and push agencies toward a strategic and unified approach.

The NSC should establish an interagency task force responsible for coordinating and implementing policy design and monitoring overall progress toward diversification goals. Key agencies for collaboration include: the Department of Defense (DOD), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), and relevant congressional committees.

Department of Defense (DOD)

The Secretary of Defense should leverage the Defense Production Act to direct the DOD to fund public-private partnerships with partner states’ mining authorities, identify mineral vulnerabilities in our weapons and technology defense systems, and accelerate long-term agreements for defense-use critical minerals. 

Additionally, the DOD should negotiate to build military bases or request for base-access to expand U.S. force posture in the Indo-Pacific region. While the U.S. cannot currently match China’s industry dominance, an expanded regional presence would provide a more sustainable deterrence posture against potential Chinese coercion or disruptions to critical supply chains. American presence also signals credible security guarantees for our partners to ensure our long-term commitments goals. 

Congressional Committees: Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee

These committees are able to elevate and support legislation regarding funding and oversight to push the executive branch to act more aggressively and fulfill its security goals of acquiring critical minerals for our national objective. These committees should prioritize legislation that increases funding for research and development, discovery, mining, and processing, and invest in our long-term strategic partners to ensure mineral security. 

Congress can further utilize hearings, oversight powers, and bipartisan rulings to apply pressure on the executive branch to maintain aggressive actions toward diversifying our mineral supply chain and decreasing our dependence on China. By passing funding legislation that spans multi-year and congressional rotations, this signals continuity and U.S. reliability for a long-term investment project that will ultimately shift the market away from China’s dominance. 

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Department of Energy (DOE)

The USGS and DOE should collaborate with its foreign partner countries to identify which critical minerals they should extract and in what area of production (mining, refining, or exportation) they should specialize in for economic advantage. In the long-term, this strategic partnership with the bloc of Asian countries will slowly reduce reliance on trade with China and increase dependence on the U.S. for investment and supply chain management. 

Building off of the unilateral relationships forged during the ASEAN Summit, the United States should pursue a critical minerals trade agreement with India to diversify its supply chain and strengthen its containment strategy toward China. With five critical minerals on its land, India positions itself as a strategically geopolitical partner in the U.S-led mineral security blockade. As India is in its developing stages, the United States can invest money into its program and fund upgrades to their processing and refining technology. India’s strategic partnership will ultimately secure long-term mineral security for the United States and apply pressure to China’s regional dominance in the long-run. 

The United States must also reinforce its soft power by deepening its partnerships across the Asian bloc, positioning itself as a more reliable economic and security partner than China. Central to this approach is respecting the sovereignty and agency of our partner institutions. Rather than dictating the terms for mineral discovery and extraction, the U.S. should adopt a collaborative model that amplifies the local governments and communities to shape how these resources are developed. These communities are most familiar with how to safely navigate the terrain, the environmental risks associated with this industry, and avoid China’s documented record of severe ecological harm with mineral extraction. 

To prevent similar outcomes, the United States should negotiate joint U.S.-partner government oversight committees to ensure transparency in all stages of discovery, extraction, and processing and refining. These committees should be responsible for assessing environmental risks at extraction sites, enforcing compliance with jointly agreed upon standards, and recommending production quotas where necessary to avoid ecological harm. While this framework only addresses local environments, it signals the United States’ commitment to long-term sustainable partnerships while strengthening regional trust and ensuring American strategic security abroad. 

The United States’ objective is to secure a resilient critical mineral supply chain that strengthens national security, military readiness, reduces dependence on China, and expands American influence with strategic partnerships that constrain China’s global leverage. Continued reliance on a peer competitor leaves the U.S. vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and coercion that could undermine its position in the global order. By adopting a long-term approach that integrates economic statecraft, partnerships, and targeted investments in the Indo-Pacific, supply chain risk mitigation is achievable. Ultimately, critical mineral security is not simply an economic concern, but a defining pillar of the U.S.’ 21st century grand strategy that will shape America’s ability to compete with China in the evolving international order. 

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