What We Know About How China Controls US Rare Earth Supply

China refines most of the 17 rare earth elements that go into smartphones, wind turbines, F-35 fighter jets and Virginia-class submarines, and it does so because the United States shut down its own separation capacity decades ago, according to an analysis by Charles Edward Gehrke for The Conversation, republished by Ars Technica on Sept. 23, 2026. The elements are not geologically scarce — cerium is about as common in Earth's crust as copper — but separating them from raw ore and from each other is technically difficult, and few countries have built the plants to do it.

Why Does China Control Rare Earth Processing?

The 17 rare earth elements show up in ordinary objects most people handle daily: a phone vibrates because a rare earth magnet moves a small weight, its screen is polished with cerium powder, and undersea cables carrying internet traffic are amplified with erbium, the Ars Technica piece notes. Vehicle steering systems rely on rare earth magnets, and cerium compounds scrub exhaust. The same magnets are essential to the F-35 and to Navy submarines. Because China dominates the processing step — not just mining — it holds outsized influence over the manufacturing that depends on those materials, the analysis states.

How Did the US Lose Its Rare Earth Lead?

California's Mountain Pass mine led world rare earth production until the late 1980s, per the article. Repeated spills of radioactive wastewater into the Mojave Desert made it difficult to keep domestic operations running, and when China expanded its own mining and undercut prices, manufacturers switched suppliers. Mountain Pass's separation plant closed in 1998, and the mine itself stopped operating in 2002. MP Materials restarted mining at the site in 2017 as concerns about foreign dependence grew, but the US still imported more than two-thirds of the rare earth elements it used as recently as 2025, the analysis reports. The country has the minerals, Gehrke writes, but for years lacked the mines and processing plants to use them domestically, instead shipping raw material overseas.

What Happens on Nov. 10, 2026?

China issued a round of rare earth export controls in 2025 and then agreed to suspend them — but only until Nov. 10, 2026, according to the Ars Technica report. Whether Beijing extends that suspension or allows the controls to take effect gives it direct influence over the pace of manufacturing in rival economies, the piece argues, comparing the dynamic to Theodore Roosevelt's description of a "very big stick." The deadline sits against a backdrop of high-level diplomacy: President Trump greeted Chinese President Xi Jinping on the tarmac in a rare US welcome this week, underscoring that trade and supply-chain issues between the two governments remain active at the highest levels ahead of the November cutoff.

Why Can't the US Just Rebuild Processing Fast?

Separating rare earth elements from ore and from one another requires specialized chemical processing plants that took China years and heavy investment to scale. The US has one major domestic operation — MP Materials' Mountain Pass facility in California, which mines and processes rare earths including neodymium-praseodymium oxide used in high-performance magnets, per Ars Technica. Rebuilding a full domestic chain, from mine to finished magnet, means constructing separation and refining capacity that has not existed in the US at scale since the plant closed in 1998. That is a multiyear industrial undertaking, not a policy announcement.

What Is the US Doing to Close the Gap?

MP Materials' 2017 restart at Mountain Pass is the clearest domestic step documented in the source material, and the company's processing of neodymium-praseodymium oxide feeds directly into magnet production. Still, the two-thirds import figure for 2025 cited in the analysis shows how much of the supply chain runs through China even with that mine operating. The report frames rare earth processing as the kind of hidden constraint that, in the author's description of war-gaming work for the Navy, can undo an otherwise workable plan — a reason the Nov. 10 deadline on China's export controls carries weight beyond a single trade dispute.

Does the Rare Earth Fight Touch Consumer Products?

Yes, directly. The magnets, polishing compounds and cable amplifiers described in the Ars Technica piece are components in phones, laptops and vehicles sold to ordinary consumers, not just military hardware. That is why analysts watching the Nov. 10 export-control deadline are tracking effects on both defense production and consumer electronics pricing and availability in the months ahead.