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Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, returned from South Carolina last week brandishing a small piece of metal, proclaiming that it was the first rare-earth magnet made in the US in a quarter of a century.

It was, he indicated to Fox Business, proof that the US is ending “China’s chokehold on our supply chain”. Thanks to the South Carolina company eVAC’s new rare-earth mineral processing center, Bessent added: “We’re finally becoming independent again.”

Breaking China’s processing and manufacturing dominance in these materials, essential for some semiconductors, batteries and armaments, is a top priority for the Trump administration that has made a bet, via tariffs and other economic tools, that it can return the industry to US shores.

Those tariffs led China to restrict rare-earth exports to the US and pushed Donald Trump to sign deals with Australia, Malaysia, Cambodia and Japan.

The US and China have now brokered a trade truce on rare earths but China, with approximately 70% of global mining and over 90% of global processing capacity, has a head start that Trump will struggle to erode.

There’s no easy fix for the US to reset its dependence on Chinese production of minerals critical to national security, semiconductor production, and the transfer of energy production from fossil fuels to wind and solar. The US imported 80% of the rare earths it used in 2024, according to the US Geological Survey.

For some rare-earth minerals such as dysprosium, used in chip production, and samarium, essential to military applications, Chinese refinement dominance rises to 99%. Dysprosium and terbium are used in magnets essential for electric engines in electric vehicles and generators in wind turbines, along with uses in cellphones, high-intensity lighting and nuclear reactors.

“These materials are used in electric motors for EV cars but also in guidance systems that have obvious applications for the defense department,” says Adam Webb, head of energy raw materials at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “Anything that has a decent magnet in it uses rare earths.”

Trump’s efforts to reduce the US’s dependence on Chinese production on rare-earth minerals could take years. “‘Rare earths’ is somewhat of a misnomer because they’re not that uncommon in terms of abundance in the earth’s crust,” Webb says, but many deposits, including in Ukraine, where Trump made a deal earlier this year, are only in the early stages of extraction.

“It’s not that there’s a shortage per se, it’s that China can limit how much is exported,” Webb said, adding that getting export licenses from China can be a lengthy, difficult process.

Greenland, another focus of Trump’s attention, and Brazil, are two other countries where there are significant rare-earth deposits. In the continental US, there are deposits in California, Wyoming and Missouri, with the largest operational mine operating at Mountain Pass, California, about 60 miles from Las Vegas.

In July, the Pentagon became the largest shareholder in MP Materials, the operator of the California mine, with plans to open a new “mine-to-magnet” plant, called 10X, to make magnets crucial in F-35 fighter jets, drones and submarines, according to the department.

In North America, measured and indicated resources of rare earths were estimated to include 3.6m tons in the US and more than 14m tons in Canada, according to the geological survey data – far less than the 44m tons estimated in China.

Mirroring direct investment and stakes in the steel industry and US chipmaker Intel, the interior department said it was prepared to make direct investments in critical mineral companies.

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“You’re competing against state capital because China is picking these strategically as areas that they want to invest in,” Doug Burgum, the US secretary of the interior, said during a speech at the Hamm Institute for American Energy in April.

Burgum floated that the US could utilize a sovereign wealth fund to speed production. “Why wouldn’t the wealthiest country in the world have the biggest sovereign wealth fund?” he asked.

US efforts to support domestic production have floundered in the past when China lowered prices, rendering unsupported rare-earth development uneconomic against China’s lower cost of production and long-term strategic outlook.

Five years ago, Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, testified before the US Senate committee on energy and natural resources that “those who invest in battery capacity and supply chains today are likely to dominate this industry for generations to come. It is not too late for the US but action is needed now.”

Five years on, a scramble to assemble trading alliances around rare earths is accelerating.

“In about a year from now, we’ll have so much critical mineral and rare earths that you won’t know what to do with them,” Trump told reporters. That came eight months after Trump demanded $500bn of Ukraine’s minerals to compensate the US for the military aid. In September, the government of Pakistan signed a $500m deal with the American company US Strategic Metals, giving it access to minerals such as antimony and copper.

But can the US make up its shortfall and loosen China’s hold on rare-earth supply chains? “The US has taken really significant steps already,” Webb says. The US, he adds, cannot be “self-reliant in the short term because it takes time to bring a mine online and build refining capacity.”