President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping met at the White House on September 24, 2026. The day before, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, following talks with Vice Premier He Lifeng, announced an extension of the trade truce—which had paused tariffs and some rare earth export controls—from November 10 to January 10, 2027. What moved was the deadline, not the substance of the restrictions. Over the past year the United States has ramped up rare earth mining and pushed forward a series of magnet plant construction plans. Yet according to statistics published by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in February 2026, in the very year that domestic mine production increased—2025—the net import reliance rate for rare earth compounds and metals rose from 53% to 67%. Why did dependence on imports climb even as the amount mined increased?
The Deadline That Moved the Day Before the Summit
Xi's visit to the United States ran from September 23 to 25, with the summit placed in the middle of that stretch. It was Secretary Bessent who announced the two-month extension of the truce, and the timing came after talks held the day before the summit. Treating this as an outcome agreed upon by the two leaders would reverse the actual sequence of the negotiations. As of when Bloomberg reported it, the Chinese government had not officially confirmed the deadline. Scott Kennedy of CSIS points out that the shortness of the extension—just two months—itself signals that the U.S. remains unsatisfied with China's proposals on rare earths and related issues.
Three days before the summit, numbers surfaced that hinted at the temperature of the negotiations. According to Bloomberg, based on Chinese customs data, China's rare earth magnet exports to the U.S. fell to 512 tons in August 2026, down roughly 21% from 647 tons in July and down 13% year-over-year. When export license issuance stalls, cargo doesn't move no matter what truce banner is flying.
The history of the restrictions themselves is not short, either. In April 2025, China tightened export controls on seven elements including samarium, gadolinium, and terbium; in October it expanded the list to five more elements including europium; and in November it suspended the October measures for one year. The April restrictions remain in effect today.
Further, on June 22, 2026, China added ten U.S. companies—including MP Materials and USA Rare Earth—to its export control list, banning dual-use item exports to them effective immediately. In other words, the very companies the U.S. government is funding to build up this industry have become targets of China's own restrictions. The two-month extension of the deadline has resolved none of this back-and-forth.
2025: The Year Production Rose and Dependency Rose Together
USGS's Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, published in February 2026, contains estimates for 2025. Domestic mineral concentrate production grew from 41,600 tons in 2023 to 45,500 tons in 2024 and to 51,000 tons in 2025—an increase of about 23% over two years. Yet the net import reliance figure in the same table moved in the opposite direction. While domestic mine production rose from 45,500 tons in 2024 to 51,000 tons in 2025, the net import reliance rate for rare earth compounds and metals climbed 14 percentage points, from 53% to 67%.
This reliance rate is the ratio of net imports to apparent consumption. That means if the denominator moves, the figure changes even if the numerator stays the same. And 2025 was a year in which the denominator moved sharply. Apparent consumption of compounds and metals nearly tripled, jumping from 9,010 tons in 2024 to 27,000 tons in 2025. Imports of compounds and metals themselves rose 169%.
Between 2024 and 2025, domestic mining volume increased by just over 10%, while consumption tripled. That is why the ratio rose.
Taken over the longer term, there has still been improvement. The same indicator exceeded 95% in 2021 and 2022 and topped 90% in 2023, so the 53% recorded in 2024 represented a substantial decline from those levels. The 67% figure for 2025 amounts to a partial reversal in the middle of that broader improvement. Dependency did not rise because domestic production fell.
The scope of the figures also requires care. The 53%-to-67% shift concerns rare earth compounds and metals specifically; for mineral concentrates, USGS's original table lists the reliance figure as "E" (net exporter). This is not a gap in the data—it reflects the fact that the U.S. is a net exporter of concentrates, so no positive import reliance rate is calculated for that category.
Raw mined concentrate and processed, usable compounds and metals are tracked as separate accounts even within the statistics. The breakdown of import sources belongs to this latter account as well: over 2021–2024, China accounted for 71% of U.S. imports, Malaysia 13%, and Japan and Estonia each 5%.
Why Separation and Refining Remain the Chokepoint
"Rare earths" is a collective name for 17 elements, and their total abundance in the earth's crust is not, in itself, especially scarce. What makes them difficult is that their chemical properties closely resemble one another, making it hard to separate individual elements out of mined ore. The production chain runs from mining to mineral concentrate, to separated and refined oxides, to metals, to alloys, and finally to magnets. Each successive stage demands more specialized equipment and technology, and takes longer to bring online. The 51,000 tons the U.S. added in 2025 sits at the very first stage of this chain.
The United States largely abandoned this industry in the latter half of the 20th century, and even after the Mountain Pass mine in California resumed operations, much of the separation and refining work continued to be sent to China. The figure that China controls roughly 90% of refining capacity circulates widely in industry commentary and secondary media, but it does not appear in the relevant USGS table—a distinction worth keeping in mind when weighing sources.
The heavy rare earth pathway is especially thin. Dysprosium and terbium are essential for magnets that retain their magnetic strength at high temperatures, yet almost none of it is refined within the United States. According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence's forecast, Western nations will still depend on China for 91% of heavy rare earth demand as of 2030. That is down from 99% in 2024, but the pace of substitution is not keeping up with the pace of demand growth. The firm projects China and Myanmar will still account for roughly 80% of global dysprosium and terbium supply in 2031.
That is why players in the U.S. are racing to move past the mining stage as fast as possible. Megan O'Connor, CEO of the refining startup Nth Cycle, put it this way: "We're all racing as fast as possible to stand up refining capacity."
Three Companies, Three Different Gaps to Fill
Summing up domestic activity as "government and industry ramping up production together" misses the actual picture. The source of support and the stage of the chain being addressed differ from company to company.
MP Materials announced a public-private partnership with the Department of Defense on July 10, 2025, under which the Pentagon acquired $400 million in convertible preferred stock and warrants. Alongside that, the government guaranteed a 10-year price floor of $110 per kilogram for NdPr products, and in August 2025 a $150 million, 12-year direct loan was executed for heavy rare earth separation equipment. A cumulative figure of $550 million is sometimes cited in secondary reporting as if it were a single package of support, but it actually reflects two distinct deals struck in July and August 2025. For the "10X Facility" magnet plant, scheduled to begin trial operations in 2028, the arrangement is that the Department of Defense has secured buyers—defense and commercial customers—for the plant's entire magnet output; the department itself is not the buyer. Post-launch, domestic magnet production capacity is estimated at 10,000 tons.
The company's actual output has grown steadily. Mountain Pass NdPr oxide production was 1,294 tons in 2024, 2,599 tons in 2025, and 917 tons in the first quarter of 2026—up 63% year-over-year and a quarterly record. Sales volume for that same quarter was 1,006 tons.
Deliveries of magnets for GM vehicle certification and regulatory testing had already begun by the time of the second-quarter earnings release on August 6, and reporting based on the September 9 Jefferies conference simply reflected that progress. Commercial shipments in small volumes are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026. The long-term supply agreement with GM was originally announced in December 2021.
USA Rare Earth's backing comes from the Department of Commerce. In June 2026, the company signed a definitive agreement under the CHIPS Act, securing up to $277 million in federal funding and up to $1.3 billion in a senior secured loan facility—together, a support package worth up to $1.6 billion. Both figures are milestone-linked caps, not funds already received. On the raw materials side, the company signed an agreement in April 2026 to acquire Brazil's Serra Verde Group (the Pela Ema mine in Goiás state) for roughly $2.8 billion; downstream, it broke ground on a $1.2 billion magnet plant in Blacksburg, South Carolina, on September 9, 2026.
Energy Fuels' move is a private M&A deal. On June 23, 2026, the company signed a definitive agreement to acquire Vacuumschmelze (VAC), headquartered in Hanau, Germany, for $1.9 billion in equity value, assuming $140 million in net debt, with consideration paid in $718 million cash plus newly issued shares. Completion is expected in early 2027; the deal has not yet closed. VAC's facility in Sumter, South Carolina, has annual permanent magnet production capacity of 2,000 tons, which is described as expandable to 12,000 tons.
Two magnet plants sit in the same state of South Carolina, but the operating Sumter plant and the newly broken-ground Blacksburg plant belong to different companies and are entirely separate facilities.
In short, three distinct mechanisms—Department of Defense capital and price guarantees, Department of Commerce funding and loans, and corporate acquisition—are each working to fill a different gap in the chain. Tim Moore, a rare earth analyst at Clear Street, describes it this way: "Rare earth reshoring is moving forward. It's still just the opening salvo, but it is happening."
What Mining Volume Alone Cannot Measure
This brings us back to the initial statistics. In USGS's 2026 edition, U.S. rare earth mine production in 2025 stood at 51,000 tons—just 13% of the global total—versus China's 270,000 tons, or 69%, a gap of more than fivefold. Global output totaled 390,000 tons; all figures are estimates expressed in rare earth oxide equivalent. It's also worth noting that China's official figures, by their nature as production-quota-based statistics, may not capture unofficial production.
But this comparison measures only how much is mined. Neither separation capacity nor magnet production capacity appears in this table. Even if the U.S. closed the fivefold gap in mining alone, that by itself would not move the numerator in the dependency calculation. Put another way, the true shape of dependency shows up in how well downstream stages are filled.
According to Benchmark estimates reported by Reuters, U.S. production of the two most widely used rare earth types has more than tripled since Trump's return to office, yet it still satisfies only 42% of demand. Even within five years, the U.S. is projected to still rely on imports for nearly a quarter of demand, and heavy rare earths are barely refined at all—meaning that even with production increases through 2031, supply will not catch up with demand. The 42% figure does not refer to overall rare earth demand; it applies specifically to those two types.
For Japan, this structure cuts in two directions. As a recipient of supply, China's rare earth magnet exports to Japan returned to the 200-ton range in August for the first time in six months since February 2026, but the August figure of 212 tons still marked roughly a 17% year-over-year decline. The sheer volatility—an increase of roughly 90% month-over-month from July's 111 tons, itself down 52.2% year-over-year—shows just how unstable the pace of export license issuance remains. China's total rare earth exports in 2025 reached roughly 63,000 tons, the highest in a decade, but delays in license issuance still thin out shipments to individual destinations.
At the same time, Japan is also a supplier at the midstream stage, accounting for 5% of U.S. imports of compounds and metals. Until the U.S. downstream capacity fully comes online, Japan's refining and magnet production capacity will sit caught between U.S. and Chinese supply and demand for the next several years.
What Would Have to Happen for the "Into the 2030s" Forecast to Break
The forecast that dependency will persist into the 2030s rests on the premise that separation and refining capacity will not keep pace with growing demand. Flip that around, and the conditions that would overturn the premise become clear. MP Materials' heavy rare earth separation facility, funded by its $150 million loan, needs to come online, and the 10X Facility needs to begin trial operations on schedule in 2028. Energy Fuels' VAC acquisition needs to close in early 2027, and Sumter's 2,000-ton capacity needs to expand toward 12,000 tons. USA Rare Earth's Blacksburg plant needs to be up and running.
Only once all of these come together will domestic separation capacity finally match the growth in apparent consumption.
A measurable milestone is also approaching. The truce deadline arrives on January 10, 2027. USGS's next edition, expected around February 2027, will show how apparent consumption and net import reliance moved. If dependency falls even as the denominator keeps expanding, that will be evidence that domestic separation capacity has actually begun to take hold.
ING analyst Coco Zhang frames the realistic endpoint not as replacement, but as preparedness. "The goal is not for the U.S. to become the dominant alternative supplier to China," she says. "A more realistic goal is to build a meaningful alternative supply chain that can protect strategic sectors during periods of geopolitical disruption." Todd Downing, a minerals analyst at Project Blue, echoes the point: "Western nations are getting closer to a position where they can reduce their dependence on China, but replacing China's supply across the entire value chain is far harder."
If separation facilities and magnet plants come online as planned, the U.S. will move closer to a level at which defense and automotive production can continue even if export controls are triggered. What determines whether that level has actually been reached is not how much has been mined—it is how much the numerator of dependency has actually shrunk.