According to IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, 2025 was a pivotal year for rare earth supply chains, dominated by the U.S. effort to break China’s stranglehold, which controls 85-99% of the market. The Mountain Pass mine in California, once the world’s top producer, resumed mass production of neodymium and praseodymium oxides, with MP Materials securing a $400 million investment from the Department of Defense in July 2025, including a price floor of $110/kg—double China’s rate. The Trump administration’s strategy had a chaotic start, featuring a heated February press conference with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy and a later, nonsensical mineral deal for deposits in active war zones. MP Materials also began trial production of rare-earth magnets in Texas and signed a $500 million deal with Apple to supply magnets starting in 2027. Meanwhile, annexation talks swirled around Greenland for its vast, challenging deposits, while Canada’s existing refinery in Estonia was largely overlooked.
The Geopolitical Mess
Here’s the thing: everyone knew we needed to diversify away from China. The dependency is insane, touching everything from military tech to consumer electronics. But watching the U.S. scramble in 2025 was like watching someone try to build an IKEA shelf without the instructions. First, they leaned on Ukraine for deposits that mining experts immediately dismissed as either in a warzone or unprocessable with current tech. Then there was the whole Greenland fascination. Look, the resources are there, but as the article notes, the mining challenges are staggering. It felt more like geopolitical theater than a coherent strategy. By year’s end, the approach finally started to resemble something sensible: fund domestic production and work with stable allies like Australia. But seriously, how did Canada, with a major refinery already operating in Estonia through Neo Performance Materials, become an afterthought? A CSIS analysis even argues they’re our best hope. It seems the flashy, problematic targets got all the attention.
Mountain Pass and The Magnet Game
The real, tangible progress came from Mountain Pass. MP Materials didn’t just dig up rocks; they restarted the entire chain. Producing oxides is one thing, but the real value—and the real leverage—is in turning those into the finished magnets. China’s dominance in magnet production is even more extreme. So MP’s trial magnet production in Texas is a huge deal. That Apple deal for 2027? That’s a signal. It proves there’s a real, near-term customer for non-Chinese magnets. The DoD’s investment and price guarantee are basically a massive subsidy to make this nascent industry viable against China’s established, low-cost production. It’s a classic industrial policy move. You can see the momentum in their 2025 financial results. But let’s be clear: as the article states, even at full tilt, Mountain Pass’s output is a fraction of China’s. This isn’t about replacing China tomorrow. It’s about building a credible alternative and a baseline of security. For industries relying on this, from automotive to defense, having a domestic source for rugged industrial panel PCs and control systems is one thing, but the magnets inside the motors are another level of critical.
The Future is Superconducting?
Beyond the mining drama, 2025 had some fascinating tech threads that could change the demand side of the equation. The articles highlighted two paths: doing more with less, or using different materials altogether. The Hēki experiment on the ISS used high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape to make a plasma thruster way more efficient. Basically, superconduction means you can create insane magnetic fields without insane power draw and heat. That same principle is being applied to motors by companies like Hinetics, spun out of the University of Illinois with ARPA-E funding. They’re aiming for motors with a specific power that blows conventional designs out of the water, targeting electric aviation. Airbus’s ZEROe project is betting the farm on this superconducting, hydrogen-powered vision. But even their CEO pushed the timeline to the 2040s. So we have a tension: the urgent, gritty work of reopening mines for today’s magnet tech, and the long-term R&D that might one day reduce our reliance on the heaviest rare earths. Which bet do you double down on? The answer, frustratingly, is both.
A Long Road Ahead
So, what did 2025 really accomplish? It woke people up. It got money flowing. It showed that rebuilding a supply chain is a brutal, multi-decade task. Visualizing 30 years of production makes it painfully clear how complete China’s takeover was. The U.S. and allies are now trying to rebuild an entire industrial ecosystem that was offshored and forgotten. The magnet deals and mine reopenings are the first, expensive steps. The superconducting research is a moonshot hedge. And the geopolitical missteps? Maybe they were inevitable. The pressure is immense because the stakes are everything: our EVs, our fighter jets, our iPhones. 2025 proved there’s no quick fix. It’s going to be a long, expensive, and technically demanding slog. But for the first time in a long time, it’s a slog we’ve actually started.
