Why breaking China’s grip on critical minerals can’t wait 

For years, America treated China’s dominance over critical minerals as a supply-chain problem. But it isn’t. It is strategic leverage — over our defense base, industrial capacity, and the technologies that will shape the next decade.

That is why the Trump administration was justified in recently announcing a hard 180-day deadline to secure binding arrangements with U.S. trading partners to reduce America’s exposure to China’s grip on critical minerals processing. If deals fail to materialize, the White House has signaled that it will act quickly through tariffs, quotas, or the enforcement of minimum import prices. 

The urgency is real. China did not “accidentally” become the gatekeeper for rare earths. It built dominance deliberately, through subsidies, market flooding, and control of downstream processing, and reinforced it with export restrictions. Too much