It could take up to five years to develop a domestic supply chain to supplant China’s global monopoly in processing rare earths into materials needed to produce everything from iPhones to F-35 fighter jets.
While the United States has most of the 17 rare earth elements and 50 critical minerals underground, it has no industrial capacity to refine them into processed metals and magnets, according to Melissa “Mel” Sanderson, American Rare Earths board member and Critical Minerals Institute co-chair.