America has the minerals. Why does it still need imports?

A copper refinery in Utah, an idle cobalt mine in Idaho and a government promise to pay for magnets explain the American mineral problem better than another map of deposits.

Research cut-off: 29 September 2026. Annual mineral statistics refer to 2025 unless otherwise stated.

America has found a way to turn the leftovers from a copper refinery into solar panels that help power the same operation. It takes a Canadian detour.

At Rio Tinto's Kennecott operation in Utah, tellurium recovered during copper refining goes to 5N Plus in Canada. There it becomes semiconductor material, supplied primarily to First Solar. Some of the resulting panels have come back to Kennecott. Rio announced its latest solar installation in January 2026: more than 71,000 panels containing tellurium from the operation they now help run. ^[1]

That is quite a useful trip for something recovered from refinery residues. It also complicates the usual story about American mineral independence.

The tellurium in those panels needed a Canadian processor. That doesn't make the achievement smaller. It shows what a working alternative supply chain can look like: American feedstock, specialist work across the border, a manufacturer with a use for the product. ^[1]

America's problem is full of these distinctions. It has substantial mines, technically demanding materials businesses and customers willing to spend billions. It also remained entirely reliant on imports for 16 of the nonfuel mineral commodities tracked by the US Geological Survey in 2025. Imports supplied more than half of consumption for 54. Those counts cover the survey's nonfuel commodities, rather than just Washington's critical-mineral list. ^[2]

The country has minerals. What it lacks, in several important cases, is a business that can deliver the particular material a factory needs at a price someone will keep paying.

Washington wants security. The buyer still wants a price.

Trump's executive order of 20 March 2025 treated reliance on mineral production in hostile countries as a threat to national and economic security. ^[12]

The concern is understandable. A supplier doesn't need to stop every shipment to cause trouble. Uncertainty over a small input can make a much larger manufacturing commitment difficult to plan. That diagnosis still covers problems that require different repairs.

Some American industries need another domestic source. Others need a processing step that the country once had, or never developed commercially. Still others already buy from several allies. Treating every imported tonne as the same strategic failure would spend a lot of money solving the wrong problems.

The import figures help, provided we read the labels.

The chart measures net import reliance for the specified material, not the proportion of American factories about to run out. A 100% figure doesn't mean 100% dependence on Chinese mineral supply. Nor does it say where the metal was originally mined. A Canadian refinery may be processing American concentrate.

USGS reports germanium reliance only as greater than 50%, tellurium as greater than 25%, and no usable percentage for hafnium. Those aren't blanks to fill with confident guesses. They are the limits of the published account. ^[2]

01 / Actual rare earths

The mine is already there. The business needed a guarantee.

The United States mined an estimated 51,000 tonnes of rare-earth-oxide equivalent in 2025. It was still 67% net import reliant for rare-earth compounds and metals. The first number describes material coming out of mines; the second concerns products further along the chain. They are compatible facts, however awkwardly they fit on a campaign placard. ^[2]

A mixed concentrate has to be separated into useful elements. Those materials then need further processing into metals, alloys or components. A large volume rich in cerium and lanthanum cannot simply be substituted for the neodymium and praseodymium that a magnet factory wants. Even within rare earths, the USGS accounts for scandium and yttrium separately, with 100% import reliance for each in 2025.

EarthRarest's US mine-to-magnet project ledger sets out plant status, capacity and the steps still needed before production. Here, the revealing part is the deal required to make that expansion attractive.

In July 2025, the Pentagon agreed to support MP Materials with an unusually direct promise. For ten years, a price-protection agreement would cover the difference when a specified benchmark price for neodymium-praseodymium fell below $110 per kilogram. The package also included a $400 million preferred-equity investment and a commitment concerning purchases from MP's planned second magnet factory. ^[13]

A company considering a factory has to estimate years of sales. If customers can return to cheaper imports as soon as an immediate shortage passes, a domestic supplier can do everything Washington asks and still struggle to repay its lenders.

The agreement gives MP protection against that risk. Under the disclosed terms, the government pays against the benchmark shortfall; this isn't a universal $110 price for every rare earth. It is support for a named producer and a particular product family. The contract also gives the government a share of specified upside. ^[13]

By the final quarter of 2025, that promise was already visible in MP's accounts. The company recognised about $51 million of price-protection income, almost as much as its $52.7 million in quarterly revenue. The accounts show those as separate items. The comparison makes the scale of the support easier to grasp, with the government guarantee contributing almost as much recognised income as the company booked in customer revenue. ^[13]

MP also reported that it had stopped all sales to China from July 2025. In the fourth quarter, it recognised no revenue from rare-earth concentrate. The company was trying to build a different business while giving up an established outlet for its product. A declaration of independence has an easier time of it than the sales department. The guarantee helps make that transition financeable, while leaving the company with factories to build and products to deliver. ^[13]

That leaves a reasonable public question: how much should the country pay to keep an alternative supplier available? The cheapest purchase this quarter and the safest industrial position five years from now may come with different bills. Somebody has to accept the difference. The MP deal makes that choice visible.

Apple brings something a mineral deposit cannot

Five days after MP's Pentagon announcement, Apple committed $500 million to American-made rare-earth magnets through a multiyear arrangement. The companies also described a recycling line at Mountain Pass and magnet manufacturing in Fort Worth, with equipment designed around Apple products. ^[14]

An actual customer changes the conversation. Apple brings specifications, a route into finished devices and a reason to invest in production equipment. It can also work with a supplier long before material reaches the purchasing department. According to the announcement, the two companies had spent nearly five years piloting rare-earth recycling technology to meet Apple's standards.

That is a less photogenic kind of industrial policy than opening a mine, but it answers a question the mine cannot: who will accept the output? Recycled material still has to perform. A successful trial still has to become repeatable manufacturing. Announcing a commitment in 2025 did not make every proposed production line operational that day.

02 / Strategic metals, by our definition

EarthRarest uses strategic metals for antimony, bismuth, gallium, germanium, hafnium, indium, rhenium and tellurium. This is our editorial category, separate from government lists. These eight expose an American weakness that rare-earth mine rankings tend to miss: much of the useful supply depends on recovering a small additional product while making a much larger one.

Gallium and indium: America can refine what it doesn't recover

The US has recovered no primary gallium since 1987, according to USGS. Yet it retains a New York operation that turns imported low-purity gallium and manufacturing scrap into high-purity material. The country has expertise near the expensive end of the chain and a dependence near the beginning. ^[3]

Gallium commonly comes out of the process used to make alumina from bauxite; zinc processing provides another route. Finding gallium in American rock is therefore only a start. A recovery business needs suitable feed passing through a suitable plant, equipment that can extract the gallium, and enough sales to justify the additional work. Our guide to gallium in semiconductors explains why manufacturers want the finished material.

Indium has a similar split. In 2025, no indium was recovered from US ores, while domestic companies made high-purity products, compounds, alloys and solders from imported metal. Gallium and indium both stood at 100% net import reliance in the USGS account. That figure should not erase the American manufacturing that happens after importation. ^[3]

It does identify a weakness. If the starting metal becomes difficult to obtain, a sophisticated finishing business still has a feedstock problem. Recycling manufacturing scrap can help, especially when the material is concentrated and its composition is known. It cannot supply endless new metal to an expanding industry.

Germanium makes the border look rather arbitrary

Alaska produces zinc concentrate containing germanium. In 2025, some of that concentrate went to Canada, where germanium oxide and tetrachloride were recovered. American companies then used imported and recycled germanium for products including satellite solar-cell wafers and optical-fibre materials. ^[4]

Call that chain foreign and you lose the Alaskan mine. Call it domestic and you lose the Canadian recovery plant. The useful question is whether each necessary step is dependable.

Washington has chosen to pay for one specific improvement. In January 2026, the defence department announced an $18.1 million investment in 5N Plus's germanium refining at St. George, Utah, made the previous December. The stated objective was more US refining capacity for uses including optics and solar crystals. ^[4]

The same company appears in the Kennecott tellurium route. That is worth noticing. A specialist processor can sit between several mines and several high-value manufacturers. Expanding its capabilities may address a more immediate gap than acquiring another deposit. The announced investment is evidence of that choice; additional dependable output still has to follow.

Antimony brings a gold mine into the defence argument

Claims that America mines no antimony need updating. USGS records mining starting in Montana in 2025, although it withholds the tonnage to protect company information. Metal and oxide import reliance remained 91%, and domestic primary processing still used imported feed. A restart and a solved supply problem are quite different things. ^[5]

Perpetua's Stibnite project in Idaho offers a potentially larger change. The company reports reserves of 148 million pounds of antimony alongside 4.8 million ounces of gold. Early works began in October 2025; its August 2026 construction account described roads, power and site work. These are reserves and construction progress, not antimony shipments. ^[6]

Gold helps explain why the project can attract capital. Antimony helps explain why Washington cares. The two arguments share a mine, but they don't automatically persuade the people living with its consequences.

“Perpetua’s continued focus on antimony and critical minerals does not change the fact that this is a gold mine, plain and simple.”

Shannon F. Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, statement following the May 2025 permit decision. ^[15]

The Tribe's objection concerns treaty rights and the headwaters of an important salmon watershed. Perpetua argues that its project can remove historical waste and restore fish passage blocked by earlier mining. Both positions belong in the account: the company's proposed restoration is part of its case for development, and the Tribe disputes the acceptability of the new disturbance. ^{[6, 15]}

The antimony isn't imaginary, and gold revenue doesn't cancel its strategic value. Equally, a defence application doesn't settle what happens to a river. Domestic supply means accepting or resolving those choices at home. A metal doesn't become free of local consequences because the Pentagon wants it.

Bismuth shows what closing a plant can take away

America's bismuth history offers a quieter explanation for today's imports. Some domestic lead ores contain bismuth, but primary refined production ended in 1997. The last US primary lead smelter closed in 2013, and lead concentrates have since been sent abroad for smelting. Bismuth import reliance was 92% in 2025. ^[5]

The ore did not have to vanish for the supply chain to disappear. Losing a host-metal processing business can remove the place where a minor metal would be recovered. A new geological survey may establish more bismuth in the ground while leaving that problem exactly where it was.

This is why national mineral policy cannot be built only around new discoveries. Keeping an unglamorous plant viable may preserve several capabilities at once. Rebuilding them later requires more than reopening a file marked reserves.

Hafnium and rhenium are evidence of what America kept

Hafnium offers a different starting point. USGS identifies metal production from zirconium chemical intermediates in Oregon and Utah. Its commercial supply is closely tied to zirconium processing. America has that specialist capability, although the published figures do not provide an exact hafnium self-sufficiency percentage. ^[7]

Rhenium also has an established route. US plants produced an estimated 9.8 tonnes in 2025 from processing molybdenum concentrates associated with copper-molybdenum deposits. The country was a leading recycler of rhenium from superalloy scrap, used turbine parts and spent catalysts. Even with those strengths, reported net import reliance was 75%.

Chile, Canada, Germany and Poland supplied 88% of US rhenium imports over 2021–24. That is a substantial foreign share, spread across a very different set of relationships from a dependence on one Chinese supplier. ^[7]

There is still work to do. An aircraft-related material needs to arrive in the required form and quality; a country's name on a supplier chart doesn't establish spare capacity. But the starting policy question should be how to preserve and strengthen those working routes. Replacing every allied shipment with a new American plant would need its own economic case.

The small circuit inside the enormous copper business

Kennecott began producing tellurium in 2022 after Rio invested $2.9 million in a recovery circuit. The company described expected annual production of about 20 tons of tellurium. This was an addition to an operating copper refinery, with 5N Plus and First Solar already providing a route to market. ^[1]

That detail deserves room beside the multibillion-dollar mine announcements. Some mineral opportunities exist in material a plant is already handling. The expense lies in recovering and upgrading a small constituent rather than building the entire host operation from scratch.

There are limits. USGS identified two American copper refineries producing copper telluride in 2025, in Utah and Texas, both exporting it for further processing. It also estimated lower recovery that year as copper output from those refineries declined. ^[7]

A by-product inherits the fortunes of the main business. You cannot assume that higher demand for tellurium will make a refinery produce more copper just to obtain it. Kennecott's success demonstrates a practical route, including the Canadian step. It doesn't abolish the dependence between the small metal and the big one.

03 / Supplementary critical materials

Idaho's cobalt was waiting for a better price

Jervois's Idaho Cobalt Operations had reached a painfully practical stage by early 2023. Its underground mine construction was complete, the company reported, and more than 30,000 short tons of ore were ready for processing. Then it suspended final construction and commissioning of the concentrator. It cited low cobalt prices and inflation in US construction costs. ^[17]

The obstacle was not a missing discovery. Ore was already waiting.

Jervois argued that leaving the resource unmined at a low point in the market preserved its value. Its project page, reviewed for this article, still describes suspended operations, permits in place and more than $200 million invested across drilling, development, processing facilities and infrastructure. It also describes a completed, federally funded feasibility study for a possible US cobalt refinery. A study gives the company a plan, not a producing refinery. ^[17]

This is where the commercial and national arguments can pull apart. A country may want a domestic supplier ready before a crisis. Shareholders may prefer to wait until selling the metal makes money. Neither needs to be confused about the geology.

The MP price guarantee belongs beside this example. Government support is partly a decision about who carries the cost of keeping a supplier available when the market, left alone, would prefer it to wait.

Lithium needs the chemical plant and the money around it

The US already produces lithium commercially from Nevada brine. National output is withheld in the USGS account, which reports import reliance above 50% for 2025. The next large projects have to deliver saleable chemicals, not simply move the country up a resource ranking. ^[8]

Thacker Pass shows how much has to gather around a deposit. Lithium Americas is developing the Nevada project with General Motors, which held 38% of the project in the company's August 2026 account. Federal backing included a $2.23 billion loan and rights to buy 5% stakes in both the developer and the project. ^[16]

The physical business extends beyond the mine. A rail terminal under construction near Winnemucca, about 60 miles from Thacker Pass, is intended to handle the reagents its processing operation will need. Securing a deposit means little if the chemicals needed to treat its ore cannot arrive reliably. ^[16]

There is an industrial customer, public finance and a substantial chemical operation. There is also a construction budget that refuses to stand still.

In its August update, Lithium Americas was still targeting mechanical completion in late 2027 and preparing a new capital estimate. It reported pressure from skilled-labour competition, fabrication and logistics constraints, fuel costs and tariffs. The company's estimated tariff exposure alone was $80 million to $100 million. ^[16]

The intended American supply can be helped by one government decision and made more expensive by another. Buyers eventually have to absorb costs somewhere along the chain, unless investors or taxpayers do. A national-security label doesn't freeze a construction budget.

Graphite isn't a metal. It still belongs here.

The United States produced no natural graphite in 2025, against apparent consumption of about 71,000 tonnes. A story restricted to rare metals would miss it altogether. ^[8]

Graphite also illustrates why a mine is an incomplete answer for a battery maker. Battery anode material needs the right purity, particle shape and treatment. Natural graphite and synthetic graphite have different production routes, so the natural-graphite import figure is not a ready-made measure of American battery dependence.

The same trap appears in titanium. America was a net exporter of titanium dioxide pigment, while entirely import reliant for titanium sponge. The paint ingredient and the intermediate used to make titanium metal are different industrial products. A strong pigment business doesn't fill an aerospace company's order for metal. ^[8]

04 / Base metals, precious metals and the plants underneath

Copper carries more than its own weight

American copper mines produced about one million tonnes in 2025, roughly 70% of it in Arizona. Primary refined production was smaller, about 790,000 tonnes, and net import reliance stood at 57%. The leading refined-copper suppliers over 2021–24 were Chile, Canada, Peru and Mexico. ^[9]

The two bars describe national mining and primary refining, rather than what happened to the same batch of ore. They show a substantial American industry, with imports still doing an important share of the work.

Keeping that industry healthy matters beyond copper. Tellurium can be recovered from copper-refinery residues. Rhenium comes through molybdenum processing. Molybdenum itself has a strong US base: the 2025 account lists two primary mines, seven by-product operations and three roasting plants, with the country a net exporter. ^{[7, 8]}

Those connections make a plant closure harder to assess than its headline product suggests. A country can continue mining the host metal while exporting the opportunity to recover the smaller one. Once that happens, the import bill for a specialist material begins somewhere inside a much larger industrial decision.

Gold belongs in the story for another reason. US mines produced an estimated 160 tonnes in 2025, led by Nevada and Alaska. Gold cannot substitute for gallium or a qualified magnet, but it can help pay for a project that also produces something Washington urgently wants. Stibnite is a particularly clear example. The profitable product and the strategically attractive product need not be the same one. ^{[6, 9]}

The missing plant is only half the question

“the United States lacks the domestic processing capacity to avoid downstream net-import reliance.”

President Trump's proclamation, 14 January 2026, reporting the Commerce Secretary's finding. ^[10]

That diagnosis is more useful than a promise to dig America out of dependence. It still leaves the commercial question: which plant, using whose feed, selling to whom, and able to survive at what price?

Washington is beginning to fund some quite specific answers. In August 2026, the Department of Energy selected nine projects for negotiations covering $162 million in potential support for recovering materials from industrial feedstocks. The programme includes antimony, copper, scandium and rare earths. The work ranges from laboratory development to pilot and pre-commercial demonstration. Selection is not a final award. ^[11]

Some proposals will fail because recovery costs too much, produces difficult waste or cannot meet a customer's specification. That is a reason to test them before promising a national solution. The attraction is clear enough: an existing industrial stream may offer a nearer source of supply than a deposit that still needs roads, power and an entire processing plant.

America has several choices, and each comes with a bill. It can pay for a domestic producer to withstand low prices, as in the MP agreement. It can help an established processor expand. It can commit to an allied route such as the one taking Kennecott tellurium through Canada. It can also accept imports where the available suppliers are dependable enough.

The decision becomes harder when the immediate shortage eases. That is when a cheaper quote arrives from abroad, a domestic plant needs another investment, and somebody has to decide whether the insurance is still worth paying for. The country's mineral dependence will be settled by those repeat decisions, long after the announcement beside the deposit.