Can the U.S. get around China's restrictions on rare earth minerals?
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Earlier this month, China placed new export restrictions on several rare earth minerals and metals, largely as a response to the Trump administration's tariff increases on Chinese goods.

These rare earth elements make up, among other things, magnets, which it turns out are an important component in a wide array of products, from consumer electronics and military aerospace technology to electric vehicles and wind turbines. The Chinese government has reportedly paused exports while it figures out a new licensing system to approve or deny U.S. companies and individuals access to these elements.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has its own ideas about expanding domestic stockpiles of these materials. We called up Barbara Arnold, a professor and chair of Penn State University's Mining and Engineering program, to talk about the alternatives to Chinese rare earth imports. Currently, we do get some of our rare earth elements from other locations. One of the things, though, is that if we have a mine here in the U.S. that's producing these

concentrates of these minerals, then it goes to China for the most part to then be processed. And so it's that processing and then getting the individual metals, that's the issue here. So a lot of the processing globally is done in China, and then they sell the actual metals or the minerals back to us, as well as around the world.

But there are a few other places around the world that do those. And there are some locations here in the U.S. that are gearing up to do that. I know that Energy Fuels at their uranium mill will bring in rare earth mineral concentrates and actually process them there. There are some research opportunities at the moment that are looking at

where we can get things like scandium, for example. Some of that's being found in bauxite. Bauxite is the mineral that is used for producing aluminum. And here in the U.S., we do have some bauxite waste materials. And, you know, can you get that out of those

red muds. That's what they're called. Can you get it out of the red mud? We've actually got some students here working on that particular application and having some good success at recovering the scandium from those. I think there's some things out there that could work. We'll be right back. Music

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This Marketplace podcast is supported by Commvault. Businesses can recover data as well as cloud applications and platforms after a cyber attack in just minutes with Commvault, so they can become a continuous business. You are listening to Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carino. We're back with Barbara Arnold, professor and chair of the Mining and Engineering program at Penn State University.

How quickly might we be able to pivot to some of these alternative sources? Well, a lot of that's going to depend on the demonstration of these technologies and if industry will pick them up and run with them, if the government will expedite some permitting types of things, if they can for specifically for maybe some demonstration scale things.

Others, it could take longer. It really depends on which of these that we're talking about. You know, some of these elements are found in greater quantities, even in our acid mine drainage from coal and mineral waste streams. So there are some technologies that are at demonstration scale, some at pilot scale that are looking at recovering these as well. Just a matter of maybe moving them forward more quickly.

There have been reports this week that the Trump administration wants to stockpile deep sea metals kind of in order to counter some of these restrictions. What do you make of that strategy? Well, the deep sea mining is something that's not really been allowed on a large scale yet. There are some considerations for disruption of the seabed. I mean, these things are very, very deep areas.

We still need to figure out how to do that mining safely and in an environmentally appropriate way.

If it's possible, you know, we still will need the processing capabilities for those because they are a mix of metals. These heavy metals on these nodules are on the seabed floor. And we really need to figure that all out as well. We've got to bring it up and still process it. So we're still going to need the processing facilities as well, in addition to making sure that the mining is done properly.

That was Barbara Arnold at Penn State University. Last month on our sister podcast, Make Me Smart, my colleagues Kai Risdahl and Nova Safo spoke with Gracelyn Baskarin, a mining economist with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

She noted that the U.S. has spent more than $300 million in the last five years to build processing facilities. President Trump signed an executive order recently to boost American mineral production. But the bigger issue is sourcing. The U.S. only produces a small fraction of rare earths used in the global supply chain.

You might remember the Trump administration has sought greater access to Ukraine's mineral supplies, but the negotiations have reportedly hit some snags. Daniel Shin produced this episode. I'm Megan McCarty Carino, and that's Marketplace Tech. This is APM. If there's one thing we know about social media, it's that misinformation is everywhere, especially when it comes to personal finance.

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