Highlights
- The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy is working to secure critical mineral supply chains through initiatives like MCEIP, investing over $439 million since 2020.
- Trump’s 2025 executive actions aim to streamline domestic mineral production and address supply chain dependencies, but lack a comprehensive industrial policy for processing and manufacturing.
- A proposed Critical Minerals Czar would coordinate cross-agency efforts, provide strategic direction, and develop a unified approach to establishing a complete domestic critical minerals ecosystem.
The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy (opens in a new tab) (OASD IBP) stands at the forefront of the Pentagon’s efforts to secure critical mineral supply chains. Tasked with ensuring the resilience of the defense industrial base, OASD IBP has initiated programs like the Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (opens in a new tab) (MCEIP), awarding over $439 million since 2020 to bolster domestic rare earth element (REE) supply chains, including processing and magnet production.
Despite these initiatives, internal and interagency conflicts hinder cohesive progress. The Department of Defense (DoD) recognizes its limited influence over global REE markets, given that its consumption accounts for less than 0.1% of global demand. This diminishes its leverage in securing supply chains, especially when compared to commercial markets, as reported by the U.S. Government Accountability (opens in a new tab) Office (opens in a new tab) (GAO) in 2024.
Trump Executive Actions
President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive actions on rare earths and critical minerals show clear signs of strategic urgency, particularly after China’s tightening of rare earth exports. The March 20 Executive Order rightly prioritized streamlining domestic mineral production, reducing permitting bottlenecks, and directing agencies to fast-track exploration projects. The April 15 Section 232 action to study critical mineral and rare earth supply chain dependencies. The April 18 announcement advancing a “first wave” of critical mineral projects demonstrated tangible execution, identifying real projects on U.S. soil. Meanwhile, the April 24 order to develop offshore seabed resources reflected broader strategic thinking, as it diversified supply beyond land-based deposits. These actions show a White House aware of the stakes and willing to expand the battlefield — land, sea, and international partnerships — to secure critical minerals for defense and economic security.
Yet Rare Earth Exchanges remains concerned that the strategic coherence and industrial depth still fall short. The April 15 “study” directive in response to China’s export restrictions struck a discordant note — studying known vulnerabilities for six months delays action when time is critical. Plus, this problem has been known among Washington DC insiders for well over a decade!
Moreover, while Trump’s policies emphasize extraction, they conflate resource acquisition with true supply chain sovereignty: there is still no integrated industrial policy to rebuild U.S. midstream processing (separation, refining) and downstream manufacturing (magnets, batteries, alloys). The risk remains that without aggressive parallel investment in processing and end-product industries, America will mine raw materials only to watch them shipped elsewhere, perpetuating dependency, not solving it. As Rare Earth Exchanges has consistently reported, a comprehensive industrial strategy — not just accelerated mining — is essential to true decoupling from Chinese control.
Urgency Without Unity–Trump’s Aggressive Moves on Critical Minerals Expose Gaps in Strategic Coordination
Now, multiple, dynamic yet potentially conflicting top-down directives may exacerbate existing tensions between federal agencies, public-private partnerships, and the private sector, plus the overlooking of the necessity for a unified industrial policy.
The absence of a coordinated, even orchestrated federated approach, with dynamic horizontal flexibility yet harmonizing and at times directive oversight, risks redundant efforts and inefficient allocation of resources, undermining the very resilience these orders aim to build.
Rare Earth Exchanges Recommendation
To truly fortify the U.S. position in critical minerals, a comprehensive strategy is imperative. Trump should appoint a Critical Mineral and Rare Earth Element Czar.
A Critical Minerals Czar would serve as a centralized coordinator and strategic authority across federal agencies to direct, align, and accelerate all aspects of America’s critical mineral supply chain policy — from upstream mining to midstream processing, to downstream manufacturing. This position would cut across bureaucratic silos (Commerce, Energy, Defense, Interior, State) and ensure that exploration, permitting, financing, refining capacity, research and development, workforce training, stockpiling, and international trade policy are integrated into a single, coherent national industrial strategy.
Without a Czar, current efforts are fragmented: agencies pursue isolated initiatives (offshore mining, permitting reform, small R&D grants), but no unified vision drives the construction of a full supply chain from mine to magnet or battery. A Czar would set priorities, ensure execution against clear supply chain goals (such as achieving domestic rare earth magnet manufacturing by 2028), and streamline regulatory and financial support mechanisms.
In short, a Critical Minerals Czar would be useful because the United States’ mineral security crisis is systemic, and only a systemic, cross-agency command structure can solve it in time to counter China’s entrenched dominance.
Some key initiatives under the Czar role:
| Initiatives | Summary |
|---|---|
| Educational Initiatives | Investing in university and technical school programs to cultivate a skilled workforce in mining, metallurgy, and materials science. |
| Interagency Collaboration | Establishing a centralized task force to harmonize efforts across the DoD, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, and other relevant agencies. |
| Public-Private Partnerships | Encouraging collaborations between government entities and private sector companies to drive innovation and share best practices. |
| Financial Engine | To compete with China — where major critical mineral and rare earth companies are state-owned or heavily state-supported — the U.S. federal government must play an active financial role across the entire supply chain, from mines to magnets. This means not only funding exploration and permitting, but also providing low-cost financing, loan guarantees, grants, and direct procurement contracts to support midstream processing facilities, metallurgical refining, alloy production, and downstream magnet manufacturing. Similar to the CHIPS Act model for semiconductors, or what Trump did with Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. needs a dedicated Critical Minerals Financial Program offering billions in targeted support to build vertically integrated, domestic supply chains that can survive market shocks and compete with China’s subsidized giants. |
Without such a holistic approach, the U.S. risks remaining vulnerable in the global race for critical minerals, with national security and economic stability hanging in the balance.
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