Highlights
- CSIS report details Trump administration’s trade deal restoring U.S. access to rare earth elements after Chinese export restrictions
- Analysis reveals structural challenges in U.S. critical minerals production, including corporate offshoring and Wall Street’s short-term investment approach.
- Urgent call for a comprehensive industrial policy to address national sovereignty and reduce dependence on Chinese rare earth supply chains
In a Critical Questions brief released (opens in a new tab) today, Gracelin Baskaran and Meredith Schwartz of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) outline the details of the Trump administration’s latest trade deal with China—one that temporarily restores U.S. access to rare earth elements and magnets after a two-month Chinese export chokehold. While the authors strike a sober and fact-rich tone, Rare Earth Exchanges finds the CSIS analysis incomplete and insufficiently critical of the systemic vulnerabilities it describes.
The CSIS Take
CSIS confirms that the June 11 U.S.-China trade agreement, reached in London, follows weeks of industrial chaos triggered by China’s April export restrictions. The new framework allows for the resumption of rare earth exports in exchange for sharply tiered U.S. tariffs (up to 55%) and the reversal of visa bans on Chinese students. CSIS emphasizes the devastating short-term impact on global automakers, citing stalled operations at Ford, Suzuki, and European suppliers. They also highlight Australia’s rising role and ongoing U.S. efforts to stand up domestic capacity through Defense Production Act investments and DOE-backed partnerships.
REEx Take
CSIS authors present themselves as neutral analysts, but their tone subtly normalizes dependency, emphasizing China’s “leverage” rather than interrogating how such leverage came to exist over decades of bipartisan neglect. There is little critique of U.S. corporate offshoring, minimal discussion of failed industrial policy, and no mention of financial markets’ disincentives to invest in domestic capacity without explicit state direction. Despite CSIS’s claim of nonpartisanship, the narrative accepts the Trump administration’s reactive tariff diplomacy as a legitimate substitute for long-term strategy. It is not.
And any glaring omissions? Nowhere do Baskaran and Schwartz address the private sector’s continued refusal to invest in downstream processing and magnet manufacturing without guaranteed off-take agreements or aggressive federal subsidies. Nor do they analyze the role of Wall Street’s short-termism in gutting U.S. mining, refining, and manufacturing. And then there is the reality of whoever is in the White House: due to short-term realities, such as mid-term elections, they kick the critical mineral industrial policy down the road for another administration to grapple with.
The CSIS report offers a solid factual overview but stops short where it matters most. Rare earths aren’t just a matter of tariffs or diplomacy—they’re a test of national sovereignty. And Washington is still outsourcing that, too. Baskaran and Schwartz deserve credit for keeping this issue in the spotlight; their work is consistently informative and well worth reading. But it’s time they confronted the harder truths more directly—chief among them, that political elites in Washington, financiers on Wall Street, and corporate leaders on Main Street have long sold out America’s future in critical minerals.
Until the U.S. government confronts these structural disincentives head-on—whether via industrial policy, nationalization, or demand-side guarantees—China’s grip on rare earths will remain.
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