Highlights
- The OBBBA aims to unlock domestic rare earth and critical mineral supply through $7.5 billion in funding and de-risking incentives.
- Contrasting analyses from CSIS and REEx reveal potential strategic gaps in the bill’s approach to mineral independence.
- The bill’s elimination of clean energy tax credits could undermine its own supply-side ambitions by reducing domestic demand for strategic minerals.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (opens in a new tab) (CSIS) and Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) present sharply contrasting lenses on Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA). CSIS’s institutional analysis (opens in a new tab) is precise but narrowly technocratic, while REEx offers a more visceral, industrial policy-centric critique. Taken together, they form a fuller picture of what the OBBBA gets right—and where it risks strategic miscalculation.
At its core, both analyses agree on one thing: the OBBBA makes an unprecedented push to unlock domestic rare earth and critical mineral supply. Through $7.5 billion in stockpiling, industrial base funding, and de-risking incentives, the bill aims to revive U.S. mining and reduce China’s dependency. CSIS rightly praises the expanded definitions of “Prohibited Foreign Entities,” which aim to keep Chinese companies from exploiting U.S. tax incentives. Likewise, the REEx report celebrates “political risk insurance” for mine developers and the long-overdue permitting reforms that could shave years off environmental reviews.
But from there, the narratives sharply diverge.
CSIS’s technocratic tone implies that all levers are roughly interchangeable: cut one subsidy, add another, and the system will adapt. Yet REEx cuts deeper: if there’s no demand-side anchor—no buyers for critical minerals in the U.S.—the entire upstream push may collapse under its own weight. And here lies the biggest fissure. OBBBA eliminates the IRA’s EV and clean tech incentives, notably the Section 30D vehicle credit and the 45X taxcredit phaseout exemption for critical minerals.
That guts the downstream pull from EV makers and magnet manufacturers just as supply is set to increase. As REEx warns, we may wind up mining rare earths just to export them—again—to China. Elon Musk also expressed concerns about this bill for some of the same reasons.
CSIS acknowledges this tension but skirts the contradiction: that without a thriving clean energy economy at home, strategic minerals become speculative exports. Their tone is analytical but oddly passive, as if systemic incentives will magically materialize. In contrast, REEx names the stakes: China dominates not just mining, but every step downstream—refining, magnet-making, and assembling finished goods. The U.S. must match this with an industrial strategy, not just subsidies.
Importantly, CSIS’s biggest omission is geopolitical context. It says little about China’s Belt and Road grip on African, Latin American, and Southeast Asian mineral plays. Nor does it explore the cascading effect of removing U.S. tax credits on allied strategies (like those of Canada, the EU, or Japan). Meanwhile, REEx names names and calls for allied coordination, including the inclusion of mineral-rich but FTA-excluded countries in future U.S. sourcing incentives.
Another blind spot in CSIS is its silence on workforce readiness. REEx rightly notes that even with capital, processing and magnet manufacturing depend on trained labor—an entire generation of chemists, metallurgists, and engineers who’ve been underdeveloped in the West. Permitting reform is pointless if there’s no one to run the mill.
In sum, CSIS provides a surgical reading of the bill’s text, while REEx offers a strategic diagnosis. Together, they tell a story of a bill that builds a scaffold for mineral independence but forgets to pour the foundation. OBBBA’s mining support is real and historic, but the repeal of clean energy demand drivers risks sabotaging its own supply-side ambitions.
Industrial policy is not only about extraction. It’s about coordination, education, demand stimulation, and long-term vision.
That’s the truth buried in the ore. Whether Washington will mine it remains to be seen.
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