Senate Bill S.789 Seeks to Break China's Grip on Critical Minerals, But Will It Deliver?

Highlights

• S.789 proposes biennial reporting on global rare earth and critical mineral resources to address U.S. strategic mineral dependencies.
• The bill seeks to facilitate divestment from mining ventures in adversarial nations and promote allied cooperation in mineral processing.
• While a positive policy step, experts warn that the legislation needs additional funding and infrastructure investments to challenge China's mineral processing dominance meaningfully.

The introduction of S.789, the Critical Minerals Security Act of 2025 (opens in a new tab), by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), (opens in a new tab) signals a renewed legislative attempt to confront America’s dangerous dependence on foreign adversaries, chiefly China, for rare earth elements (REEs) and other critical minerals. The bill in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee outlines a broad mandate for the U.S. Department of the Interior to secure global access and develop allied cooperation in mining, refining, and recycling essential materials.

The proposed legislation would require the Department of the Interior to deliver a biennial report cataloging global REE and critical mineral resources, including recycling streams—an overdue acknowledgment that secondary recovery must become a strategic pillar. Interior would also be tasked with helping U.S. individuals or companies divest from foreign mining ventures involving adversarial nations such as China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran—potentially facilitating ownership shifts toward friendlier, allied jurisdictions.

Critically, S.789 aims to spur allied cooperation on advanced refining and recycling technologies, offering pathways for intellectual property sharing and joint development. This approach, if resourced properly, could begin to chip away at Beijing’s entrenched dominance in rare earth processing, where it still controls over 90% of global capacity.

Yet, as Rare Earth Exchanges analysts note, the bill does not mandate funding or infrastructure investments, raising doubts about its immediate impact. The U.S. is still a decade behind China in mine-to-magnet integration. .Without real capital and midstream incentives, reports and IP-sharing strategies won’t change that.

While S.789 represents a policy step in the right direction, observers warn that it must be followed by binding procurement targets, downstream manufacturing incentives, and public-private investment in U.S. and allied separation facilities to achieve meaningful decoupling from China.