Highlights
- Dr. Gracelin Baskaran’s Senate testimony reveals strategic vulnerabilities in U.S. rare earth and critical mineral dependencies.
- The U.S. lacks an integrated national strategy for mineral sovereignty, with fragmented approaches across agencies and sectors.
- Comprehensive solutions require unified planning, coordinated off-takes, public capital, and recognition of critical minerals as a national industrial policy challenge.
In testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, critical minerals strategist Dr. Gracelin Baskaran at Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) delivered a clear and articulate assessment (opens in a new tab) of the United States’ strategic vulnerabilities in rare earth and critical mineral supply chains. Representing a growing expert consensus, she emphasized that America cannot achieve minerals independence alone, citing geological limits and the need for tighter trade alignment with key producing nations outside traditional free trade partners. Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) elaborates and adds some food for thought.
Her testimony is a necessary step forward. But from REEx perspective, it is also incomplete. While Dr. Baskaran accurately diagnoses the urgency of the crisis—and wisely recommends policy tools such as tariff reform, vertical integration with allies, and mineral ecosystem financing—her framework underemphasizes the structural, systems-level breakdown across the entire rare earth value chain.
Dr. Baskaran Key Points
Dr. Baskaran’s six recommendations underscore key leverage points:
| Recommendation | Summary and Comment |
|---|---|
| Broadening mineral alliances beyond FTA countries | Brazil, Vietnam, Namibia) is both geologically rational and geopolitically overdue. While President Trump’s initial foray into a unilateral trade war against the world could be a move out of “Art of the Deal,” it was not that useful for a proactive, comprehensive, well-contemplated rare earth element alliance plan. Canada, Australia, and the UK, as we have called out, are key, especially for investment know-how (investor mining culture, etc.). |
| Tariff Reform is a major blind spot in USA strategy | Current structures risk crushing early-stage domestic processors by making feedstock uncompetitive. |
| Linking Offtake and Fed Contracts | Baskaran’s call to integrate U.S. offtake obligations into federally funded projects (akin to Japan’s JOGMEC) reflects international best practice. |
| Vertical Integration with Allies | The push for vertical integration with allies, rather than merely securing upstream resources, echoes what REEx advocated since our launch: control must extend from rock to magnet. |
| Mineral Ecosystem | Absolutely vital and key to what REEx promotes. Her emphasis on the mineral ecosystem—not just mines, but logistics, energy, and port infrastructure—is refreshingly holistic |
These are smart, actionable, and politically feasible recommendations.
What Needs More Clarity?
One of the biggest problems facing the U.S. is not policy in isolation. It’s fragmentation.
Baskaran’s testimony when discussing the need for investment in ecosystem does confront the fact that America’s rare earth failure is a systems problem—a breakdown across upstream exploration, midstream separation, and downstream magnet manufacturing, each governed by disjointed actors and siloed agencies.
There is no integrated national strategy. No binding industrial policy framework. No unified offtake authority. No centralized coordination with allied programs like Australia’s Critical Minerals Facility (opens in a new tab) or the EU’s CRM Act.
Dr. Baskaran’s recommendations nod in the right direction but do they go far enough? Without a clear framework for aligning finance, permitting, defense procurement, foreign policy, and commercial industry, the U.S. will continue to chase isolated wins while China maintains lockstep control over the full supply chain. Baskaran is a national resource and should elaborate more on how to bring about these systems changes.
Some other factors raised by REEx. The following items are suggested as ideas to ponder for a more proactive, comprehensive, and impactful, not to mention accelerated, advancement toward rare earth metal resiliency in the United States.
First, establishing a rare earth and critical mineral strategic command center within the U.S. government—whether within DOD, DOE, or Commerce- to coordinate vertically across sectors and horizontally across agencies. We and others have suggested a critical mineral and REE czar.
What about standardizing offtake contracts backed by U.S. government credit to de-risk long-term supply agreements for midstream and downstream players? A stretch?
Plus, there is a need for direction of public-private joint ventures in magnet and alloy manufacturing, especially where commercial investment is insufficient to challenge Chinese incumbents.
Dr. Baskaran perhaps does not emphasize the urgency of industrial-scale midstream capacity, which means the processing, separation, and metallurgy activity needed at scale. At this point, the U.S. has no commercial-scale oxide-to-metal capacity at scale. True, there are unfolding efforts, but they are still nascent. Without it, upstream development risks becoming a stranded asset class.
Final Thoughts
Dr. Baskaran’s testimony certainly represents an essential voice in the evolving minerals conversation. She’s right to call for new allies, strategic incentives, and more innovative trade policies.
America also needs a cohesive, systems-level strategy to restore its industrial sovereignty in rare earths. This means unified planning, coordinated offtakes, public capital, and a clear recognition that this is not a mining problem—it is a national industrial policy problem.
Without it, the U.S. would remain dependent not on geology but on design.
Tracking the pulse of global rare earth markets and America’s strategic path to mineral independence. For discussion on investment topics in the field of rare earth elements and critical minerals, see the REEx Forum (opens in a new tab).
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