When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he had four years to assess what went right and wrong in his first term before it was sabotaged by COVID-19. To counter the true “China virus” (hegemony over critical minerals), Trump promptly began imposing tariffs with a goal of taking away China’s pricing advantages built up in the wake of decades of globalist policies.
Somewhere during his interregnum – perhaps in discussions with industry leaders – Trump forged a master plan. Perhaps taking a cue from Ezekiel 37, Trump looked at the dry bones of American manufacturing and spoke their revival into existence. He deemed America’s heavy reliance on China for critical minerals a national security risk and that reshoring manufacturing would create good-paying jobs.
To implement the strategy, Trump issued Executive Order 14241, which sought to expedite minerals production project approval. He dusted off the Defense Production Act and other statutes and began throwing seed money into long-dormant industries – and, lo and behold, boatloads of cash began flowing back into American manufacturing.
Just last month, the administration announced plans to invest $3 billion in conditional loans to springboard new critical minerals and battery projects at a roundtable with more than 200 mining executives, educators, investors, and politicians. Among the targeted minerals are bauxite, boron, graphite, niobium, rare earths, scandium, tantalum, and tungsten.
The Center on Global Energy Policy lauded the action, which includes workforce development to offset a structural mismatch between the number of mining engineers, geologists, and metallurgists and the number that an ambitious U.S. critical minerals strategy requires. They also applauded the inclusion of less sexy minerals along with lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earths.
The chief complaint from CGEP scholars Tom Moerenhout and Kevin Brunelli was that the initiative has not gone far enough to address the paucity of private capital flowing into the mining sector. [Could the reasons include permitting timeframes and overburdening regulations, together with government sequestering of high-yielding mineral deposits?]
The largest chunk of the pie was a $1.4 billion loan from the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital that went to Sila Nanotechnologies, which makes lithium-ion battery parts. Another $400 million went to scandium miner Sunrise Energy Metals, while magnet developer Niron Magnetics received $150 million.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank is also lending $25 million to Westwater Resources to develop the Kellyton Graphite Plant in Coosa County, Alabama; $25 million to Global Advanced Metals in Pennsylvania for tantalum and niobium; and $8 million to 5E Advanced Materials LLC in California for its 5E Boron Americas project.
In a separate deal, announced on August 29, the Department of War and private investors, via a fund managed by Pinnacle Asset Management, each provided $400 million to enable Atlantic Alumina Company (ATALCO) to expand domestic alumina output and initiate production of up to 50 metric tons of gallium a year at its Gramercy (Louisiana) facility. ATALCO will also begin research and development into processing of other critical minerals from bauxite ore residue.
The Washington-backed projects may be stimulating private investment after all. For example, Ionic Rare Earths USA just announced a joint venture with Missouri-based US Strategic Metals for construction of magnet recycling facilities at an integrated campus near Frederickstown, Missouri. The $100 million operation intends to process recycled neodymium-iron-boron and samarium-cobalt magnets and magnet scrap and to evaluate recycling heavy rare-earth elements.
Another aid to U.S. critical minerals producers (and a concern for end users) is a new requirement that some lithium-ion battery scrap and tungsten scrap be sold only to U.S. buyers for at least the next 12 months. While the primary goal is a return to domestic production, China controls 80 percent of global tungsten production and in January 2025 tightened the screws on exports — which has driven tungsten prices through the roof.
One company seeking to mitigate the impact of Chinese export policy is Kentucky-based Tungco, which has been a family-owned business since the 1960s. CEO Cliff Nance started the firm’s “Project 74” a few years ago while working with legacy tungsten smelters to improve their recycling yields by operating more efficiently.
Nance says that Washington’s interest in tungsten – used in steelmaking, chip production, nuclear energy, and national defense – led to accelerating Tungco’s plans to bring its new 3,000-ton facility online by summer 2028. The facility, which will increase domestic tungsten recycling by 20 percent, will produce sodium tungstate – the universal feedstock for tungsten metal, tungsten carbide powder, and specialty alloys — using spent cutting tools, drill bits, and wear parts as feedstock.
Project 74 became even more important after President Trump in late July issued Executive Order 14415, which established new federal policy to secure U.S. defense supply chains and ensure critical materials are sourced domestically or from allied nations. As the U.S. today produces no primary tungsten, recycled tungsten becomes even more essential for U.S. users.
Nance says that no sooner had China been granted entry into the World Trade Organization, it began predatory pricing – leading many Western mining operators to shutter facilities and expedite Chinese control of critical minerals markets. The new Chinese squeeze has left just 15 Chinese companies in the tungsten supply chain. As a result, tungsten powder prices jumped by over 640 percent from early 2025 to March 2026, and 110 percent during 2026 alone.
Nance says that, without the Trump administration’s initiatives, “we would still be asleep at the wheel” – hardly responding at all to China’s long-term critical minerals strategy. He compared the U.S. position on critical minerals prior to Trump to the desperate situation of American industry that President Roosevelt faced at the outset of World War II.
Political opposition to the Trump minerals policy has largely focused on opposition to new mining operations and any shift away from an emphasis on renewables – but Nance believes the momentum created by the Trump administration would survive major slashes in defense purchasing because “the cat is already out of the bag” on reindustrialization.