How China wields rare earths as a strategic weapon – DW – 06/23/2025
China's grip on rare earths — vital for smartphones, EVs, and military tech — has left the US, Europe and India vulnerable. Until global supplies increase, Beijing wields great power over the West's critical industries.
China's chokehold on rare earths — the minerals essential for electronics, automotive and defense systems — gave it significant leverage over the United States during recent tariff talks in London.
Controlling about 60% of global rare-earth production and nearly 90% of refining, China tightened its grip in April by imposing export controls on seven rare-earth elements and permanent magnets.
The curbs, partly in response to sky-high tariffs on Chinese exports imposed by US President Donald Trump, exposed US vulnerabilities, as the country lacks domestic refining capacity.
"The whole world economy relies on these magnets from China," Jost Wübbeke, managing partner at the Berlin-based Sinolytics research house specializing in China, told DW. "If you stop exporting those, it will be felt across the globe."
The resulting supply chain disruptions have hit American industries hard. US carmaker Ford, for example, announced two weeks ago (June 13) it had been forced to scale back SUV production in Chicago due to shortages, while auto parts suppliers Aptiv and BorgWarner said they were developing motors with minimal or no rare-earth content to counter supply constraints.
Michael Dunne, a China-focused automotive consultant, told the that China's curbs "could halt America's automotive plants entirely."
A survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China revealed that 75% of US firms expect their rare-earth stocks to be exhausted within three months. US producers urged Washington to negotiate an end to the restrictions, and in London, China agreed to speed up export license approvals, although a large backlog persists.
It is also unclear whether the deal includes access for US military suppliers, who rely on these minerals for fighter jets and missile systems.
China's strategic use of rare earths as a geopolitical tool is not new. In 2010, Beijing halted exports to Japan for two months amid a territorial dispute, triggering price spikes and exposing supply chain risks.
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Gabriel Wildau, managing director at New York-based CEO advisory firm Teneo, warned that China's export licensing regime is a permanent fixture, not merely a response to Trump's tariffs. In a note to clients, he wrote that "supply cutoffs will remain an ever-present threat," signaling China's intent to maintain leverage over Washington.
The US is not the only country facing a rare-earth shortage. The European Union relies on China for 98% of its rare-earth magnets needed for auto components, fighter jets and medical imaging devices.
The European Association of Automotive Supplies (CLEPA) warned earlier this month the sector was "already experiencing significant disruption" due to China's export curbs, adding that they had caused "the shutdown of several production lines and plants across Europe, with further impacts expected in the coming weeks as inventories deplete."
Alberto Prina Cerai, a research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), told DW that Brussels urgently needed to "buy time."
"In terms of scale, we [the West] cannot catch up with China," Prina Cerai warned. "They have an integrated, mine-to-magnet supply chain that is very hard to replicate." But while a complete decoupling from China is "unthinkable" in the short term, he said the EU should "manage this interdependence with a coherent industrial strategy."
The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, aims to produce 7,000 tons of EU-based magnets by 2030 under the Critical Raw Materials Act, with several mining, refining, and recycling projects underway. A huge rare-earth processing plant is due to open in Estonia later in the year, and another large facility in southwestern France will be operational next year.
After meeting with his Chinese counterpart earlier this month, EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic called China's curbs "extremely disruptive" to Europe's auto and industrial sectors. China did propose a "green channel" to expedite license approvals for EU firms, but experts warn approvals could still take up to 45 days.
Despite having the world's fifth-largest rare-earth reserves, at 6.9 million metric tons, India contributes less than 1% of the global supply of rare earths. The South Asian country lacks the refining capacity to process them for use in high-tech applications. India also relies on Chinese exports, which have also faced restrictions.
Although New Delhi has stepped up efforts to diversify its supply through deals with the US, Australia and Central Asian nations, progress has so far been slow.
News agency Reuters reported recently that New Delhi ordered its state-run miner IREL to stop exports of the domestically produced minerals, including to Japan, to safeguard supplies for the country's producers. Last year, IREL delivered a third of the 2,900 metric tons of the rare earths it mines to Japan, via a Japanese processing firm.
With China's stranglehold unlikely to be rivaled anytime soon, G7 leaders meeting in Canada on June 15 tentatively agreed on a strategy to anticipate critical rare-earth shortages, vowing a joint response to deliberate market disruption, such as China's, as well as moves to diversify production and supply.
"Recognizing this threat to our economies, as well as various other risks to the resilience of our critical minerals supply chains, we will work together and with partners beyond the G7 to swiftly protect our economic and national security," the group of advanced economies said in a document called G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan.
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ISPI's Prina Cerai told DW that access to rare earths will become more critical for the West as advanced technologies emerge, noting how "robotics and humanoids might be an important market" in the medium term.
After China's 44 million tons of rare-earth deposits, Brazil, India and Australia have the next largest deposits, collectively around 31.3 million tons, according to the US Geological Survey. Around 20 million tons were recently discovered in Kazakhstan.
The US and Australia are the most advanced in ramping up their own rare-earth mining and processing output, while other countries' plans are still in the early to mid-stages, requiring 5-10 years, environmental considerations and billions in investment.
Another future source could be Greenland, despite its harsh weather conditions. The US and EU have already signed cooperation agreements, and in 2023, the Tanbreez Project, in southern Greenland, was ranked as the top rare earth project by mining industry data provider Mining Intelligence, with an estimated 28.2 million tons of minerals.
Reuters reported earlier this month that the US Export-Import Bank was set to approve a loan of up to $120 million (€104 million) to the firm running Tanbreez, in what would be the Trump administration's first overseas investment in a mining project. Trump has repeatedly threatened to acquire Greenland for US strategic purposes, but the island nation, which is a Danish territory, has rejected the overture.
The EU, meanwhile, has identified 25 of the 34 minerals on its official list of critical raw materials in Greenland, including rare earths, in another sign of the country's increasingly crucial role in the global economy.
But until alternative rare-earth supplies are significantly scaled up, China will continue to wield this critical resource as a powerful geopolitical weapon, holding global industries and nations in its grip.
Sinolytics' Wübbeke is skeptical about whether other countries will ever tackle China's stranglehold on rare earths due to the market leader's huge cost advantage.
"Once China takes down export controls, prices will go down and the supply situation will ease. Nobody will talk about it [overrealiance on China] again because then it'll be about prices," Wübbeke told DW. "Non-Chinese mines and refineries have to compete with these prices and normally they cannot."
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