China’s Rare Earth Cutoff Sparks Alarm: Why Trump’s Economic Nationalism Was Always About Survival
China’s decision to halt exports of seven critical rare earth elements to the United States has triggered a fresh round of panic in boardrooms from Detroit to Silicon Valley. The move, which Beijing claims is a licensing issue, is being interpreted by global markets as a thinly veiled act of economic retaliation in response to President Donald Trump’s aggressive 145% tariffs on Chinese goods.
The rare earths targeted—dysprosium, terbium, lutetium, and others—may not be household names, but they are irreplaceable components in the motors of electric vehicles, the turbines of jet engines, the systems that power artificial intelligence, and even the guidance mechanisms of next-generation weapons systems. These are not just commodities. These are the arteries of modern industry and defense.
This isn’t the first time China has wielded its rare earth monopoly like a geopolitical blade. But the current escalation feels different. With over 60% of the world’s rare earths produced in China—and nearly 90% of global processing controlled by Beijing—Washington is facing a crisis decades in the making.
The question now isn’t whether America can recover its industrial sovereignty. The question is why we ever lost it in the first place.
For years, critics painted Donald Trump’s economic nationalism as backward-looking. They scoffed at his Made in America agenda, ridiculed his focus on supply chains, and dismissed his tariffs as political theater. But the escalating standoff with China reveals something now undeniable: Trump was right.
While previous administrations allowed America’s industrial backbone to be offshored for the sake of short-term profit and globalist orthodoxy, Trump’s approach was grounded in hard geopolitical logic. His demand for strategic decoupling wasn’t a slogan—it was a survival imperative.
From semiconductors to solar panels to steel, America’s dependency on China isn’t just a trade issue—it’s a national security threat. And nowhere is this more evident than in rare earths.
If China’s export pause becomes a long-term chokehold, U.S. manufacturers will face catastrophic slowdowns. Electric vehicle production could grind to a halt. AI development could stall. Even basic military readiness could be compromised.
It’s not enough to hope that China lifts the ban. The time for hope has passed. The Trump doctrine—onshoring production, securing domestic mineral supply chains, and rebuilding critical industries—must now become permanent national policy, regardless of political party.
This crisis exposes the fatal flaw of free-trade dogma: it only works when all players follow the rules. China never did. And now, the price of that naïveté is being paid by every American whose job depends on a factory that doesn’t have enough magnets to build a motor.
Trump understood this. He saw the fragility beneath the surface of a “global economy” built on bad faith and false assumptions. And while pundits fixated on his rhetoric, he laid the groundwork for a return to American industrial independence.
The rare earth war is just beginning. The real test now is whether America has the political will to finish what Trump started.