Inside Trump’s scramble to reduce US dependence on Chinese rare-earth metals

Rare-earth minerals at Tradium, a rare-earth trading company, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on 4 November 2025. Photograph: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, returned from South Carolina last week brandishing a small piece of metal, proclaiming that it was the first rare-earth magnet made in the US in a quarter of a century.

It was, he indicated to Fox Business, proof that the US is ending “China’s chokehold on our supply chain”. Thanks to the South Carolina company eVAC’s new rare-earth mineral processing center, Bessent added: “We’re finally becoming independent again.”