Rachel Stark

To counter the United States’ dependency on China’s critical earth minerals, the United States should place greater emphasis on developing domestic capacity for critical mineral processing and continue to build alternate supply chains through agreements with allies. Pursuing this dual-pronged approach will prevent the United States from experiencing a weakened defense industry and threatened, fragile supply chains due to China’s targeted restrictions on critical minerals from the U.S. This resource competition is largely driven by opposing geopolitical aims between the U.S. and China.

Executive Summary