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America Relies on China for 100% of 15 Critical Minerals — One Man Says That’s About to Change
The U.S. can’t build fighter jets, electric vehicles, or smartphones without materials controlled entirely by its top strategic rival. Former CIA and Pentagon advisor Jim Rickards says an unprecedented federal response is already underway — and most Americans have no idea.
Baltimore, MD, May 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The United States currently depends on China for 100% of its supply of 15 critical minerals. Not most of its supply. Not a majority. All of it.
These aren’t niche materials with limited applications. They are the essential building blocks of modern life and national defense. Without rare earth minerals, the U.S. military cannot fly F-35 fighter jets. Without lithium, there are no electric vehicle batteries. Without these materials, there are no smartphones, no laptops, no flat-screen televisions, and no advanced semiconductors.
“We’re completely dependent on our number one strategic competitor,” said Jim Rickards, an economist, best-selling author, and former advisor to the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House. “That’s a huge problem for America.”
What most Americans don’t realize, according to Rickards’s recent free presentation, is that this vulnerability didn’t happen overnight. It was decades in the making — and the response now underway to reverse it is unlike anything the country has seen in modern history.
How America Lost Control
The roots of the problem go back to the 1990s, when U.S. companies began shifting production overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor. After China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the migration accelerated. Entire industries — and the supply chains underneath them — moved offshore.
Manufacturing wasn’t the only thing that left. The mining and processing of the raw materials that feed manufacturing left with it. While China invested aggressively in mining infrastructure and rare earth processing, the U.S. let its own mining sector atrophy under layers of regulation and permitting timelines that could stretch to a decade or more.
The result, Rickards says in his presentation, is a dependency that now threatens both economic competitiveness and national security.
“After many years of underinvestment in the mining sector, we now rely on China for 100% of 15 key minerals,” Rickards said. “Without these minerals we wouldn’t have Tesla cars. Our military wouldn’t be able to fly F-35 fighter jets. And we wouldn’t have smartphones, laptops, or flat-screen TVs.”
The Federal Response No One Expected
What’s now underway to close that gap, Rickards’s presentation argues, goes far beyond typical policy adjustments. He describes it as a full-scale, government-backed mobilization to rebuild America’s mining and mineral processing capabilities from the ground up.
It started with an executive order titled “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production,” directing federal agencies to ramp up mining operations on public lands. The Financial Times has estimated those lands hold as much as $100 trillion in untapped mineral wealth.
Then came the permitting overhaul. Through a program called FAST-41, mining projects that once required up to 10 years of approvals are now being fast-tracked in a matter of weeks. The Thacker Pass lithium project in Nevada received its federal permits in just 89 days. The stated goal is to bring that timeline down to 28 days.
“This is a true game-changer for the industry,” Rickards said. “A lot of big investors want nothing to do with mining projects because it normally could take over a decade for them to see any return. But with these accelerated permits, that entire equation has changed.”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has summed up the administration’s stance bluntly: “Everybody likes to say, ‘drill, baby, drill.’ I know that President Trump has another initiative for us, which is ‘mine, baby, mine.’”
The Government Is Becoming a Shareholder
Perhaps the most striking development, according to Rickards’s presentation, is what’s happening beyond regulation. The federal government has begun taking direct equity stakes in mining companies it considers strategically critical.
The Pentagon invested $400 million in MP Materials, the only active rare earth mining operation in the U.S., becoming the company’s largest shareholder. It also agreed to purchase the company’s rare earth output at a guaranteed floor price of $110 per kilogram.
“The company now basically has a guaranteed buyer for its products,” Rickards said. “The best kind of buyer you can ask for — a buyer with unlimited spending power. The U.S. government.”
That was followed by a $35 million federal investment in Trilogy Metals to secure critical mining projects in Alaska. Reports indicate the administration is also planning a direct stake in Lithium Americas. And a $5 billion mining investment fund is being created specifically to take equity positions in companies producing critical minerals domestically.
Rich Nolan, the CEO of the National Mining Association, has called it “the New Deal for minerals.”
$9 Trillion in Demand — And No Domestic Supply
The urgency behind these moves becomes clearer when you look at what’s happening on the demand side. In under a year, major corporations have committed nearly $9 trillion to new manufacturing operations on U.S. soil. Apple, Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor, Eli Lilly, Hyundai, GE Aerospace, and dozens of others are building out facilities that will require enormous quantities of raw materials to construct and power.
“You cannot have an industrial boom without energy from coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear power,” Rickards said. “And you cannot have an industrial boom without metals like copper, iron ore, rare earth elements, lithium, and silicon.”
Every new chip fab requires copper wiring. Every advanced manufacturing line depends on rare earths. Every factory needs a power source. And right now, Rickards says, the U.S. is trying to build a 21st-century industrial base while importing the most critical inputs from the very country it’s trying to compete against.
A Pattern Rickards Has Watched Play Out Before
Rickards’s presentation sees a clear historical parallel. In the early 2000s, China launched its own state-backed industrialization push. The country consumed twice as much steel between 2000 and 2020 as the U.S. did during the entire 20th century. That government-driven demand triggered a supercycle in natural resources — a sustained, multi-year boom in the value of metals, energy, and raw materials worldwide.
Rickards believes the same dynamic is now emerging in the United States — only this time, it’s compounded by a simultaneous effort to unwind decades of mineral dependency on a strategic rival.
“Throughout history, every single industrialization effort has been powered by natural resources,” Rickards said. “I honestly never thought I would see another supercycle in my lifetime. But here we are.”
Adam Rozencwajg, who manages a natural resource hedge fund, shares a similar outlook, calling this “the best opportunity that I’ve seen probably in the 150-odd years that we’ve been studying these markets.”
Why Rickards Believes This Is Just the Beginning
Rickards’s presentation says the moves made so far — the permitting overhauls, the direct equity investments, the $5 billion mining fund — represent the opening phase of a much longer campaign. The dependency on China took decades to develop, and unwinding it will require sustained investment at a scale most people haven’t yet imagined.
But the direction, he believes, is now irreversible.
“This is an unprecedented situation,” Rickards said. “Because we’ve never seen the U.S. government support a sector like it’s supporting the mining industry.”
Rickards has published his full analysis through his research service, which is followed by thousands of readers nationwide.
About the Presentation
Jim Rickards' full video presentation is free to watch and available for on-demand viewing at no cost. To access the complete session, click here.
About Jim Rickards and Paradigm Press
Jim Rickards is an economist, best-selling author, and one of the most connected figures in the world of international finance and national security. Over a career spanning nearly five decades, he has advised the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House. He helped craft the Petrodollar Accord, played a key role in resolving the Iran hostage crisis, and worked alongside the Federal Reserve during the Long-Term Capital Management banking crisis. His books Currency Wars and The Death of Money have shaped how policymakers and investors think about the intersection of geopolitics and markets. His research is published by Paradigm Press, an independent firm whose readers have given it a 4.8-star rating on Google across more than 1,900 public reviews.
Derek Warren Public Relations Manager Paradigm Press Group Email: dwarren@paradigmpressgroup.com
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