Just recently, a little-known American company with extensive connections to the Trump family and the son of the Secretary of Commerce invested in one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs to produce missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other critical goods. According to the New York Times, the Trump administration “approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.”
While tungsten is not a rare earth element, it is part of a broader category of critical minerals that have become the focus of intensifying geopolitical competition. This investment is one indication of the extent to which the race to find and refine critical minerals and rare earth elements is on, with vast implications for countries everywhere.
Past commodity determinism
For much of the twentieth century, oil was the essential commodity behind industrialization, transportation, military power, and economic growth. Countries with large petroleum reserves gained significant geopolitical influence, while import-dependent nations remained exposed to supply disruptions and price shocks. Created in 1960, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reshaped global energy markets by enabling major producers to coordinate output and influence prices. Saudi Arabia, with vast spare capacity and low extraction costs, became OPEC’s central actor, able to stabilize — or disrupt — global oil markets by adjusting production.
Rare earth elements (REEs) are used in specialized industrial applications and have become essential to modern technology, renewable energy systems, advanced manufacturing, and national defense. Despite their name, rare earths are a relatively abundant group of 17 elements: scandium, yttrium, and the lanthanides. Their crustal abundance ranges from cerium — the 25th most common of the 78 common elements in Earth’s crust — to thulium and lutetium, the least abundant rare earth elements.
Although only a tiny fraction of the world’s mineral production by volume, their unique magnetic, optical, catalytic, and electrochemical properties make them irreplaceable in many sophisticated products. Smartphones, electric vehicles, wind turbines, precision-guided missiles, radar systems, satellites, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence infrastructure all depend, directly or indirectly, on reliable supplies of rare earth elements.
Mining is only one stage of the highly complex rare earth supply chain. After extraction, ores must be chemically processed, separated, purified, converted into alloys, and manufactured into components before they can be used by industry. These steps require deep technical expertise, specialized facilities, and rigorous environmental management. In many cases, the ability to turn rare earth concentrates into usable materials is more strategically important than owning the deposits themselves.
According to the International Energy Agency 2026 report on rare earth elements, China holds roughly half of the global reserves, Brazil follows with 23.3%, India accounts for roughly 8%, Australia 7%, Russia 4.2%, and the United States 2.1%.
Beyond its share of mineral resources, China accounts for approximately 60% of global rare earth element production and is responsible for 90% of processing, a dominance achieved through deliberate strategies to source rare earth elements globally and consolidate midstream processing domestically.
Share of global supply of magnet rare earths and magnet manufacturing, 2024.
Catching up to China
China currently holds a dominant position in rare earth elements that no other country can match. In response, the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia, Canada, South Korea, and others are pursuing strategies to diversify supply, expand domestic refining capacity, promote recycling, and thereby reduce reliance on Chinese suppliers.
Although mining operations can be developed in many countries, building advanced separation facilities, refining plants, magnet manufacturing industries, and skilled workforces will require years of effort and billions of dollars in investment.
Comparing rare earth elements to oil
OPEC emerged because a relatively small number of countries controlled a substantial proportion of the world’s easily accessible petroleum reserves. By coordinating production quotas, member governments sought to stabilize markets while maximizing export revenues. Saudi Arabia became the organization’s pivotal member because it had (and has) enormous reserves, exceptionally low production costs, and considerable spare production capacity, enabling it to increase or reduce oil production to influence world prices, moderate supply disruptions, or reinforce collective decisions made by OPEC.
Although China now holds a dominant position, governments and private companies are actively identifying and developing new mines, adopting more efficient refining techniques, and conducting research on alternative technologies. Moreover, untapped rare earth resources are known to exist in Australia, Canada, Brazil, Greenland, several African countries, parts of Southeast Asia, and now Central Asia. Developing these deposits will require capital investment and careful environmental stewardship, but they represent potential global supply diversification and opportunities for joint investment in processing facilities, coordinated research programs, and long-term purchasing agreements.
Possibilities for international cooperation
As rare earth elements become increasingly essential, countries need mechanisms to stabilize supplies, encourage investment, coordinate production, and reduce market volatility. The Rare Earth Industry Association (REIA), a nonprofit organization, already advances some of these goals through stakeholder initiatives, primarily from an industry perspective.
Broader efforts are needed in addition to industry mining and production and market coordination, and they should include consumer considerations, technological cooperation, environmental standards, and strategic planning.
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An International Rare Earth Elements Organization (IREEO) is worth considering
Full-fledged international organizations across many fields, including trade and commodities, have been losing support, with some nearing termination. Even so, a multi-national rare earth element organization is worth considering because, as noted previously, rare earth elements underpin many technologies driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Such a hypothetical organization could:
- Improve transparency in global production, inventories, and demand forecasts to reduce uncertainty for manufacturers, investors, and governments while helping stabilize prices.
- Promote long-term investments supporting geological exploration and testing, environmental review, permitting, financing, and construction.
- Establish common environmental and labor standards to address hazardous chemical risks, significant water consumption, and extensive waste management challenges.
Any institutional framework should draw on existing models for commodity organizations and international resource forums. It could include a Ministerial Council of mining and natural resources ministers, an Executive Board representing major producing and refining countries, and a Secretariat to collect data, conduct research, convene technical meetings, and manage cooperative programs.
China would inevitably have a major role, but excessive Chinese influence could deter participation by Western governments and private investors. China’s importance should be acknowledged while ensuring rotating leadership among major producing countries and requiring broad international support for key decisions. Even if established, such an organization would face serious political, financial, and national-security challenges.
The notion of a new international organization today is certainly aspirational. The reality, however, is that demand for these materials has been growing exponentially and will continue to do so, thus calling for action by the international community to ensure stable, transparent, and sustainable access to these resources.
Another option: A forum for cooperation
A potentially more politically acceptable approach would be simply to create a forum for cooperation designed to improve transparency, encourage responsible investment, promote sustainable mining practices, coordinate research, facilitate emergency consultations during supply disruptions, and support long-term supply security.
Many obstacles could derail or weaken such efforts, including inadequate representation of consumer nations, exclusion of the populous Global South, limited private-sector interest, insufficient transparency, uncertain financing, trade disputes, environmental concerns, and more. Some form of multilateral cooperation, however — balancing the interests of producers, consumers, developed economies, and developing nations — would offer a path to reducing geopolitical tensions while sustaining technological progress.
Skepticism is understandable. Many obstacles could derail or weaken such an effort. Yet the need remains clear: Like it or not, rare earth elements are essential to modern economies, societies, and national security. Without a cooperative mechanism now, we will all pay a heavy price later.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: The Richat Structure, often called the Eye of Africa, is a prominent circular geological feature at the northwestern edge of the Taoudeni Basin, on the Adrar Plateau of the Sahara. Cover Photo Credit: United States Geological Survey.
