America's Rare Earth Reckoning Is Less Than 60 Days Away

OilPrice.com · Michael Scott · 2026-11-06 02:00 UTC

Trump's $12 billion rare earth plan faces a critical test as a January 1 Pentagon deadline collides with America's dependence on Chinese processing.

In February 2026, President Trump announced one of the most ambitious industrial security initiatives of his presidency: Project Vault, a $12 billion strategic stockpile of critical minerals and rare earths designed to protect American manufacturers and the defense industrial base from supply disruptions.

This announcement was backed by a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the largest single financing in the agency’s 92-year history, plus roughly $2 billion in private capital from companies like General Motors, Boeing, Google, and Stellantis.

It was a welcome and necessary move. But there’s a problem with Project Vault that almost nobody is talking about: a stockpile of raw rare earth materials that can’t be processed into usable metals and magnets is just an expensive collection of rocks. And right now, the ability to do that processing in North America barely exists.

Read the full story at OilPrice.com · All coverage of this story