Japan's more than decade-long effort to reduce its dependence on Chinese rare earths offers a sobering lesson for Washington as it attempts to secure its own critical supply chains, a Brookings Institution fellow has argued in Foreign Affairs, as "Hvylya" reports.
Ryan Hass, a former NSC director for China, writes that Tokyo is more than a decade ahead of Washington in this effort. At its peak in 2010, Japan sourced roughly 90 percent of its rare earths from China. Today, that proportion has dropped to 60 percent. The United States, by contrast, still imports about 70 percent of its rare earths from China.
And rare earths, Hass stresses, are only one chokepoint. China controls midstream processing in other crucial supply chains - including active pharmaceutical ingredients, batteries, drones, robotics, and solar manufacturing. "Any expectation that Washington will escape economic interdependence from China is an illusion," he writes. "Progress will have to be measured in degrees."
To strengthen its position, Hass argues, the Trump administration should expand long-term contracts and purchasing guarantees, accelerate environmental reviews of domestic mining and refining, and fund midstream processing to build a mine-to-magnet supply chain with no production in or dependencies on China. Washington also needs to build stockpiles and set price floors "to prevent China from undercutting U.S. and allied producers, thereby wiping out competition and distorting the market."
The vulnerability was exposed in stark terms in April 2025, when the administration appeared caught off-guard by China's move to weaponize rare-earth, critical mineral, and magnet exports in response to Trump's tariff escalation to 145 percent. These products are used in a vast array of modern electronics, and losing access to them, Hass notes, could bring some U.S. factory floors to a standstill.
Previously: Pentagon Pulls Marines and Fighter Jets From Asia to Iran, Tilting Indo-Pacific Balance.