{"id":5371,"date":"2026-08-01T14:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T14:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/5371\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T14:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T14:47:13","slug":"pain-or-gain-us-moves-to-decouple-its-defence-industry-from-chinas-rare-earths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/5371\/","title":{"rendered":"Pain or gain? US moves to decouple its defence industry from China\u2019s rare earths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent US executive order requires major arms manufacturers to trace their multi-tier supply chains and actively phase out Chinese <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/topics\/rare-earths?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">rare earths<\/a>, aiming to end years of reliance on cheap minerals from China.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Far from a radical policy shift, industry observers view the directive as a long-overdue enforcement crackdown designed to inflict short-term contractor pain for long-term national security gain.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">While contractors face immediate hurdles to requalify suppliers and find non-Chinese alternatives, US analysts said the market adjustments were manageable, though delivery timetables for future military hardware could slightly stretch.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">They also warned that true strategic independence needed sustained, long-term capital investment in non-Chinese midstream processing.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Signed on July 20 by US President Donald Trump, the executive order significantly tightens the conditions under which the Department of Defence can issue waivers for defence-critical imports from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">US defence procurement rules strictly prohibit sourcing from adversary states certain \u201ccovered materials\u201d \u2013 ranging from rare earth magnets to newly added inputs like gallium and germanium \u2013 with exemptions available under waiver conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Rare earth mining is poisoning Thailand\u2019s Mekong tributaries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent US executive order requires major arms manufacturers to trace their multi-tier supply chains and actively phase&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[867,407,14,63,2622,2359,3088,139,1745,2352,3089,273,1927,520,1789,856],"class_list":["post-5371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-beijing","tag-china","tag-defence-industry","tag-donald-trump","tag-executive-order","tag-gallium","tag-germanium","tag-iran","tag-north-korea","tag-pentagon","tag-rare-earths","tag-russia","tag-supply-chain","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}