Summer 1982. GM Research Lab. Warren, Michigan.

John Croat made the strongest permanent magnet anyone had ever built. He used neodymium, iron, and boron. He was a metallurgist with a Ph.D. He was not trying to change the world. He was trying to make General Motors' electric motors smaller.

He changed the world anyway.

By 1986 GM had spun the technology into a subsidiary called Magnequench. By the early 1990s the Anderson, Indiana plant was supplying roughly 80% of the magnets in U.S. precision-guided munitions. In 1995, GM sold Magnequench to a consortium led by two Chinese state-owned companies tied to the family of Deng Xiaoping. The deal included a clause that production had to stay in the U.S. for at least ten years. Seven years after that promise ran out, the new owners shipped the equipment to Tianjin. Anderson laid off the workers. America stopped making neodymium-iron-boron magnets at scale.

That was over twenty years ago. America did not make another commercial-scale NdFeB magnet until March of this year.

Last Friday, MP Materials filed a lawsuit in Texas state court accusing USA Rare Earth of stealing its sintering technique. The suit says a former MP engineer took the company's grain boundary diffusion formulations to USAR, which passed them to a third-party technology firm called FOM Technologies. Bloomberg first reported the filing on Wednesday. Grain boundary diffusion is what allows a magnet to keep its magnetism when it gets hot. It is the difference between a working EV motor and a paperweight.

MP is the only large-scale rare earth producer in the U.S. USA Rare Earth started commercial magnet production in Stillwater, Oklahoma eleven weeks ago — the first NdFeB magnets to come out of an American facility in a generation. Both companies have Pentagon backing. Both have major White House attention. Together they represent almost the entire American attempt to rebuild what GM sold thirty years ago. They are now in court against each other.

The shares moved on the news. USAR fell over 3% and dropped below $6 billion in market cap. MP fell 3% to $11.6 billion.

USA Rare Earth did not return a request for comment from Bloomberg. Its statement to Mining.com said the company is "focused on the real challenge: China's dominance of the rare earth supply chain."

That is true. China still makes 94% of the world's NdFeB magnets. The U.S. makes 0.3%. The lawsuit between MP and USAR will be settled in a courtroom. The bigger fight will not be.

The deal REalloys signed with Critical Metals Corp. on May 20 — and confirmed publicly last Thursday — is exactly the kind of pipeline the Pentagon's 2027 ban on Chinese-origin materials was designed to create. REalloys will take 15% of all rare earth concentrate from the Tanbreez deposit in southern Greenland for 15 years, with priority access to dysprosium and terbium, the two heavy metals that keep magnets working in fighter jets, missile guidance, and drones. Tanbreez is one of the largest known heavy rare earth deposits on the planet. Critical Metals owns 92.5% of it after the Greenland government cleared the final ownership transfer in April. The deal feeds REalloys' metallization plant in Euclid, Ohio — the only heavy rare earth metal facility operating in North America.

ProPublica reported on Thursday that the $620 million Pentagon loan announced last November to Vulcan Elements — a North Carolina rare earth magnet startup — was set in motion by a direct request from Peter Navarro, the White House senior counselor for trade. Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, had taken a stake in Vulcan three months earlier. Vulcan's valuation went from around $200 million when 1789 invested to roughly $2 billion after the Pentagon deal landed. Pentagon staff told ProPublica the White House call to fast-track the loan was without precedent in the Office of Strategic Capital's review process. Another company under Pentagon review, drone-parts maker Unusual Machines, lists Trump Jr. on its advisory board.

Benchmark Minerals said this week that sulphuric acid prices have more than doubled in some regions since the Iran war began. Sulphur, the feedstock for sulphuric acid, mostly comes from Middle East oil and gas refining, and more than half of global seaborne sulphur trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Sulphuric acid is what refiners use to leach lithium, nickel, and rare earths out of ore. Benchmark estimates that more than half of all critical minerals production planned for 2026 is exposed to sulphur disruption. Sulphur now accounts for 42% of the cost of producing nickel through high-pressure acid leaching, up from 26% before the war.

Amanda Lacaze, CEO of Lynas Rare Earths, speaking to Time
April 24, 2026

PRASEODYMIUM

Praseodymium is what nobody talks about. Neodymium gets the press. But pull apart any NdFeB magnet — the kind that powers EV motors, wind turbines, headphones, and hard drives — and roughly one in five of the rare earth atoms is praseodymium. They occur together in nature. They get sold together as NdPr oxide. Magnet makers use them as one input. The price went from $73 a kilogram in 2020 to $245 today — up 237% in six years. China refines roughly 90% of the world's supply. The new MP Materials magnets and the USA Rare Earth magnets at the center of last week's lawsuit both use NdPr.

A Rare Earth Exchanges analyst argued this week that the MP versus USA Rare Earth fight, while real, distracts from the bigger story. Japan's Proterial — formerly Hitachi Metals — built the original NdFeB patent fortress. Chinese firms have spent the last decade adding to it and now hold the most advanced patent portfolio in the world. Billions in U.S. government subsidies are trying to rebuild a metallurgical ecosystem that East Asia took forty years to assemble.

— Rare Earth Exchanges

The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital is weighing whether to scrap an $80 million loan offer to ReElement Technologies, a rare earth refiner that was supposed to turn end-of-life magnets and electronic waste into magnet feedstock. Officials vetting the company raised doubts about its ability to scale and questioned its revenue forecasts. The deal is not dead. But the second-guessing fits a pattern across the entire Pentagon-funded rare earth portfolio.

— Bloomberg via Mining.com

The General Administration of Customs released data showing China exported 5,308 tonnes of rare earths in April, worth $64.2 million. The volume settled into the post-licensing-regime rhythm that emerged after Beijing's October 2025 update. The gap between the FOB export price and the domestic Chinese price remains wide — the licensing layer prices in a scarcity that Chinese domestic buyers never pay.

— China General Administration of Customs

Beijing pushed back this week on U.S. pressure for further loosening of rare earth export rules. The commerce ministry said the controls are "lawful" and that China "will cooperate with the U.S. on reasonable concerns." Translation: the licensing regime stays in place, and Washington should plan to negotiate item by item rather than wait for a broad rollback.

— Reuters via InvestorNews