The U.S. Can Secure Rare Earths in China’s Own Backyard

The U.S. imports nearly a million tons of copper each year. China is one of the world’s leading miners of the metal. (Dreamstime)

About the author: Joseph Epstein is director of the Turan Research Center and senior fellow at the Yorktown Institute.

Washington must urgently diversify its rare earth supply chains. China’s new export restrictions will essentially choke off all supply to the U.S. when they are implemented next month. That will leave a massive hole in U.S. supply—70% of which is currently sourced from China.

Ironically, one of the most promising opportunities for supply diversification lies in China’s own backyard: Central Asia.

Few Americans could find Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan on a map. Yet these countries have quietly shaped the modern world for centuries. Kazakhstan was the site of the first space launch. Uzbekistan’s medieval astronomer Ulugh Beg built the most advanced observatory of his time, charting the stars with uncanny precision long before Galileo. It is fitting, then, that this region now sits at the frontier of another scientific and technological revolution: the race for rare earth elements.

Recent findings have shown that Kazakhstan alone may hold the world’s third-largest reserves of rare earths. As Kazakhs like to say, “we have the whole periodic table under our feet.” That includes critical minerals such as tungsten, lithium, copper, and magnesium classified by the U.S. Geological Survey as “high or elevated risk” of trade or supply disruptions.

Neighboring Uzbekistan also boasts significant reserves of USGS-designated high risk critical minerals, such as magnesium and potash. The region holds deposits of many of the very elements China has placed under export controls: yttrium, scandium, erbium, europium, ytterbium, samarium, and lutetium.

Much of the region remains unexplored. Its full potential is still being uncovered—often, ironically, with funding that originated from Western development assistance and scientific partnerships. U.S. taxpayers helped finance geological surveys that identified many of the deposits in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. And yet today it is other nations, not the U.S., racing to capitalize on those discoveries.

Central Asia offers a key advantage others lack. It is willing to handle the messy middle of the rare earth element supply chain. Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has ordered the creation of enterprises to produce and process rare-earth metals. Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has directed his government to develop projects covering the full production cycle, from exploration to refined materials.

Many Western nations shy away from these steps. Environmental and regulatory barriers, as well as political sensitivities, make mining and refining notoriously slow and expensive. In contrast, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan already have mature extractive industries, technical expertise, and governments eager to expand cooperation with the West.

Here, the U.S. has a clear opportunity. By investing in joint extraction and refinement initiatives in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Washington could help the region build local processing capacity and ship refined materials westward through the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. That shipping route, commonly called the Middle Corridor, links Central Asia to Europe via the Caspian and South Caucasus.

Azerbaijan will be indispensable in this process. Its capital city, Baku, is a logistical hub and a political bridge linking Central Asia to Europe. It has led efforts to integrate the region, which is surrounded by Russia, China, and Iran, into a more cohesive economic and strategic bloc.

The rest of the world is waking up to this potential. The European Union invested 2.5 billion euros in new mining and processing projects in Central Asia in June. Germany has committed another $500 million to lithium extraction and processing in East Kazakhstan. Japan purchased a uranium mine and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into mining ventures in both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Yet the region is still courting U.S. engagement. Both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan jostled for President Donald Trump’s attention on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last month. Kazakhstan ended up signing a $4 billion deal with the U.S. for rail locomotives. Uzbekistan purchased $8.5 billion worth of Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.

During the same visit, Mirziyoyev met U.S. executives from Traxys, FLSmidth, the Colorado School of Mines, and McKinsey to expand cooperation on critical minerals and sustainable mining. Traxys signed a $1 billion framework agreement, a new mining training center was announced with the Colorado School of Mines, and McKinsey finalized a strategy to modernize the country’s extractive sector.

The U.S. government must also take steps to cooperate with the region, starting with removing outdated restrictions. The Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a Cold War relic that restricted trade with the Soviet Union, inexplicably still applies to Central Asia. Likewise, Section 907 of the 1992 U.S. Freedom Support Act bans any direct aid to the Azerbaijani government over its war with Armenia, despite both sides having signed a peace agreement at the White House.

Continuing to rely on Beijing for the materials that power our technologies, vehicles, and weapons is no longer sustainable. Central Asia offers a realistic and geopolitically sound path forward—one that aligns U.S. economic interests with regional stability.

Washington must show up, invest, and treat the region as a strategic partner, not a peripheral concern. Rare earths are the new oil. Securing them beyond China isn’t just smart policy. It is essential to America’s security and technological leadership.

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