In 1986, General Motors founded the rare earth magnet company Magnequench. It was based in Indiana. It made the neodymium magnets that went into GM's power steering motors, missile guidance systems, and fighter jet fins. The company was profitable. The technology was American. The workforce knew what it was doing.

By 2004, Magnequench was gone. GM sold it to a Chinese-led consortium in 1995. The new owners shut down the Indiana factory and shipped the equipment to Tianjin. Two hundred and twenty-five workers lost their jobs. The Pentagon lost a domestic magnet supplier. And China gained one more link in the chain it now controls end to end.

Jack Lifton has been telling this kind of story for decades. Last week, he published a new column for InvestorIntel. He updated his inventory of every facility outside China that can actually make rare earth metal. Not plan to. Not announce they will. Do it, right now. He found only a handful. The list barely changed from the month before.

That's because producing a kilogram of rare earth metal is a science project — producing qualified tons at a price customers can afford is an industry. And the industry, outside China, barely exists.

Lifton added two names to his watch list. One is SRE Vietnam, a unit of Japan's Tokai Trading. In July, it shipped five tonnes of NdPr metal to a U.S. magnet maker called Evolution Metals. That's a real shipment to a real buyer. But Lifton says he hasn't checked whether SRE Vietnam made the metal itself or got it from someone else. So it goes on the list with an asterisk.

The second is India's IREL, the state-run rare earth company. IREL refines oxides at its Aluva plant in Kerala. It runs small plants in Bhopal that have turned out batches of lanthanum, cerium, and neodymium metal. But test batches are not output. Lifton puts IREL in the "demo stage" column. He won't count it as a real producer until it shows steady output, tight quality, and a buyer who has tested the product.

That leaves the same short list it was last month. Shin-Etsu in Japan and Vietnam. Less Common Metals in the UK. A few others. Meanwhile, governments have poured billions into plans. The U.S. alone has committed a $500 million conditional loan for Phoenix Tailings and a $110/kg price floor for MP Materials. Europe just handed Neo Performance Materials up to €126 million to expand its Estonian magnet plant from 2,000 to 5,000 tonnes a year.

China, for its part, has been building this system for 30 years. It refines about 90% of the world's rare earths. The gap between a check and a factory is where most of the Western supply chain lives right now.

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Neo Performance Materials won a grant of up to €126 million from the EU Innovation Fund to grow its rare earth magnet plant in Estonia. The project, called GAUSS, would raise yearly magnet output from about 2,000 tonnes to roughly 5,000 tonnes. One third of the new output is set aside for wind farms off Europe's coast. Neo started shipping magnets to a Tier 1 EV motor buyer from the plant in September. The total build is expected to cost around €400 million. Neo's Silmet oxide plant in Sillamäe will also be tripled. The EU named Silmet a key project under the Critical Raw Materials Act this month. That makes it one of the few spots in Europe that can split oxides, make metal, and press magnets in one place. For context, MP Materials is building a Texas magnet campus aimed at about 10,000 tonnes of output.

Phoenix Tailings will build a $375 million rare earth plant at Eastman Business Park in Rochester, New York. The plant is called Freedom Separation. It will process more than 18,000 tonnes of mined and recycled feedstock a year. At full speed it will turn out over 4,400 tonnes of split rare earth oxides. Output is set to start in 2027 and hit full pace by 2028. The Department of War's Office of Strategic Capital has made a $500 million loan pledge for the broader Freedom Project. The DOE added a $66 million grant. At least 90 new jobs are expected at the Rochester site alone. Over 500 are planned across all Freedom plants in New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

Ex-China NdPr is up 23% this year and sits above the $110/kg floor the Pentagon set for MP Materials. But Canaccord says the rare earth producers it covers are down 28% on average. Developers are down 17%. The REMX rare earth ETF slid from above $100 in May to the high $50s. Canaccord blames global macro, not fundamentals. The 10-year Treasury yield sits above 5%. Tech stocks are wobbling. The speculative bid has vanished. That leaves long-duration, capital-heavy mining projects caught up in a broad risk-off trade. On paper, the producers trade at just 0.57 times net asset value. Canaccord sees 104% upside in MP Materials and 108% in Lynas. Energy Fuels stands out at a C$30 target, which would be about 150% above current levels. The gap between physical prices and equity prices is as wide as it has been all year. Canaccord says demand for NdFeB magnets should grow at 7.3% a year through 2035, reaching about 365,000 tonnes. The fundamentals haven't changed. The market's mood has.

MP Materials jumped 111% in one week.

Lithium Americas jumped 194% in two weeks.

Trilogy Metals jumped 211% overnight.

Three different stocks.

Three different months.

One thing in common.

Every single one was touched by Trump’s “National Energy Dominance Council” - a shadow committee most Americans have never heard of.

Those three moves were warning shots.

Tiny grants and stakes, measured in millions.

The next move is a five-trillion-dollar rebuild of the American power grid.

And I’ve identified the one company sitting at the dead center of it.

Here’s where the weapon fires next >>

India's state-run iron ore giant NMDC is looking for mineral assets in South America, Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia. The company wants 20% of sales from metals other than iron ore. Chairman Amitava Mukherjee confirmed the push in a recent talk, with targets that include lithium, cobalt, copper, and rare earths.

— Business Standard, October 25

China's 12-month pause on its expanded rare earth export controls runs out on November 10. The broader U.S.-China trade truce was pushed to January 10, 2027, but that deal did not mention rare earths by name. Magnet shipments to the U.S. fell 28.7% in September from August.

— Startup Fortune / Metal.com

Shanghai Metals Market's weekly review showed ex-China prices falling across the board. Terbium oxide FOB dropped $8/kg. Neodymium metal FOB fell $2/kg. Praseodymium metal FOB also shed $2/kg. Trading stayed thin ahead of the November 10 deadline.

— Shanghai Metals Market, October 24

Samarium goes into SmCo magnets for missiles, fighter jets, and radar. Canaccord data shows CIF North America samarium is priced at 346 times the Chinese domestic quote. Dysprosium in Rotterdam trades near $1,074/kg versus $227 in China. These gaps show what happens when one country controls refining and restricts exports.

— Canaccord Genuity / nai500.com, October 21