FEDERAL POLICY
Washington Came to Nebraska. That Tells You Everything.
Southeast Nebraska is not the kind of place cabinet members fly to on a Tuesday. It's farm country. Corn, soybeans, small towns with one stoplight. But yesterday, October 14, six top officials showed up at the same patch of dirt near the village of Elk Creek.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright came. EXIM Chairman John Jovanovic came. Governor Jim Pillen came. So did Senators Fischer and Ricketts and Congressman Smith. They toured one site: NioCorp's Elk Creek mine.
NioCorp plans to pull eight products from a single ore body here. The list reads like a rare earth wish list — NdPr oxide, dysprosium oxide, terbium oxide, plus niobium, scandium, and titanium. A study from August puts the project at $4.1 billion in pre-tax value with a 40-year mine life. That's real money from real rock.
Why does this visit matter? EXIM is still reviewing NioCorp's loan under its Make More in America program. When the head of the bank that writes the check shows up at your site, that means something. It's not a yes. But it's the next best thing.
And the timing is hard to miss. China's rare earth export control pause runs out on November 10 — twenty-six days from now. Beijing froze its tightest rules for one year. No one knows if they will renew, narrow, or drop the pause. The IEA says $6.5 trillion of Western industry — EVs, chips, defense — sits on the other side of that date.
So Washington is doing what it does when it's worried. It's showing up. Shaking hands. Standing next to shovels.
NioCorp CEO Mark Smith said the visit let his team show officials "the progress underway at the site." He talked about what Elk Creek could mean for jobs and security in the region. Once built, it would be the second-largest rare earth site in the U.S., behind only Mountain Pass in California.
Right now, America buys almost every one of the eight products NioCorp plans to make from abroad. That list includes niobium for jet engines, scandium for alloys, and the rare earth oxides that go into magnets. One mine in one state could cut that import bill across all of them.
One mine won't close the full gap. China built its rare earth lead over thirty years. But six officials on a plane to a cornfield in Nebraska tells you the mood has shifted. November 10 is twenty-six days away. Washington is acting like it.
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| Source: Strategic Metals Invest · Updated Oct 9, 2026 · USD/kg |
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ALSO THIS WEEK
EARNINGS
China Northern Rare Earth Expects Profits to More Than Double
China's biggest rare earth miner said net profit for the first nine months of 2026 will hit RMB 3.62–3.68 billion. That's up 135–139% from a year ago. The reason: high prices for its main products and strong demand from EVs and high-end gear.
Its magnet unit alone pulled in RMB 9.5 billion in the first half — up 107%. That's not just mining growth. It's the kind of growth Western firms are still trying to build. China isn't only digging up rare earths. It's turning them into magnets, alloys, and motors — and making money at every step.
DEFENSE
Ukraine's Drone War Exposes America's Magnet Gap
Rare Earth Exchanges linked the drone war in Ukraine to a coming crunch in U.S. defense supply chains. Every brushless motor in a military drone needs rare earth magnets. Most of those magnets still come from China.
Starting January 1, 2027, DFARS rules widen the ban on Chinese magnets in defense gear. That gives U.S. drone makers less than 80 days to find new sources or risk losing contracts. REEx calls it a "transition vulnerability window." That's the gap where the old supply is banned but the new supply isn't ready yet.
EVENTS
LME Week Brings Critical Minerals to London Starting Monday
London's annual metals week kicks off October 19. Critical minerals are all over the schedule. Monday: the Argus Critical Minerals Forum. Tuesday: Project Blue and the Minor Metals Trade Association host a session on "The Shifting Critical Materials World Order."
Wednesday brings the Wood Mackenzie LME Forum. The Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce is also running an evening event on minerals in the Americas, hosted at Canada House on Trafalgar Square. If you want to see where the money side of the rare earth world gathers, it's London next week.
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“We're extremely proud of what we're building in Nebraska… This visit gives us the opportunity to show them firsthand the progress underway at the site, and discuss what Elk Creek can mean for American critical mineral security, manufacturing and jobs.”
— Mark A. Smith, Executive Chairman & CEO, NioCorp Developments, October 12, 2026
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AROUND THE MARKET
Greenland Mines Backs Neo's Estonian Rare Earth Plant as EU Strategic Project
Greenland Mines welcomed the EU's pick of Neo Performance Materials' Silmet 2.0 plan as one of 46 new strategic projects under the Critical Raw Materials Act. The idea: ship rare earth feedstock from Greenland's Sarfartoq deposit to Neo's plant in Estonia for refining. The company calls it a "North Atlantic Critical Metals Corridor" — Greenland to Europe, no China in the middle.
Bao Gang Raises Q4 Rare Earth Concentrate Price 0.5%
Bao Gang United Steel set its Q4 rare earth concentrate price at 38,769 yuan per tonne. That's up 204 yuan from Q3 — a small bump of about 0.5%, but it shows raw material costs inside China keep creeping higher even as global prices cool off.
USA Rare Earth Down 52% From Its October 2025 Peak
The Motley Fool ran the math. Put $10,000 into USAR stock a year ago and you'd have about $4,800 today. The stock hit $26 last October when China fears ran hot. It now trades near $12.56. The Busan truce drained the urgency.
Critical Minerals Stocks See 30–60% Pullbacks Since May
Shad Marquitz at Excelsior Prosperity wrote that rare earth, antimony, and tungsten stocks have dropped 30–60% from their May 2026 highs. No big bad news caused it — much of the sector had good news while shares fell. He called it a broad sell-off with no real driver, and said the dips are starting to look like buying chances for those with patience.
