The US is challenging China to weaken its dominance in rare metals.

• The Pentagon will allocate $1 billion to purchase critical raw materials, including rare earth elements.
• American actions are aimed at becoming independent from Chinese market domination.
• The US aims to reduce Chinese control over raw material supplies to below 50 percent.

Last week, Beijing announced increased controls over the trade in critical raw materials. This includes not only greater selection of whom the Chinese sell these raw materials to, but also oversight of subsequent transactions. Beijing claims the right to approve the resale of raw materials . In practice, if these restrictions were to take effect, purchasing them without Chinese control would be nearly impossible.

The Pentagon already knows what it wants to spend millions on

But what exactly are critical raw materials? Although the term originally referred to rare earth elements , it is now more widely used. It also refers to certain more abundant metals, or even some seemingly common raw materials.

However, all of them are crucial in modern technologies or key production sectors, including military ones.

As the Financial Times wrote, citing public documents from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the Pentagon has already taken steps to increase the country's stockpiles of "critical materials."

According to the newspaper, the Pentagon's purchases will include not only rare earth metals, but also metals that have not previously been mentioned in the context of national stockpiles.

According to documents obtained by the FT, the Americans plan to buy cobalt worth up to $500 million, antimony worth $245 million (from US Antimony), tantalum worth $100 million from an undisclosed American supplier, and scandium worth a total of $45 million from Rio Tinto and APL Engineered Materials.

Americans will spend huge amounts of money to become independent from China

The Pentagon's actions are part of Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," which allocates $7.5 billion for critical minerals — $2 billion to expand domestic stockpiles by 2027, $5 billion for supply chain investments and $500 million for a Pentagon lending program aimed at stimulating private projects.

The US goal is to transform supply chains so that China ultimately controls less than half of raw material supplies. Currently, in some countries, China controls as much as 90-95 percent.

Moreover, in recent years, Beijing has actively thwarted competitors' plans and has been accused of price manipulation in certain raw material markets. These actions were intended to make life difficult for competitors and make new projects unprofitable.

However, the US and the European Union have now begun to financially support investments due to the Chinese threat of suspending supplies.