The weekly brief on the U.S. critical-minerals, rare-earth, and coal build-out, for the people who staff and supply it.
Top signal of the week
China blacklists the two firms the US is counting on to break its rare-earth dependence
On Monday, June 22, China's commerce ministry added MP Materials and USA Rare Earth, the country's two flagship rare-earth firms, to its export-control list, along with eight other US companies, cutting them off from Chinese dual-use goods and technologies and barring third parties anywhere from passing Chinese-origin dual-use items to them. Beijing cast it as a response to the Department of War's June 8 update to its Section 1260H list of "Chinese military companies." For the people who staff and supply these projects, the message is that the firms meant to end US reliance on China are now themselves cut off, which hardens the decoupling and raises the premium on fully domestic mining, separation, and magnet capacity.
At the G7 summit in Évian, leaders pledged to cut reliance on any single supplier outside the bloc and its partners for rare earths and permanent magnets to under 60% by 2030, and launched a non-binding G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance, citing 195 projects and €64B mobilized since the start of 2026.
The US Department of War's Office of Strategic Capital signed a conditional loan of up to $725M to help Energy Fuels build domestic rare-earth separation and metallization capacity, the midstream step that turns processed material into magnet feedstock; the loan is still subject to due diligence before it can close.
Graphite One engaged a global engineering and production-line integration firm for its planned advanced graphite materials plant in Conneaut, Ohio, advancing an Alaska-to-Ohio anode supply chain anchored by the Graphite Creek deposit; the facility remains subject to project financing.
Where projects are ramping and what roles they need, for our recruiter readers.
HiringMagnets · South Carolina
USA Rare Earth selected Blacksburg (Cherokee County), South Carolina for a $1.2B plant making NdFeB magnets and refined rare-earth metals, projected to create about 490 jobs as it comes online (targeted 2028); the work spans electrolysis, metallothermic reduction, strip casting, sintering and machining operators, plus process and metallurgical engineers.
Energy Fuels, long a uranium producer, is expanding into rare-earth separation and metallization on the back of the conditional $725M federal loan; scaling its White Mesa Mill in Utah, where it already separates rare-earth oxides, will call for process and chemical operators, metallurgists, and lab technicians.
Graphite One is moving its planned Ohio anode-materials plant from engineering into equipment integration and operational-readiness planning, work that points to plant operators, process and maintenance technicians, and integration engineers as it heads toward construction.
Graphite is the anode material in lithium-ion batteries, the bulk of the anode by weight, which puts it at the center of EVs, grid storage, and defense systems. The US mined no natural graphite in 2025 and was 100% net import reliant; the last US flake came from Texas in 1979 and the last amorphous from Montana in 1989. China produced an estimated 82% of the world's natural graphite in 2025 and dominates the downstream "active anode material" stage, so import dependence, not a shortage of deposits, defines the US position. That gap, set against China's tightening export posture, is what an Alaska-to-Ohio supply chain and new US anode lines aim to close.
U.S. natural graphite: net import reliance
0
tons of natural graphite mined in the U.S., 2025
~82%
China’s share of world natural graphite production, 2025