Critical Minerals: What They Are, Why They Matter & Supply Risks
Until something disrupts their supply, critical minerals rarely get much attention. But many are buried surprisingly deep in the mundane workings of the economy. You can find them in electrical power grids, semiconductors, aircraft, fertilizers, batteries, medical equipment and thousands of industrial processes.
The United States currently identifies 60 minerals as critical. They are a very mixed bunch. Lithium, copper, potash, silver, tungsten and a grab-bag of rare earths that few outside specialist industries ever see are among the items on the list.
What they have in common is not rarity, but rather what would happen if reliable supplies became tough to sustain.
What Are Critical Minerals?
A critical mineral under U.S. law is essentially one that is important to economic or national security, has a supply chain vulnerable to disruption and has an important role to play in manufacturing. The U.S. Geological Survey definition of a critical mineral is based on the Energy Act of 2020.
That definition is broad enough to include minerals that are not very rare. For instance, a certain mineral may be plentiful in the earth’s crust, but only a handful of countries dominate commercial production and processing.
The classification isn’t permanent either. Demand shifts. New technologies arrive, new mines open and more processing capacity is built. Recycling and alternative sources can further reduce dependence on primary supply. A mineral that today presents a serious supply problem may not present the same problem decades from now.
Critical Minerals & Rare Earth Elements
Rare earth elements are often mentioned together with critical minerals, so the two terms can sound like they mean the same thing. They are not.
Rare earths are a specific group of elements used in products like permanent magnets, electronics and specialized industrial equipment. Fifteen of these are on the 2025 U.S. List of Critical Minerals.
The whole list is much longer. It contains 60 minerals including copper, lithium, graphite, nickel, tungsten, platinum, silver, potash and silicon. Rare earths are pertinent to the story, but only a part of it.
What Are the Critical Minerals in the U.S.?
The 2025 U.S. list of critical minerals includes:
Aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, boron, cerium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, copper, dysprosium, erbium, europium, fluorspar, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, holmium, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lead, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, metallurgical coal, neodymium, nickel, niobium, palladium, phosphate, platinum, potash, praseodymium, rhenium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, silicon, silver, tantalum, tellurium, terbium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc and zirconium.
That’s 10 more than the 2022 list. In 2025, boron, copper, lead, metallurgical coal, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver and uranium were added.
But more interesting than the number itself is how USGS came up with it.
In its 2025 assessment, the USGS examined 84 mineral commodities and modeled more than 1,200 potential trade disruption scenarios. The analysis didn’t just check if the United States imports a mineral, but also tried to figure out how a disruption could affect American industries and the overall economy.
This involved examining global production concentration, U.S. import reliance and the capacity of suppliers elsewhere to expand production. The approach also looked at how producers and consumers might react to price changes and the fact that reliance on a single domestic producer could be a weakness in its own right.
The complete methodology is available in the USGS technical assessment for the 2025 List of Critical Minerals.
So the 60 minerals are not 60 versions of the same problem. The reason a mineral might be on the list may be very different from the reason another is on it.
Critical Mineral Applications
While most people connect critical minerals with batteries, their actual use cases are far more extensive.
Lithium, graphite, nickel and cobalt are key battery materials. Copper is everywhere in electrical systems, from wiring and motors to power networks. High-performance permanent magnets use neodymium and dysprosium. Gallium and germanium are used in high-tech electronics and semiconductor technology.
Then there are minerals for entirely different industries. Titanium is useful where strength and relatively low weight are important. Tungsten is useful for applications that require high-temperature and wear-resistant properties, while rhenium is often preferred for high-performance alloys. Platinum-group metals play a significant role in catalysts and other industrial processes.
Even agriculture is in the mix. The main mineral inputs for fertilizers include potash and phosphate.
This variety is important. A shortage does not have to stop an entire industry to become a pricey problem. A manufacturer might only need a small quantity of a specific mineral, but if there is no real substitute for it, it might not be able to manufacture the finished product.
The Biggest Threat May Be After Mining
It’s easy to look at a map of mineral deposits and assume that the countries with the most resources control the market. That’s often oversimplified.
But getting the material out of the ground is just the start. Depending on the commodity, it may then have to be concentrated, separated, refined or chemically processed before it can become an input for manufacturing. These steps do not always take place in the country where the mineral was mined.
The numbers show why this has become increasingly important. According to the IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025, the top three mining countries together provided an average of 73% of supply for six important energy minerals in 2020. By 2024 that number was up to 77%.
Refining was even more concentrated. The equivalent share increased from 82% to 86% over the same period.
At this stage of the chain China stands out. In a wider IEA study of 20 strategic energy-related minerals, China was the dominant refiner for 19, with an average market share of around 70%.
That doesn’t mean China mines everything. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a major producer of cobalt and Indonesia is a major producer of nickel.
China’s position in the rare earth industry goes much deeper than this processing snapshot. RMB covers that history, mining and processing structure separately in our guide to China’s rare earth metals.
By the time the mineral ever reaches a factory, it may have passed through several countries. Discovering a new deposit doesn’t fix the real issue either if only a handful of places can actually process what gets mined.
The Difficulty of Substituting Some Critical Mineral Supplies
When a big supplier leaves the market, the obvious fix is to buy from someone else. With minerals, however, that’s a lot harder than it sounds.
One reason is that not all minerals are extracted from mines specifically for their production. Some are recovered as by-products of mining or processing other commodities. One IEA analysis looked at 20 strategic minerals and found that about half of them are produced as by-products.
This can influence supply behavior. A big jump in the price of the by-product will not necessarily result in a rush of new mines opening up just to produce it.
Substitution only goes so far. Engineers can sometimes replace one material with another, but that usually comes at a price, whether in performance or cost, or both. And for some specialized uses, there’s simply nothing that works as well.
Even when a deposit is found, getting it up and running can take years. Before any material is sold, the project typically has to go through exploration, technical studies, permits, financing and construction. Processing facilities may also have to be constructed.
This is one reason why mineral reserves can look good on paper, while the actual supply chain is exposed.
What Critical Minerals Could Disrupt the Economy the Most?
Some of the more intriguing USGS discoveries in 2025 involve minerals that rarely make the news.
USGS attempted to quantify the potential economic impacts of possible trade interruptions for the commodities studied. Samarium scored the highest in the technical assessment, with a probability-weighted estimated net reduction in U.S. GDP of nearly $4.5 billion.
Rhodium was second at about $2.75 billion, followed by lutetium at about $2.06 billion. Other minerals with particularly high modeled economic impacts included terbium, dysprosium and gallium.
That’s a different list altogether than you might expect after reading general coverage of critical minerals. Lithium gets most of the attention, but lesser-known materials can matter just as much economically, depending on where they come from and what they’re used for.
The type of damage being modeled also changed. In some cases, the bigger problem was that industries would have less material to work with and would need to cut output. In other cases, most of the estimated impact came from businesses having to pay higher prices.
RareMetalBlog Analysis: The Highest-Risk Minerals Aren’t Necessarily the Most Famous
RareMetalBlog compared several of the highest-ranking commodities in the USGS model. The figures below are probability-weighted modeled net decreases in U.S. GDP, rather than predictions of losses that will necessarily occur.
| Mineral | USGS Risk Rank | Modeled Net Decrease in U.S. GDP |
|---|---|---|
| Samarium | 1 | $4.498 billion |
| Rhodium | 2 | $2.752 billion |
| Lutetium | 3 | $2.059 billion |
| Terbium | 4 | $1.809 billion |
| Dysprosium | 5 | $1.624 billion |
| Gallium | 6 | $1.419 billion |
| Germanium | 7 | $814 million |
| Gadolinium | 8 | $758 million |
| Tungsten | 9 | $544 million |
| Niobium | 10 | $394 million |
Source: RMB analysis of the USGS methodology and technical input for the 2025 U.S. List of Critical Minerals. Figures are probability-weighted modeled net decreases in U.S. GDP, not forecasts of guaranteed losses.
The ranking brings out something that can get lost in broader discussions about critical minerals. Lithium and copper are far more familiar to the public, yet neither appears among these top 10. The first 10 instead include six rare earth elements, along with rhodium, gallium, germanium and tungsten.
The way economic damage occurs isn’t identical either. For samarium, USGS attributed about $2.003 billion of the modeled impact to consuming industries reducing output and another $2.266 billion to those industries paying higher prices.
Rhodium looks quite different. About $727 million was attributed to reduced output among consuming industries, while roughly $2.151 billion came from those industries paying higher prices.
So even two minerals near the top of the same risk ranking can transmit a disruption through the economy in different ways.
USGS also examined the countries that contributed most to the modeled exposure. For 46 of the 84 mineral commodities examined, China was the largest contributor to the probability-weighted economic impact. This included all the rare earth elements and the metals gallium, germanium, tungsten and magnesium.
But it was not just China country risk. Canada was the leading contributor for eight commodities, while South Africa led another eight, including platinum-group metals such as rhodium, platinum, ruthenium and iridium.
That’s why comparing critical minerals to each other tells you a lot more than just checking if something appears on the federal list. Samarium, potash and rhodium can all be critical and present very different kinds of exposure.
How to Make Supply Chains for Critical Minerals More Secure
There is no “magic” solution because the issues and weak points can be in different spots.
Mining more at home could reduce reliance on foreign mines, but it won’t clear a refining problem by itself. Building processing capacity addresses a different link entirely. If the main issue is reliance on just one supplier, buying from a broader mix of countries can help.
Recycling is another piece of the puzzle and in some cases it is already an important source of U.S. material. According to the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, 15 critical minerals had secondary production in the United States in 2025. The value of domestically recycled critical-mineral commodities was about $18 billion.
Recycled material was the only domestic supply reported by USGS for antimony, bismuth, chromium, magnesium metal, tin, tungsten and vanadium.
There are also ways to reduce demand for a vulnerable material rather than increase it. Economics and technical requirements may sometimes lead manufacturers to use less material, redesign a product or substitute another material.
So the correct answer will depend on where the constraint is. A mining shortage is a different problem from a refining bottleneck, and both are different from a lack of substitutes.
Critical Minerals FAQs
Which Country Has the Most Critical Minerals?
You can’t point to one country as the answer until you define what “controls” means. Mineral reserves, mine production and processing capacity are three different measures.
China, for instance, handles an especially large share of the processing and refining for many critical minerals. Some countries produce large quantities of certain raw materials. A mineral may also be mined in one country, processed in another and used in the manufacture of components in a third country.
The country with the largest mineral deposits is not necessarily the country with the greatest influence over the usable supply.
Are Critical Minerals Really Rare?
Some are rare, but that is not why a mineral is critical.
A mineral can exist in huge amounts underground and still have a commercial supply that depends on just a few producers or processing plants. When those suppliers are hard to replace and whole industries rely on the material, that becomes a serious supply risk.
Why Do Some Sources Say 35, 50 or 60 Critical Minerals?
Part of the confusion comes from comparing lists from different years or different government frameworks. The U.S. list has changed over time as supply conditions and assessment methods have shifted.
The 2022 federal list had 50 minerals, while the final 2025 version has 60. So if an older article gives a different number, it’s probably working from an earlier list.
