The United States is accelerating a domestic rare earth magnet supply chain with a heavy emphasis on recycling and end-of-life material recovery to reduce reliance on China, especially as export controls shift.

With China pausing some export restrictions, the U.S. is racing to diversify and secure its rare earth supply chain, highlighting these materials’ strategic importance for defense, energy, and technology.

Policy makers are pushing to restart mining and processing while strengthening recycling to build a more resilient, independence-focused magnet supply chain.

Design-for-recycling and standardization are essential to enable easier disassembly, standardized magnet sizes, reduced adhesion, and clear material identity, boosting recovery efficiency and lowering costs.

High-priority magnets for collection and recycling include those from hard drives, EV motors, wind turbines, consumer electronics, and industrial motors.

Commercial-scale recycling facilities and infrastructure development are advancing, driven by players like Cyclic Materials, RecycleForce, and Ames National Laboratory, while feedstock consistency and supply chain integration remain critical.

Recycling faces barriers such as coatings and assemblies that hinder recovery, underdeveloped design-for-recycling in electronics and automotive manufacturing, and the need for scalable, domestically controlled separation and metalmaking capacity.

A multi-stage process is required to convert end-of-life magnets into usable magnets, including collection, chemical separation, and metallization, with a gap between recovery and remanufacturing.

Commercial pathways for recovering elements like neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium are clearer, while other elements remain less viable under current technology and economics.

Quality and certification standards for recycled rare earth materials are critical for market acceptance, covering chemical purity, magnetic performance, physical properties, and traceability to reassure manufacturers.

Advanced chemical extraction methods aim to selectively dissolve rare earths with reduced environmental impact, but coatings, complex assemblies, and contamination hinder practical deployment.

Hydrogen-based processing for recycling magnets offers potential energy savings and lower temperatures, though it requires further validation and scale-up.