China Controls the Metals Inside Your Car, Your Phone, and Your Military. Is A Trade Deal The Only Thing Keeping That Quiet?
A former Pentagon advisor on what happens when it expires and where he is looking on U.S. soil.
Washington, D.C., June 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A deadline most Americans have never heard of is approaching, and former government advisor Jim Rickards says it could reach all the way into the car in your driveway and the phone in your pocket. In a new free presentation, he turns that looming date into a question: what critical-mineral supply does the United States actually hold at home?
The Deadline
China suspended its sweeping October 2025 rare-earth export controls for one year until November 10, 2026, leaving an earlier April 2025 set of controls on seven elements fully in force. When the suspension expires, all twelve controlled elements and their compounds come back under restriction. The reprieve is temporary by design.
The materials at stake are not abstractions. China accounts for roughly 91% of global rare-earth separation and refining, and was the leading refiner for 19 of 20 strategic minerals in a 2025 IEA assessment. These are the metals inside everyday technology, which is why a supply decision made in Beijing can surface as price and availability here at home.
The earlier round of controls already showed how fast that can bite. Chinese customs data show China exported just 17 tons of yttrium to the United States in the eight months from April to December 2025, compared with 333 tons in the eight months prior and aerospace manufacturers warned of shortages and rationing. Rickards points to episodes like that as a preview of what the November deadline could bring at a larger scale.
What Gold Has to Do With It
The minerals Rickards tracks at this one American deposit are not just industrial inputs. The site holds an estimated 82 million ounces of gold, enough, by his read, to meaningfully back the U.S. dollar at a time when the money supply has ballooned past $22 trillion. Rickards has argued for years that gold is headed to $10,000 an ounce and beyond. He points out that gold has already crossed $5,000, a level most dismissed when he first wrote about it over a decade ago.
His case is that the gold sitting inside this one deposit is not just a commodity play. It is a monetary one. Whoever controls that supply holds real leverage over the long term credibility of the dollar, which is why Rickards believes Washington cannot afford to leave it in the ground much longer. The November deadline makes that calculus more urgent, not less.
Why It Matters to You
If a single supplier can tighten the materials inside the products Americans use every day and has already done so once, the natural question is what the U.S. could do to reduce that reliance before the next deadline. The stakes are not limited to manufacturers: when input costs rise or supply tightens, the effects tend to travel down to the prices ordinary consumers pay and the companies ordinary investors hold.
That is what Rickards examines, which domestic deposit the current policy push could unlock, and why he believes the timing is worth understanding now rather than after November.
About the Presentation
Rickards walks through the November deadline, the dependency behind it, and the domestic opportunity he believes it points to in a free presentation now available online. Click here to watch.
About Jim Rickards and Paradigm Press
Jim Rickards has advised the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the White House, and the Department of Defense across five decades in government and finance. He later built financial threat detection systems for the CIA and designed the Pentagon's first financial war games. In 2007, he delivered formal testimony to the U.S. Treasury warning of the conditions that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
Paradigm Press is one of the most widely read independent financial research publishers in the United States, rated 4.8 stars on Google across more than 1,900 reviews. Free from advertiser influence, Paradigm Press is committed to helping everyday Americans understand the forces shaping their wealth.
Derek Warren Public Relations Manager Paradigm Press Group Email: dwarren@paradigmpressgroup.com
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