USA Rare Earth shares soar on White House talks report

Shares of USA Rare Earth (Nasdaq: USAR) jumped more than 21% to a historic high on Friday after CEO Barbara Humpton told CNBC that the developer is speaking with the White House.

The company’s main project is the preliminary economic assessment (PEA)-stage Round Top site in west Texas which contains 15 of the 17 rare earth elements (REEs). It is also building a sintered magnet manufacturing facility in Stillwater, Okla.

Humpton, speaking in an interview with CNBC late Thursday, addressed speculation about the company’s interest in striking a deal with the White House. USA Rare Earth did not immediately respond to a MINING.COM request for comment.

The White House news just days after USA Rare Earth announced plans to acquire U.K.-based Less Common Metals (LCM), which produces both light and heavy REE permanent magnet metals and alloys at scale from its 6,224-sq.-metre plant in Cheshire.

USAR stock rose 21.9% to $27.68 apiece in morning trading in New York, giving the company a market capitalization of about $2.69 billion.

Critical minerals push

The talks are part of a wider context of the Trump administration intensifying efforts to secure supplies of strategic minerals and reduce reliance on China, which dominates global production and processing.

This week, the Department of Energy took a 5% stake in Lithium Americas and a separate 5% position in its Thacker Pass joint venture with General Motors, which is set to become the largest lithium source in the Western Hemisphere.

In March, President Trump invoked emergency powers to boost domestic production of critical minerals. The move followed China’s decision to halt rare earth exports, escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing.

In recent months, the U.S. has acquired stakes in Intel, rare earths miner MP Materials (NYSE: MP) and other technology and mineral producers. MP’s Mountain Pass site is the only commercially producing rare earths mine in North America.

Building supply chains

USA Rare Earth is advancing its own plans to expand the U.S. supply chain for rare earth magnets.

In January, it produced a sample of dysprosium oxide  from Round Top with a purity of 99.1%, which it said marks a breakthrough in domestic rare earth production. Round Top could produce 2,213 tonnes of REEs, of which over 1,900 tonnes would be heavy REEs, over a 20-year mine life from an open pit mine, according to its 2019 PEA. The estimation was based on mining only 14% of the current mineral resources at the project.

Also in January, the company produced the first batch of sintered permanent rare earth magnets at its plant in Oklahoma.

That plant is expected to go commercial in the first half of 2026. At full capacity, it will produce nearly 5,000 tonnes of magnets annually, enough for hundreds of millions of units, according to company estimates.