The car that starts in the driveway. The hospital that stays lit during a power outage. The data center that keeps the internet running. The military vehicle that moves when ordered. All of it depends on a narrow set of critical minerals and on the industrial capacity to transform those minerals into something usable.

President Donald Trump and leaders in Washington have made critical minerals a priority again. That is the right instinct. For years, America ceded control of the raw materials that underpin its economy and military for the sake of free-trade dogma. The Trump administration deserves credit for taking necessary steps to revitalize America’s raw materials supply chain, including permitting reform, leading the push to reopen mines, and expanding deep-sea mining.

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But the mines are not the chokepoint. The refineries are.

The battle for critical minerals is not where they come from — it is where they get transformed into something usable. As a recent joint report from the Coalition for a Prosperous America and the Responsible Battery Coalition concluded, processing and refining is arguably the most decisive stage in the supply........

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