There are, of course, a few reasons that President Trump is reluctant to send the missiles to NATO partners for resale to Ukraine, the most commonly uttered example is a determination to not expand and extend the war.
However, there are a couple rare earth angles that are also behind the decision.
On July 2, 2025 China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi held an extended (four hours) meeting with former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, now the
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat on Wednesday that Beijing did not want to see a Russian loss in Ukraine because it feared the United States would then shift its whole focus to Beijing, according to several people familiar with the exchange.
The comment, to the EU’s Kaja Kallas, would confirm what many in Brussels believe to be Beijing’s position but jar with China’s public utterances. The foreign ministry regularly says China is “not a party” to the war. Some EU officials involved were surprised by the frankness of Wang’s remarks.
However, Wang is said to have rejected the accusation that China was materially supporting Russia’s war effort, financially or militarily, insisting that if it was doing so, the conflict would have ended long ago.
During a marathon four-hour debate on a wide range of geopolitical and commercial grievances, Wang was said to have given Kallas – the former Estonian prime minister who only late last year took up her role as the bloc’s de facto foreign affairs chief – several “history lessons and lectures”.
Some EU officials felt he was giving her a lesson in realpolitik, part of which focused on Beijing’s belief that Washington would soon turn its full attention eastward, two officials said.
One interpretation of Wang’s statement in Brussels is that while China did not ask for the war, its prolongation may suit Beijing’s strategic needs, so long as the US remains engaged in Ukraine....
....MUCH MORE
Someone leaked to the SCMP. It probably wasn't the Europeans.
One way for China to keep Russia in the fight is to pressure the U.S. generally on the critical minerals.
Another is to focus on the Tomahawks themselves. They cannot be built without the use of dysprosium magnets in the actuators that move the control fins.
Dysprosium is a Heavy Rare Earth Element (HREE) and America's only rare earth mine at Mountain Pass doesn't produce it. Australia's Lynas produces some but unlike the light rare earths, the HREEs are pretty much all found in Chinese geologies.
If interested see last week's reposted article from 2012 "The only five rare earth elements that matter":
[Jack Lifton writing]....I follow four or five critical REEs that each have individual markets. One of them is neodymium, because it’s the most important REE used in permanent magnets. The others are heavy rare earth elements (HREEs), including europium, terbium, dysprosium and yttrium. The latter isn’t really an REE, but it’s associated with them. As the market corrects to reasonable prices, people are coming to understand this....
Neodymium magnets are not as robust as those made from dysprosium and are more likely to fail under thermal and physical stress, leaving you with an unguided missile flying hither and yon.
As things stand right now, China not only has one heck of a monopoly on the majority of the rare earth supply chains, from mine to fabrication but absolutely controls the one for the absurdly critical input into Tomahawk missiles.
Oh, and after lobbing a bunch of the Tomahawks at the Houthis in Yemen, we see this at ZeroHedge October 14: "Military Analyst Warns US Doesn't Have Enough Tomahawks To Send To Ukraine".
All because China found and exploited a point of maximum pressure to implement their geostrategic worldview.
