What China Knows About November 10, 2026 That Trump Doesn't Want You to Think About

A rare earth "deal" that expires 7 days after the midterms. 7 elements we can't make. And a Pentagon that can't build an F-35 without Beijing's permission. This is not a drill.

I’ve done something your government hasn’t: I’ve summarized America’s rare earth catastrophe in a single image you can actually understand.

Below is the whole disaster in one picture. Study it. Screenshot it. Tape it to your refrigerator next to the note reminding you to buy more ammunition.

But here’s the deal: this took me longer to make than it took China to corner the global magnet market. So before you scroll past and forget everything by lunch, do one of two things. Subscribe if you haven’t. Share if you have. Consider it the cover charge for the only honest analysis of our national supply chain suicide you’ll read this week.

Now let me explain how we got here, and why nobody in Washington wants to talk about it.

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Last November, the financial press celebrated like the Berlin Wall had fallen. Trump Secures Rare Earth Deal with China! the headlines screamed. Crisis Averted! Markets rallied. Pundits exhaled. Everyone went back to arguing about interest rates.

Nobody read the fine print.

I did. And what I found should keep the Pentagon awake at night, though I suspect it won’t, because the Pentagon sleeps like a baby regardless of what’s actually happening in the world. It’s one of their gifts.

The Truce That Wasn’t: A Masterclass in Reading What Beijing Didn’t Say

Here’s what actually happened at the Trump-Xi summit in Busan last October: China agreed to suspend its October 2025 export controls on rare earths. Suspend. Not cancel. Not abandon. Suspend. The way you suspend a gym membership you have no intention of using but want to keep as an option.

The suspension lasts until November 10, 2026.

The midterm elections are November 3, 2026.

Seven days. Beijing gave itself seven days to watch the election results roll in before deciding whether to flip the switch back on. If you think this timing is coincidental, I have a bridge in Shanghai I’d like to sell you. It’s a very nice bridge. The communists built it using rare earth elements they won’t sell us.

But here’s the part that should really make your coffee go cold: the April 2025 controls were never suspended at all.

The Seven Dwarfs: Samarium, Gadolinium and Friends Who Aren’t Coming to Dinner

In April 2025, China slapped export controls on seven medium and heavy rare earth elements: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium. These aren’t the rare earths that go in your Tesla. These are the rare earths that go in your F-35.

Samarium-cobalt magnets can handle the 600-degree heat inside a jet turbine. About 50 pounds of them sit in every F-35, doing the thankless work of keeping the aircraft from becoming an extremely expensive lawn dart. Dysprosium and terbium make the neodymium magnets in guidance systems work at temperatures that would otherwise cause them to forget what they’re guiding.

These controls? Still in effect. The Busan deal didn’t touch them. China kept the kill switch on everything that matters for national defense and gave Trump a headline about everything that doesn’t.

Oh, and there’s another provision that survived the summit: exports of rare earths for foreign military use remain explicitly banned. Not controlled. Not licensed. Banned. China has declared, in writing, that they will not sell us the materials to build weapons. We’re supposed to be deterred by weapons we cannot build without their permission.

This is like negotiating a ceasefire where your opponent agrees to stop shooting at your legs while continuing to aim at your head. And then holding a press conference about the leg thing.

Meanwhile, In America: We’re Building a Bicycle to Chase a Ferrari

Let’s talk about what we’re doing to close the gap. It’s adorable, really.

MP Materials, bless their hearts, is the only integrated rare earth producer in America. Their Fort Worth plant can currently make about 1,000 metric tons of magnets per year. They’re expanding to 3,000 tons. There’s talk of a big new “10X Facility” that would add another 7,000 tons by 2028.

China produces 300,000 tons.

JL MAG, a single Chinese company you’ve never heard of, currently makes 40,000 tons annually. They’re building a new plant in Inner Mongolia that will take them to 60,000 tons by 2027. One company. Sixty thousand tons. We’re celebrating plans to maybe reach 10,000 by 2028.

By the time China’s export control suspension expires in November, the United States will be producing approximately 1.4% of China’s magnet output. If every American project currently planned comes online on schedule, with no delays, no cost overruns, and no technical problems, by 2028 we’ll hit maybe 5-6%.

The Pentagon requires 3,000 to 4,000 tons of specialized magnets every year just for defense applications. That number is projected to hit 10,000 tons by 2030 as we build more F-35s, more Virginia-class submarines, more of everything that keeps China from doing whatever it wants in the Pacific.

We cannot supply our own military. Let me say that again: we cannot make enough magnets to build our own weapons. Every F-35 contains 920 pounds of rare earth materials. Every Virginia-class submarine contains 9,200 pounds. We are building these systems with materials that require, either directly or through supply chains, Beijing’s approval.

The Greenland Solution: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. President

This is where Greenland enters the conversation, stumbling in like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving with a solution nobody asked for.

Yes, Greenland has rare earth deposits. Yes, they’re substantial. No, they won’t save us. The deposits are low-grade, the infrastructure is nonexistent, the weather is what you’d expect from a place called Greenland, and here’s the kicker: even if we somehow extracted ore from frozen rock in the Arctic, we’d still have to send it somewhere for processing.

Ninety percent of global rare earth processing capacity is in China.

You cannot mine your way out of a processing problem. China spent 40 years building the world’s only real rare earth refining infrastructure while we were busy outsourcing everything that couldn’t be done by a guy with an MBA and a spreadsheet. Now we’re talking about invading a NATO ally’s territory because we forgot how to make things.

This is not a serious policy. This is what happens when you realize you have a problem and don’t want to admit how long the solution takes.

The Whack-A-Mole: Silver, Tungsten, and Other Things We Don’t Make

While everyone was celebrating the rare earth “deal,” China quietly tightened the screws elsewhere. On January 1, 2026, new export controls on silver took effect. Only 44 companies are now approved to export silver from China. Requirements include 80 tons of annual production capacity and a $30 million credit line. Hundreds of small and mid-sized exporters, the ones who actually supplied global markets, are now locked out.

China controls 60-70% of globally traded refined silver. Silver goes into electronics, solar panels, medical instruments, and approximately everything else. The price has hit $84 an ounce, an all-time high, up over 150% from a year ago.

Tungsten and antimony are under similar restrictions. Fifteen companies approved for tungsten exports. Eleven for antimony. These materials go into armor-piercing ammunition, high-temperature electronics, and fire retardants. China controls over 80% of global tungsten supply.

See the pattern? Beijing gave Trump a headline on rare earths while quietly building leverage everywhere else. It’s like a magician who shows you his empty right hand while his left hand picks your pocket, steals your watch, and signs you up for extended car warranty.

The 2027 Compliance Crisis: A Problem That Cannot Be Solved in Time

Beginning January 1, 2027, Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement rules prohibit the Pentagon from buying rare earth magnets sourced from China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. This is an excellent policy that should have been implemented 20 years ago. Instead, it takes effect in 12 months, at which point we will be unable to comply with it.

As of right now, the United States has zero heavy rare earth separation facilities operating at commercial scale. Zero. MP Materials is working on one. USA Rare Earth in Oklahoma is working on one. Various other companies have various other plans. None of them will be producing at scale by 2027.

In 2022, an F-35 was found to contain a Chinese-made samarium-cobalt magnet in its turbomachine pump. The Pentagon’s solution was to issue a waiver and keep building the planes. That’s what compliance looks like when you don’t have alternatives.

The Department of Defense set a goal in its 2024 National Defense Industrial Strategy to establish a complete mine-to-magnet supply chain meeting all defense needs by 2027. This goal will not be met. It was never going to be met. It takes a decade to build this kind of infrastructure, and we started about nine years too late.

The Midterm Prediction: The Math Beijing Is Watching

Let me give you the honest assessment, not the pundit spin.

The generic ballot has Democrats up 4.7 points. Trump’s approval sits at 43.8%, with a net approval of negative 9. Historical models say that environment produces a 10-15 seat Democratic gain. Democrats need just three seats to flip the House off its current 220-215 Republican majority.

The math says Democrats are favored. Roughly 65-35.

But here’s what makes 2026 different from a typical midterm: the redistricting arms race.

Republicans have already locked in a structural advantage of about 3 seats through completed redistricting: Texas (+5), Ohio (+2), North Carolina (+1), and Missouri (+1), offset by Democratic gains in California (+5) and Utah (+1). That’s not a forecast. That’s arithmetic already on the books.

The wild cards are Florida and the Supreme Court.

If DeSantis pushes through Florida redistricting this spring, that could add another 3-5 Republican seats. If the Supreme Court guts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the pending Louisiana case, Southern states could rapidly redraw maps for another 4-8 seats.

Stack all of that together, and Republicans could potentially offset 8-12 seats through map manipulation alone. In that scenario, even a D+12 national environment only nets Democrats 0-4 seats. The House becomes a toss-up.

But that’s the best-case scenario for Republicans, requiring everything to break their way: Florida acts, the Supreme Court delivers, and the national environment doesn’t deteriorate further.

The base case remains: Democrats flip the House with a margin of 5-10 seats. Republicans have a real path, but it runs through courtrooms and state capitols, not the ballot box.

Here’s the part that matters for November 10.

Beijing doesn’t need to know who wins. They need to know how weak the winner will be.

If Democrats take the House with 223-212, they’ll spend two years investigating Trump while he vetoes everything they pass. Gridlock. No industrial policy. No rare earth response.

If Republicans hold with 218-217, they’ll spend two years managing a caucus that can’t agree on lunch orders, let alone China strategy. Their margin will be so thin that any three members can hold legislation hostage.

Either outcome serves Beijing’s interests. America will enter the November 10 deadline weakened, divided, and incapable of mounting a coherent response to whatever China decides to do with those export controls.

That’s not pessimism. That’s the math.

The Investment Thesis: What Wins When Empires Forget How to Make Things

Gold hit $4,600 an ounce this week, a record high. Silver is at $84, also a record. Central banks bought over 1,000 tons of gold for the third year in a row. The People’s Bank of China has been buying for 14 consecutive months.

This is not about inflation, though inflation is bad enough. This is about something deeper. Capital is figuring out that the world’s reserve currency is backed by military force that requires materials from the country we’re supposedly deterring. That’s not a hedge. That’s a contradiction.

The Federal Reserve can print dollars. It cannot print dysprosium. You can quantitative ease your way out of a banking crisis. You cannot quantitative ease your way out of a supply chain that runs through Shanghai.

My thesis remains unchanged: we’re living through 7% annual monetary debasement that requires 10%+ returns just to stay even. But that thesis now has a physical constraint. The rare earth situation isn’t just a supply chain problem. It’s a reminder that real power comes from making things, and we stopped making things a long time ago.

Gold and silver work because they’re no one’s liability. But they’re also no one’s permission. You don’t need Beijing to approve your bullion purchase. You don’t need a license from the Ministry of Commerce to own an American Eagle. In a world where critical materials are being weaponized, assets that exist outside the permission structure have obvious appeal.

Bitcoin operates on the same principle, only more so. When China announced its rare earth export controls in early October, Bitcoin was trading at an all-time high of $126,000. Three days later, Trump threatened 100% tariffs on China, triggering the largest liquidation event in crypto history, with $19 billion wiped out in 24 hours. Bitcoin dropped 30%, bottoming near $80,000 before recovering to around $92,000 today.

Here’s what the financial press missed: Bitcoin crashed because it’s now correlated with risk assets. It recovered because institutional buyers stepped in. The ETFs absorbed $26 billion in net inflows during 2025. Long-term holders added 42,000 BTC in November and December alone, their largest accumulation since summer. The market structure has changed. Bitcoin isn’t your uncle’s speculative asset anymore. It’s a macro asset with real institutional backing.

I run my own Bitcoin node. Have for years. Not because I’m a crypto bro with laser eyes and a Lamborghini fantasy, but because I spent enough time in places where governments decide who gets to have money and who doesn’t. The rare earth situation is the same dynamic playing out at an industrial scale. China has a kill switch on our manufacturing base. They don’t have a kill switch on Bitcoin. Nobody does.

Own hard assets that don’t require permission from governments that have demonstrated, in real time, they can say no.

The Economic Paradox: Strong Numbers, Weak President

The inflation news dropped Tuesday morning: Core CPI held steady at 2.6% year-over-year, the lowest since March 2021. The 0.2% monthly print came in cooler than the 0.3% economists expected. This is the clearest sign yet that inflation is actually on a downward path, not just statistical noise from the government shutdown that left October and November data missing entirely.

But here’s what the headline number misses: food at restaurants is running 4.1% higher than last year. Natural gas bills jumped 4.4% in December alone and are up 10.8% year-over-year. Electricity is up 6.7%. Recreation prices rose 1.2% in December, the largest one-month increase in the 32 years the BLS has tracked that index. Airline fares climbed 5.2% in a single month.

The inflation Americans feel when they eat out, heat their homes, and book a flight is running considerably hotter than the core number suggests. Core CPI strips out food and energy because they’re volatile. It also strips out what people actually spend money on.

The economy is objectively strong by every traditional measure. GDP grew 4.3% in Q3, the strongest in two years. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model projects Q4 at 5.1-5.4%, which would be the strongest quarter in four years. The S&P 500 hit a record high this week. Productivity surged 4.9%, a six-year high.

And Trump’s approval is 43.8%.

This disconnect is historically bizarre. Presidents with this economic performance typically have approval above 50%. The gap represents either a messaging failure or a structural ceiling on Trump’s popularity that no amount of GDP can breach.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans think Trump is focused on immigration, which only 27% consider a priority. Meanwhile, 57% want him focused on cost of living, and he’s barely talking about it. He’s winning the argument nobody asked him to have.

The inflation news gave Trump a gift. Core CPI at a five-year low while food and energy costs keep climbing is exactly the kind of nuance a skilled communicator could exploit: “We’ve beaten the Fed’s inflation, now let’s tackle the kitchen table costs.” Whether he unwraps it is another question. A pivot to economic messaging could add 4-6 points to his approval and dramatically tighten the House forecast. But pivoting requires discipline, and discipline has not been this president’s defining characteristic.

The Uncomfortable Conclusion: We’re Not Catching Up

Here’s the part that nobody in Washington wants to admit: we’re not closing the gap. We’re falling further behind. Global demand for rare earth magnets is projected to more than double by 2035, from 250,000 tons to 600,000 tons. Electric vehicles, wind turbines, robots, drones, every technology that defines the future runs on these materials.

China knows this. That’s why they’re not permanently cutting us off. A permanent ban would give us no choice but to build alternatives. A temporary suspension with a strategically timed expiration date keeps us dependent and guessing. It’s the dealer giving you one more hit while reminding you where to find him.

Japan tried to diversify after China restricted rare earth exports during a 2010 territorial dispute. They spent 15 years and enormous resources building alternatives. They’re still 60% dependent on China.

We’re not Japan. Japan started earlier, took it more seriously, and didn’t spend the intervening years arguing about whether industrial policy was ideologically acceptable. We’re starting later, investing less, and pretending that tariffs and tough talk are substitutes for factories.

The Check Is Coming, and We Left Our Wallet in Shenzhen

November 10, 2026, is ten months away. China will watch our election results, assess the political damage, and decide whether to squeeze. Democrats are favored to flip the House, roughly 65-35, though redistricting and court rulings could narrow that. Either way, America enters the deadline weakened and divided.

The leverage belongs to them. It’s going to keep belonging to them until we build things again, which we show no serious sign of doing.

Own gold. Own silver. Own Bitcoin. Own assets that don’t require permission from a government that has figured out it can say no.

America can’t make a magnet. But sure, let’s invade Greenland.

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