STILLWATER, Okla. (The Oklahoma Post) Dec. 15, 2025
USA Rare Earth (USAR) announced this week that it plans to begin commercial production at its Round Top facility in late 2028, which is two years earlier than expected. This is thrilling news in the same way your contractor telling you “I’ll be done early” is thrilling, meaning you immediately check your wallet and hide the silverware.
The company has tied up all of its supply chain in foreign companies. It has spent or moved the money that has been invested. This isn’t a cruel joke. It is a reality we tried to warn you about. The stock trades like Kanye West on bath salts.
Here’s the part nobody’s talking about: USA Rare Earth is promising to start cranking out magnets in Stillwater by early 2026, but their Round Top mine won’t be producing rare earths until late 2028. That’s a two year gap where they’ll be making “American” magnets with foreign rare earth materials, which is exactly the supply chain vulnerability they claim to be solving. The entire pitch is “sovereign supply chain” and “breaking China’s grip,” but their own timeline reveals they’re just planning to assemble magnets in Oklahoma using imported rare earths until at least 2028, assuming Round Top doesn’t get delayed. There are companies in the U.S. already doing better.
The Stillwater situation
The company also reminded us it is building out a 310,000 square foot, traded around, repainted, former Select Energy oil service building, into an overnight magnet manufacturing facility in Stillwater, Oklahoma, which locals will recognize as the kind of project that will be described as an “almost finished something” for roughly the rest of our existence. Pizza Shuttle hired more employees and probably had a bigger economic impact than that building or any business that’s touched it.
Still, it’s comforting to know the U.S. may one day produce magnets domestically instead of relying on the same supply chain that brings us novelty phone chargers shaped like fruit. “Rare Earth” USAR has now purchased a British company that was producing magnets for Europe. Europe has now announced they are battling the US for their own startups, exiting European control for U.S. “in name only” companies faster than ever, giving even more reason to expediently pitch in to win the Ukrainian/Russia war.
Market chaos and warrant collapse
Investors, meanwhile, responded by doing what investors do best: panicking in completely unrelated ways. The stock wobbled, the warrants fell into what can only be described as a financial fainting couch, and somewhere a retail trader stared at a screen that read “Chart Unavailable,” which is the market’s polite way of saying, “We don’t know either.” But we know.
For those unfamiliar, a warrant is like a coupon that expires in the future and becomes worthless if everyone loses interest, similar to yogurt, gym memberships, and most New Year’s resolutions. When liquidity dries up, warrants collapse theatrically, clutching their pearls and demanding to be carried out of the ballroom.
The warrant didn’t fall because the company accelerated production. It fell because no one wanted to be holding a leveraged promise during a choppy market, which is a sentence that could also describe dating in your forties. Eventually, liquidity dries up and real economy issues take focus.
The reality check
So if you’re confused, you’re not alone. The company says it’s ahead of schedule. The stock says it’s thinking about it. The US government says we don’t think you’re a real company. The warrant says it needs to lie down. And the rest of us are left staring at a screen wondering how something can be both encouraging and terrifying at the same time, like a toddler holding a permanent marker.
Washington takes a closer look
Fast forward a few weeks and the tune has changed from “sovereign supply chain” to “please hold while Washington looks under the hood.” Reuters now reports the Trump administration isn’t just handing out grants anymore, it’s considering taking equity stakes, which is what you do when you don’t entirely trust the babysitter but still need to leave town. USA Rare Earth is listed as “in discussions,” a phrase that in finance roughly translates to “someone asked some uncomfortable questions.”
Around the same time, the warrants collapsed, charts vanished, and suddenly the story wasn’t about breaking China’s grip but about whether the Bidens’ startup magnet factory had any clothes on first.
The numbers behind the hype
Imagine waking up one morning to discover that USA Rare Earth, the company that makes big promises and bigger headlines, has acquired a British metals plant for roughly $220 million in cash and stock, secured a separate $125 million equity investment to fund its expansion plans, then accelerated its mining timeline by two years because “we’re just that good,” all while hinting that the White House itself might hop on board. One day Barbara Humpton is on CNBC discussing how the company is in close communication with the Trump administration.
But behind the scenes, it’s like a Silicon Valley startup with zero sales: a cash position that reached over $400 million by late 2025 burning against hundreds of millions in losses, sobering disclosures that the company might not even survive the next year, and a bunch of warrants being redeemed at one cent, basically a giveaway.
The bottom line
All this makes one wonder if USA Rare Earth is really primed to dethrone MP Materials Corp. (MP), or if it’s a hype machine: talk of government stakes and U.S. independence, followed by red flags like “going concern” warnings and 100 percent off sales of its own warrants.
In short, all the ingredients of a big, old fashioned hype story are there, and one investor’s windfall could be another’s trap door. I’m sure when the government wants to invest in your business they are going to make sure that the financial foundation is secure.
If this is what reshoring a stock looks like, it’s less a victory parade and more a yard sale, with the government poking the merchandise while the stock deflates. You can practically hear the sad little farting sound as it collapses into itself.
These are simple questions. The kind you’d ask if you were, say, a journalist. Or breathing.
Writing By: Robbie Robertson | Editing by Robbie Robertson
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