STILLWATER, Okla. — April 3, 2026 (The Oklahoma Post)
On March 26, 2026, USA Rare Earth (Nasdaq: USAR) issued a press release announcing the successful commissioning of its commercial magnet production line in Stillwater. The prose was confident. The language was triumphant. Somewhere in the bowels of a corporate communications department, a person was paid real American dollars to write the words “major operational and strategic milestone,” and they wrote them without apparent irony or shame.
Champagne was presumably somewhere in the building, assuming the building has a Certificate of Occupancy for the room where the champagne was stored, which, as this publication has reported, remains an open question. One does not wish to dampen the festivities. One merely notes that a facility celebrating the commissioning of a production line it has not yet been permitted to operate commercially is engaging in a particular species of optimism that, in a different context, we might call fraud.
Four days later, the company filed its annual earnings report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC filing is the document executives sign under penalty of law. It is the document where the lawyers prevail over the communications department. It is, in short, the document where the truth lives. And the truth, buried inside that legally binding instrument like a body under a patio, reads as follows: “The Company’s Stillwater magnet manufacturing facility is under development and is not yet completed, it has not commenced producing and selling sintered neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets.”
Four days. That is the distance between the triumphant press release and the legally binding admission. Four days between the champagne and the confession. In a court of law, one might call this a material discrepancy. In Stillwater, Oklahoma, where $7 million in public money is riding on this company’s promises, one might call it something less polite.
The Motley Fool, to its credit, published a cheerful analysis of USAR’s March performance this week noting that “there were more positives than negatives in March.” The Motley Fool is technically correct the way a weather forecaster is technically correct when they describe a category four hurricane as a chance of precipitation.
To be fair, USAR did hit some closing bell highs in March. The ticker moved, down and up, sideways, and into AI paradise on Yahoo Finance. The charts had green days. Financial paid media noticed. What the financial media did not linger on is the question of why a company with zero real revenue, a going concern warning from its own auditors, a production facility that may lack a Certificate of Occupancy, and a SEC filing admitting it has not commenced production was moving the way it was moving.
The answer is $1.6 billion in federal money attached to a non-binding letter of intent, administered by a Commerce Secretary facing conflict of interest allegations, structured to require a private capital raise led by that same secretary’s sons’ firm. When the government picks a winner in a market it has simultaneously distorted with tariffs and tax policy, the stock moves. That is a shell game? And the resource at the bottom of the shell; Round Top Mountain, a low-grade deposit in the West Texas desert 900 miles from the facility it is supposed to feed has never been able to justify the architecture built on top of it on its own merits. It needed the government to make the math work. The math still does not work. But the stock moved, and somewhere a press release called it a milestone. So will they buy M.P. now and create a Trumpolopy with your tax dollars.
The Federal Government Wants Your State to Pick Up the Tab
There is a pattern to how power operates in this country, and it is not subtle once you see it. It does not hide. It simply moves faster than most people are watching.
While the Trump administration has been busy engineering a federal tax code that allowed Amazon, Meta, Alphabet and Tesla to collectively pay an effective federal income tax rate of just 4.9% in 2025, the same administration’s Council of Economic Advisers has published a report with a suggestion for the states. The suggestion, delivered with the serene confidence of a man who has never worried about a grocery bill, is that states should drastically raise their sales taxes and use the proceeds to eliminate corporate and personal income taxes altogether.
The people who would pay more under this arrangement are the people who spend most of what they earn, because they have to. The people who would pay less are the people who can afford not to spend. This is not a coincidence. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has described the proposal as potentially the single largest legislated transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich in the nation’s history. The CEA’s own report acknowledged, with what reads as almost touching candor, that states have to collect tax revenue somehow. They do. The question is always from whom.
Now draw the line from Washington to Stillwater, Oklahoma. The federal government cuts corporate taxes for the largest companies in the world. It then suggests that working families at the state level absorb the cost through higher sales taxes on the goods and services they need to survive. And simultaneously, through a non-binding letter of intent administered by a Commerce Secretary with documented financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein and a conflict of interest flagged by a sitting member of Congress, it commits $1.6 billion in public money to a private company that has taken $7 million from the City of Stillwater, $1.2 million from the State of Oklahoma, and filed a document with the SEC this week confirming it has not commenced production.
At the State of the Union, Trump told the American people that tariffs paid by foreign countries would one day substantially replace the income tax. Economists noted that income taxes generate roughly 13 times more revenue than tariffs. The math does not work. It has never worked. It was not designed to work. It was designed to sound like it works long enough for the people it benefits to finish benefiting.
The pattern is not complicated. Reduce the tax burden on favored corporations at the top. Direct public subsidies to those same corporations through government investment programs. Instruct the states to recover the lost revenue from the people least able to absorb it. Announce the whole arrangement as economic development. Put the governor and the mayor at a podium. Call it a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Hand out hard hats for the photographs.
Governor Kevin Stitt and Mayor Will Joyce stood at that podium in June 2022. The hard hats were present. The photographs were taken. The City of Stillwater is still waiting for the production to start. It has been waiting for three years. It may wait longer. The pattern does not concern itself with that.
The Round Top Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
Here is the thing about Round Top Mountain in Hudspeth County, Texas. It is 85 miles southeast of El Paso. It is 900 miles from Stillwater. The ore grade is low, meaning you have to move an enormous amount of rock to extract a meaningful amount of rare earth material. The biggest cost driver in mining low-grade ore is fuel. Fuel costs money. Moving processed material 900 miles to Stillwater costs more money. The magnet manufacturing facility in Stillwater is a $100 million renovation of a former oil services building that the company has spent four years trying to get into production. The hydrometallurgical demonstration facility is in Colorado, which is between Texas and Oklahoma geographically but somehow connected to neither in any operationally logical way.
The company also acquired Less Common Metals in the United Kingdom last year, which processes material using, among other sources, non-U.S. supply chains, because there is currently no domestic supply chain capable of supporting the operation. So the domestic rare earth supply chain strategy involves a mine in far West Texas that will not produce commercially until 2028 at the earliest, processing in Colorado, magnets in Oklahoma, metals in England and alloys coming from France by 2027. This is the supply chain that was going to free America from dependence on China.
This is not unlike a geothermal energy project in Reno, Nevada some years ago, where a resource that could not economically produce what was promised attracted government matching funds and private pension money, required a series of financial interventions and ultimately needed political blessing to survive. The details differ. The architecture is familiar. Promise a critical resource. Attract government matching. Layer in private money. Announce milestones. Manage the gap between the announcement and the reality for as long as the capital holds out.
What Stillwater Actually Got
The City of Stillwater gave USA Rare Earth $7 million in upfront cash, a five-year property tax exemption and a commitment to rebate 90% of property taxes after the exemption expires. The State of Oklahoma gave $1.2 million and enrollment in the Quality Jobs Program. Governor Kevin Stitt stood at a podium in June 2022 and called it a once-in-a-generation announcement. Mayor Will Joyce called it a win for Stillwater and a win for Oklahoma.
Production was supposed to begin in 2023.
What Stillwater got was a company that filed a document with the SEC this week saying it has not commenced production, a company whose production area may not have a Certificate of Occupancy, a company that is pumping hydrogen into an industrial building for testing purposes while the inert gas suppression systems are not yet installed, and a company whose stock has declined from a 52-week high of $43.98 to $15.42 despite receiving billions of dollars in public and private backing.
What We Are Still Waiting For
The Oklahoma Post has an Open Records Act request pending with the City of Stillwater requesting the full TIF agreement, all compliance monitoring records, all communications with USAR including those conducted via Signal, WhatsApp or text message, and all fire safety and Certificate of Occupancy records for 100 West Airport Road. The city has not responded. USAR has not responded to media inquiries. The March 31 TIF deadline has passed.
The $1.6 billion Department of Commerce funding agreement is expected to be finalized in April 2026. The Commerce Secretary overseeing that agreement has not responded to congressional conflict of interest allegations. His son’s firm is positioned to collect fees on the transaction.
The commissioning was successful. The facility has not commenced production. Both of these things are true, apparently, and we are all just going to have to sit with that for a while.
A Word About Netflix
The Motley Fool would like you to know that if you had invested $1,000 in Netflix when their analysts recommended it in December 2004, that investment would be worth $532,066 today. They mention this in the same article discussing USA Rare Earth, in a section encouraging readers to consider their list of top stock picks. The implication is ambient but unmistakable.
Let us examine the comparison.
Netflix in 2004 was a company that was already mailing DVDs to paying customers. It had revenue. It had a product. It had subscribers. People were giving it money in exchange for a service it was actually providing. The company existed in a relationship with commerce that most people would recognize as a business.
USA Rare Earth in 2026 is a company that filed a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week stating it has not commenced producing or selling neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets. Its auditors have flagged going concern doubts. Its stock is down more than 64% from its 52-week high. It has cycled through four CEOs since 2022. Its mine will not produce commercially until 2028 at the earliest. Its magnet facility may not have a Certificate of Occupancy for its production area. It has $1.75 billion in cash, most of it from a government letter of intent and a private capital raise, and it is burning through roughly $7 to $8 million per month.
Netflix did not require a non-binding letter of intent from the Department of Commerce to continue operations. Netflix did not need a fire suppression consultant to certify its server rooms before it could mail you a copy of Shrek 2. Netflix’s CEO did not have documented business dealings with Jeffrey Epstein. These are meaningful distinctions.
Netflix this is not.
Writing By: Dr. King Schultz | Editing by Robbie Robertson
Editor’s Note:
Sources
USA Rare Earth Q4 and full year 2025 earnings press release, Globe Newswire, March 30, 2026 — https://www.globenewswire.com
USA Rare Earth Phase 1a commissioning press release, Globe Newswire, March 26, 2026 — https://www.globenewswire.com
The Motley Fool, Lee Samaha, Markets Move in Mysterious Ways, April 3, 2026 — https://www.fool.com
Yahoo Finance, USAR stock data — https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/USAR
Rep. Zoe Lofgren press release, Ranking Member Lofgren Raises Alarm Over Terms of Commerce Department Equity Stake in USA Rare Earth, March 20, 2026 — https://lofgren.house.gov
CBS News, Lutnick and Epstein were in business together, Epstein files show, February 7, 2026 — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/howard-lutnick-jeffrey-epstein-in-business-together/
The Oklahoma Post, USA Rare Earth’s Commissioning Announcement May Have a Fire Code Problem, March 28, 2026 — https://theokpost.com
The Oklahoma Post, $8.2 Million from Oklahoma, $277 Million from Feds, Zero Dollars in Revenue, Feb. 22, 2026 — https://theokpost.com/news/business/8-2-million-from-oklahoma-277-million-from-feds-zero-dollars-in-revenue-the-usa-rare-earth-math-problem/2026/02/22/
Stillwater News Press, City of Stillwater approves $7 million incentive for USA Rare Earth, June 7, 2022 — https://www.stwnewspress.com
Oklahoma Department of Commerce, Governor Stitt secures first domestic rare earth metal and magnet manufacturing facility, June 2022 — https://www.okcommerce.gov
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