United States Announces Critical Minerals Deal With EU, Japan, And Mexico

In an effort to counteract China’s dominance of critical minerals production, the Trump administration has announced a new plan to work with Mexican, Japanese, and European Union officials “to identify critical minerals necessary for certain industries and develop policies to encourage their mining and processing into products like rare earth magnets.”

This latest agreement goes a step further than recent critical minerals frameworks by encouraging the creation of a preferential trade initiative, which could involve price floors for participating countries and coordinated trade policies toward those outside the zones. Indeed, at a U.S. Department of State ministerial last week, U.S. Vice President Vance said the Trump administration wants to create a “preferential trade zone for critical minerals protected from external disruptions through enforceable price floors.” (Read about the vice president’s remarks at this link.)

“Today’s announcement is an important signal that the world’s largest market-oriented economies are committed to developing a new paradigm for preferential trade in critical minerals,” said U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer in a press release. “Through the development of these action plans, we will lay the groundwork for a binding plurilateral agreement on trade in critical minerals with like-minded partners.” In two pieces of related news:

• At the U.S. Department of State ministerial where Vice President J.D. Vance spoke, the U.S. government signed 11 bilateral critical minerals frameworks and memorandums of understanding and completed negotiations on 17 additional measures. Read more about those agreements at this link.
• The Export-Import Bank of the United States launched Project Vault, a supply chain security initiative that establishes the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve, an independently governed public‑private partnership that will store essential raw materials in facilities across the United States. Read more about Project Vault at this link.