Overview
This week witnessed the Trump administration’s ambitious critical mineral strategy in action, highlighting Washington’s push to accelerate development and access to resilient supply chains while reducing exposure to China-linked value chains. The strategy rests on the simultaneous deployment of domestic intervention, expanding bilateral access, and facilitating multilateral coordination, all aimed at addressing near-term supply vulnerabilities while spreading the risk of overreliance and concentration across geographies. Washington’s critical minerals strategy presents upside risk of significant investment and long-term supply chain resilience, but also carries downside risks for project execution from geopolitical turbulence, including underlying political and trade tensions with the US, China, and emerging conflicts.
Developments in the US Critical Minerals Policy
A defining feature of the second Trump administration has been its effort to reverse decades of US dependence on imported critical minerals. Central to this effort is reducing supply chain vulnerabilities stemming from China’s dominance in the sector—a strategic risk given that critical minerals are essential for advanced technologies, and China has shown a greater willingness to leverage its market position for political concessions. This was put on display following China’s December 2024 export ban on gallium and China’s halted export licensing for rare earths, a key input for the US defense industrial base. Moreover, for the US and its allies alike, China’s large-scale, state-subsidized overproduction, coupled with predatory pricing, has undermined competitors from breaking into or remaining in the market.
Domestic Initiatives to Build Sovereign Mining Capacity
At home, the administration has moved quickly to expand domestic capacity and insulate the US economy from external shocks with three methods: stockpiling, investing, and taking equity stakes in US mineral players. On Monday, the US launched Project Vault, a new public-private critical minerals stockpile, signaling another major interventionist role for the federal government in securing supply. While details remain scarce, Project Vault is expected to support domestic and allied producers as a steady buyer of various critical minerals, smoothing the boom-bust cycles that deter private investment and underscoring Washington’s willingness to act as both financier and buyer of a strategically vital market.
Project Vault builds on a broader suite of measures aimed at accelerating domestic production across the critical minerals value chain. Executive actions early in the administration focused on cutting permitting delays, mobilizing federal financing authorities, and prioritizing mineral-rich federal lands for development—steps intended to shorten timelines that have historically made US mining uncompetitive. At the same time, Congress has backed these efforts with substantial funding, including multibillion-dollar allocations to the Department of War to secure mineral supply chains critical to national security.
The administration has also embraced direct government involvement to an extent not seen in years. Federal agencies, including the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM), have provided loans, guarantees, and in some cases equity investments in mining, processing, and manufacturing projects, signaling a willingness to take on risks to rebuild domestic capabilities rapidly. This includes the Pentagon’s $150 million equity stake in Atlantic Alumina to build the first large-scale US production of gallium, a key critical mineral that exposed the extent of US reliance on Chinese supply. Taken together, these initiatives underscore Washington’s determination to assert direct influence over timelines, permitting, and prioritization of certain minerals—becoming a serious player across the supply chain and moving away from reliance on market forces alone.
Bilateral Cooperation to Diversify Immediate Supply
Yet even with these domestic investments underway, new production capacity will take years to come online. To bridge the gap, the Trump administration has pursued a series of bilateral agreements with resource-rich partners to secure near-term supplies through bilateral agreements. Heightened, critical mineral-focused engagement was on display on Wednesday when leaders from 54 countries and the European Commission convened in Washington for the closed-door inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial—an initiative designed to strengthen alliances and counter concentrated control over global value chains.
At the Critical Minerals Ministerial, Washington expanded one-on-one partnerships, signing eleven new bilateral frameworks or MOUs. While specific terms have not yet been released, these agreements lay the groundwork for cooperation on pricing, market development, supply chain security, and access to financing. Four of the deals were with South American nations—reflecting the administration’s strategic emphasis on the Western Hemisphere, which is home to two-thirds of the world’s lithium reserves and has significant copper and nickel production. The US also announced an action plan with Mexico, to be implemented within 60 days, that will include coordinated policy measures, price floors, and identification of mining, processing, and manufacturing projects of mutual interest. Additionally, the US and the EU committed to concluding a critical minerals MOU within 30 days, building on a trilateral agreement announced the same day between the EU, the US, and Japan to accelerate critical mineral cooperation.
These moves build on a string of bilateral successes last year, including $10 billion in critical mineral agreements across five countries in October 2025 alone. Alongside securing foreign investment for domestic projects—such as Korea Zinc’s $7.4 billion refinery in Tennessee and Japan’s $2 billion copper facility—the administration has used financing from EXIM and the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to secure overseas projects for American firms. On Tuesday, the Orion Critical Minerals Consortium—led by Orion Resource Partners with DFC backing—acquired a 40% stake for $9 billion in Glencore PLC’s copper and cobalt operations in the DRC, kickstarting a growing US presence in the country as part of a December 2025 bilateral economic and security agreement.
Multilateral Coordination to Consolidate Shared Strategy
The US under President Trump has clearly favored bilateralism over multilateral coordination, reflecting his belief that Washington can better shape deals aligned with US interests through one-on-one relationships. Yet, the organization of the Critical Minerals Ministerial most clearly demonstrated that a multilateral forum is necessary for Washington’s greater critical minerals strategy.
The Ministerial reportedly centered on a draft, nonbinding framework agreement—circulated in advance by the State Department—that would commit signatories to mobilize funding for priority projects capable of delivering materials to the US and partner countries within six months. It also produced a major outcome: the launch of the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), a broad platform designed to coordinate policy and projects across the critical minerals sector. Within FORGE, the US seeks to establish a preferential trade zone that would shield critical minerals from external market shocks through enforceable price floors and benchmark prices at each stage of production, ensuring values reflect “real-world, fair” market conditions. Moreover, the US has made clear that all participants, whether they have critical mineral reserves or not, can contribute meaningfully to this forum as they can leverage their strengths to create a functioning trade bloc—i.e. Australian mineral reserves, paired with Japanese processing expertise, paired with UAE’s energy and capital, etc.
FORGE is a successor to the Minerals Security Partnership, a Biden-era, US-led multilateral partnership established to strengthen the global critical mineral supply chain, and complements Pax Silicia, a State Department-led partnership launched in December 2025 between the US and nine allies to secure supply chains for advanced technologies. While Pax Silicia targets specific minerals crucial to high-tech industries, FORGE operates across the entire critical minerals spectrum. Even as the United States has stepped back from some international institutions over the past year, the Trump administration has made critical minerals a notable exception, sustaining and in some cases expanding multilateral engagement with allies. Sustained engagement with allies—such as the January meeting in Washington between G7 members, Australia, Mexico, South Korea, and India—underscores a deliberate effort to align partners with US national security priorities of reducing dependence on China-linked critical minerals.
Geopolitical Considerations and Business Implications
The Trump administration’s multi-pronged approach to securing critical mineral supply chains functions as a form of strategic risk management, compressing timelines for access while dispersing exposure across geographies to reduce dependence on any single supplier. For businesses across the value chain, this strategy offers clear upside. Heightened government investment and policy support lower barriers for US firms to expand mining, processing, and manufacturing capacity at home and abroad, while also creating opportunities for smaller or more innovative companies to enter a market that has long lacked established domestic players. For major downstream consumers—such as automakers, advanced technology firms, and defense contractors—this layered approach helps offset near-term supply gaps and reduces the risk that material shortages constrain US production. International partners with mineral reserves also stand to benefit. US engagement brings access to capital, long-term offtake opportunities, and policy coordination that can accelerate project development, support job creation, and stabilize local industries. Participation in frameworks such as FORGE further strengthens these incentives by increasing predictability on both sides of the market.
At the same time, this strategy carries meaningful geopolitical and execution risks. Expanding engagement with mineral-rich but politically fragile countries creates exposure to project delays, disruptions, or cancellations. For instance, there is renewed instability in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, where EXIM-backed financing of about $1.3 billion supports the Reko Diq copper-gold project. Similar vulnerabilities exist in other key jurisdictions, including the DRC and Ukraine, highlighting the trade-off inherent in diversifying supply in conflict-prone regions. These challenges are compounded by ongoing trade tensions between the US and its allies. Disputes over tariffs and industrial policy have already introduced friction into US multilateral efforts, with some European partners signaling hesitation about FORGE absent clearer alignment with EU policies. Finally, the growing visibility of US initiatives among allies and partners in critical mineral markets risks drawing increased scrutiny from China, raising the possibility of retaliatory measures that could further complicate supply chains.
