The United States hosted the first-ever Critical Minerals Ministerial at the State Department in Washington on February 4, bringing together ministers and senior officials from 54 countries and the European Commission to discuss securing diversified and resilient supply chains for critical minerals and rare earth elements. Some 43 countries sent ministerial-level participants to the meeting. Many governments see assured access as a national-security priority as these materials are essential for advanced technologies, including batteries, semiconductors, clean energy infrastructure, defense systems, and AI.
A new multilateral initiative, the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE) — a successor to the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) established under former President Joe Biden — was launched to strengthen cooperation among like-minded nations on supply chain concerns. Building on the MSP, FORGE partners will collaborate at the policy and project levels to advance initiatives that strengthen diversified, resilient, and secure critical minerals supply chains.
Numerous foreign ministers used the Washington meeting to highlight their countries’ roles in the global mineral economy and committed to shared approaches for supply chain security.
These new efforts are complemented by collaboration between the U.S. and its nine “Pax Silica” partners to secure strategic stacks of the global technology supply chain.
According to the Department of State’s media release on the meeting, “the United States is demonstrating unprecedented leadership in critical minerals diplomacy.” At the February 4 meeting, the U.S. signed eleven new bilateral critical minerals frameworks or MOUs with countries, including Argentina, the Cook Islands, Ecuador, Guinea, Morocco, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan. It also noted that Washington has signed ten other critical mineral frameworks or MOUs in the past five months and reached completion of negotiations on such agreements with seventeen other countries. The State Department also noted that these frameworks lay the groundwork for nations to collaborate on pricing challenges, spur development, create fair markets, close gaps in priority supply chains, and expand access to financing.
On February 3, the day before the ministerial, the State Department assembled what it termed the “leading lights in the private sector” together with governments from around the world to discuss supply chain challenges and investment opportunities.
Following the ministerial on February 4, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jacob Helberg convened a task force of mining industry leaders to advance priority projects in the framework of new collaboration with the U.S. and its partners.
Much more to come
The U.S. Government is mobilizing unprecedented resources to secure critical mineral supply chains, supporting projects with more than $30 billion in letters of interest, investments, loans, and other support over the past six months in partnership with the private sector, according to the Department of State. These investments, along with Pax Silica and reinvigorated diplomatic and commercial engagement driven by the U.S. President Donald Trump administration’s “America First” values, are having a multiplier effect, mobilizing private capital many times greater than the U.S. government outlay, which will generate billions of dollars in new projects to secure U.S. supply chains.
These coordinated efforts span domestic and international projects, strengthening U.S. national security and economic competitiveness. According to the State Department, the record so far is only the beginning — dozens of additional projects are in the pipeline undergoing due diligence by U.S. funding agencies, with more coming online soon.
On February 2, Trump announced Project Vault, a landmark initiative led by the Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM), which marks an important step in U.S. industrial policy by establishing a domestic strategic reserve for critical minerals. The EXIM Board of Directors approved a Direct Loan of up to $10 billion for Project Vault, more than double the largest financing in EXIM’s history, designed to shield domestic manufacturers from supply shocks, expand U.S. production and processing of critical raw materials, and fundamentally strengthen America’s critical minerals sector.
The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) has invested in and is exploring more than a billion dollars in new mineral exploration deals and strengthened critical mineral supply chains for the United States as well as U.S. allies.
The elephant not in the room
The Critical Minerals Ministerial marked an important step toward an allied-led approach to critical minerals supply chain security, emphasizing collaboration, new trade and investment frameworks, stockpiling mechanisms, and geopolitical diversification in response to market concentration concerns. While specific binding agreements were not universally adopted at the meeting, many participants view the massive gathering as a foundation for deeper cooperation and future trade and investment arrangements.
External observers see the ministerial as part of a broader — and expanding — U.S.-driven geopolitical effort to reshape critical mineral markets and reduce vulnerabilities tied to highly concentrated production and processing.
Chinese statements did not directly name the United States or explicitly call the Washington meeting an “anti-China” initiative, but Chinese Foreign Ministry comments framed such efforts as potentially harmful to multilateral cooperation and criticized protectionist policies. Some state-linked commentary framed U.S. efforts as strategic competition, which is essentially the least controversial thing that could be said.
China’s Foreign Ministry has long criticized efforts to form exclusive trade arrangements that could disrupt global trade norms, stressing that the world needs an open, inclusive, and mutually beneficial international trade environment and that supply chains should be stable and secure through cooperation, not exclusionary alliances. According to a Foreign Ministry spokesperson on February 4, “all parties have a responsibility to play a constructive role” in safeguarding the stability and security of global supply and production chains, projecting the tone of Beijing as a responsible international economic actor, which is not difficult in the current unstable global trade environment.