US Vice President JD Vance unveiled plans to form a critical minerals trade bloc with allied and partner countries, including coordinated price floors, as Washington steps up efforts to reduce reliance on dominant suppliers of materials used in semiconductors, electric vehicles and advanced weapons.
The administration plans to use tariffs to enforce minimum prices and protect supplies of key minerals. Vance said the recent US-China trade war showed how dependent many countries are on critical minerals, whose sale is largely dominated by Beijing, and argued that collective action is needed to make the West more self-reliant.
“We want members to form a trading bloc among allies and partners, one that guarantees American access to American industrial might while also expanding production across the entire zone,” Vance said at the opening of a meeting hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Speaking to the gathering, he added the bloc should prevent “people flooding into our markets with cheap critical minerals to undercut our domestic manufacturers,” a remark he made without naming China.
Vance outlined a plan to set reference prices for critical minerals at each production stage. For members of the proposed preferential zone, those reference prices would serve as a floor upheld through adjustable tariffs “to uphold pricing integrity,” he said.
Rubio said officials from 55 countries attended the Washington talks, including South Korea, India, Thailand, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Australia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, noting these nations have different mining and refining capacities. He warned the minerals are “heavily concentrated in the hands of one country,” a geopolitical leverage point he mentioned without explicitly naming China.
At the meeting, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced bilateral plans with Mexico and trilateral arrangements with the European Union and Japan to strengthen critical mineral supply chains, and indicated these moves could lead to broader agreements with other allies. Argentina’s foreign ministry also said it reached an agreement with the United States to diversify supply chains and boost exports of copper and lithium.
Greenland and Denmark, which oversees the mineral-rich Arctic island, did not attend the talks.
Edited by: Sean Sinico