On Monday, at the White House, Donald Trump presented the “Vault Project” (vault or safe), a plan that allocates 12 billion dollars of mostly public and also private investment to build in the United States a strategic reserve of rare earths and critical minerals that protects the country from alterations in the market or supply chains. More than a dozen companies have agreed to participate, including automakers General Motors and Stellantis and technology company Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
“For years American businesses have risked running out of critical minerals during market disruptions. This project will ensure that Businesses and workers are never harmed by shortagesTrump said.
Two days later, 54 representatives of countries and US allies such as the European Union participated in Washington in a ministerial meeting led by Vice President JD Vance and attended by the Secretaries of State, Energy and the Interior and the Trade Representative. There Vance proposed creating “a trade bloc between allies and partners” that allows access to critical minerals and financing and the establishment of “secure and resilient supply chains.”
“We have ahead of us the opportunity to be self-sufficientnever having to depend on anyone else but each other, for the critical minerals needed to sustain our industries and growth”said Trump’s number 2.
The summit ended with 11 bilateral agreements and memoranda of understanding with countries such as Argentina, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea-Conakry, Morocco, Philippines, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom or Uzbekistan.
These pacts are added to another 10 signed and 17 negotiated in the last five monthsto announcements of funding opportunities to support strategic projects and to the launch of a Forum for Geostrategic Resource Engagement (FORGE). And this forum completes a previous US project with nine countries, baptized as Pax Silica, which was established to coordinate both mineral policies and projects.
In all these negotiations Trump and his government are showing a very different face from the one they have found in the trade war countries and partners such as Canada or the European Union, with which Washington has clashed with pressures in those tariff disputes. And in this field it is showing a spirit of agreement and rapprochement that are rarely deployed when dealing with levies, although critical minerals and rare earths have been part of its trade negotiations with countries such as Ukraine or Greenland.
Stand up to China
All of the activity this week by the Trump Administration is a sign of the Republican government’s renewed efforts to try to establish supply chains Chinese independents. And the acts and agreements of the last few days represent the most aggressive effort to date to confront the dominance of the Asian giant in this field that affects some 60 materials that the US considers essential for your economy and his national security and that are fundamental for the development of key technologies in advanced weapons systems, Artificial Intelligencethe green energies.
According to the International Energy AgencyChina controls 70% of rare earth extraction and nearly 90% of processing capacity of critical minerals. That control has given Beijing a important tool for prying and pressing in the negotiations with Washington in the tariff trade war reopened by Trump in his second term, a conflict that has been in a truce since October.
Despite that pause, already a dialogue between Trump and Xi Jinping that remains and which had its last episode with a conversation between the two this Wednesday, China maintains stricter limitations on exports of critical materials than before the Republican returned to the Oval Office. Last year, for example, the Chinese government limited exports of magnetscausing shortages for manufacturers of motor, semiconductors and robotics, among others, and in the negotiations on tariffs between Washington and Beijing, the export of minerals necessary to manufacture aircraft engines, radar systems, electric vehicles, computers or telephones.
State capitalism, third axis
Trump’s strategic plan, together with the reserva of minerals and international alliances has a tThird axis: government participation in private companies, one more sample of state capitalism that the Republican is making one of the trademark signs of his second term.
Before this frenetic week in Washington, specifically, the fourth direct investment in a US producer, USA Rare Earth, which will receive a $1.6 billion injection in exchange for shares and a redemption agreement.
In it Congress Trump’s boost has received bipartisan applause and legislative steps are being taken to try to support it. Democrats and Republicans presented a bill joint for create an agency with 2.5 billion dollars to increase the production of rare earths and other critical minerals.
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