Trade Tools for Climate Action: Ensuring a Secure and Stable Supply of Critical Minerals

Critical minerals provide a host of applications across the global economy, but they are particularly essential for the diffusion of green technology. Wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles (EVs), and other green technologies require more minerals than fossil fuels. For example, producing a conventional car takes about thirty-four kilograms of critical minerals, primarily copper and manganese, while EVs require over two-hundred kilograms of critical minerals, including cobalt, copper, graphite, lithium, manganese, and nickel. Nuclear, solar, and wind energy generation similarly rely on substantially more critical minerals than coal or natural gas: where coal-based power uses about 2,500 kg of critical minerals to produce one megawatt (MW) of energy, offshore wind production takes over 15,000 kg.

As the world transitions to more renewable energy sources, the demand for critical minerals will grow. The International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 scenario predicts that demand for those minerals could increase by 250 percent within just five years, and evidence of this trend is already emerging. Lithium-ion batteries, used to power EVs and one of the primary options for renewable energy storage, saw a 30 percent increase in demand in 2024, up from 10 percent annual growth in the 2010s. The demand for cobalt, graphite, nickel, and rare earths also increased by 6 to 8 percent that same year, with the energy sector accounting for 85 percent of total growth. Finding ways to ensure a secure and stable supply of critical minerals is essential.

What Is at Stake

Despite the importance of critical minerals to the energy transition, the United States remains far too dependent on China for access to those minerals. In 2024, the United States was entirely reliant on imports for twelve of fifty identified critical minerals, and imported over 50 percent of total demand for another twenty-eight of those minerals, mainly from China. The country dominates critical mineral extraction, processing, and refining, producing 60 percent of the world’s rare earths and maintaining nearly 90 percent of global processing capacity. Through long-term investments in mineral-rich regions such as Africa and Latin America under the Belt and Road initiative, China has expanded its influence in the sector. Without deliberate action, the United States’ reliance is projected to continue. Estimates show that the United States will hold less than 2 percent of global market share in critical mineral extraction through 2030, and an even smaller share of the world’s mineral processing capacity.

Reliance on China for critical minerals makes access to those inputs vulnerable for two reasons. First, concentrated supplies heighten exposure disruptions and risk, as the U.S. baby formula crisis revealed. Second, China’s willingness to leverage its market dominance for economic statecraft exposes countries to coercion: in December 2024, China banned the export of gallium and germanium to the United States, essential inputs for high-tech products such as fiber optics, semiconductors, and solar cells. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates predicted that a total permanent ban would increase the price of gallium by 150 percent and germanium by 26 percent. Although the ban was temporarily lifted, it could have triggered a $3.4 billion decline in U.S. gross domestic product had it stayed in place, in addition to supply crunches that would threaten stockpiles and production.

China has continued to play this card in response to President Donald Trump’s tariff campaign, halting rare earth exports to the United States once again on April 4, 2025, after it had agreed to lift them as part of the ninety-day trade truce. Most recently, on October 9, 2025, China imposed export controls on rare earth elements, lithium battery materials, and processing technologies. Although those additional restrictions were avoided after talks between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the last few months have shown China’s willingness to leverage its dominance over critical mineral supply chains.

The Need for Collaboration

The Trump administration has sought to secure critical mineral supply chains through both domestic efforts and international coordination, both essential to improving predictability and access.

Domestic Efforts

On his first day in office, Trump issued executive order 14154, Unleashing American Energy, which directed the secretary of the interior to review the USGS’s list of critical minerals, accelerate geologic mapping of the United States to find new deposits of critical minerals, and ensure that critical mineral projects are considered for federal support. The order simultaneously called for the secretary of defense to “take all appropriate steps to ensure that the National Defense Stockpile will provide a robust supply of critical minerals in the event of a future shortfall.”

Three months later, Trump signed executive order 14241, Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production, to boost domestic mineral production by expediting permitting for projects on federal lands and providing financial support through federal mechanisms such as the Defense Production Act and the International Development Finance Corporation. Finally, on April 24, he issued executive order 14285, Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources, which called for the expedited review of seabed mining and expanded domestic capacity to collect and process seabed minerals.

Those acts have already influenced the U.S. critical mineral strategy. In early November, the USGS designated ten new critical minerals, including metallurgical coal, copper, potash, and uranium, citing executive order 14241 as a motivating factor. In response to executive order 14285, the Department of the Interior issued a new policy to accelerate leasing, exploration, and development of seabed mining by expediting the environmental review process, extending prospecting permits from three years to five years, and allowing earlier exploration of potential development areas with less oversight. The policy also shortens public comment periods and allows the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to offer more favorable lease terms.

Bilateral Coordination

Although expanding domestic opportunities is important, the United States cannot mitigate critical mineral supply chain risks on its own. The United States simply lacks the capacity to secure all necessary minerals domestically. However, as the table below shows, partnerships have the potential to strengthen supply chain security, as many producers and holders of critical minerals exist outside of China.

Recognizing this, both the Biden and the Trump administrations have prioritized critical minerals partnerships with like-minded countries, as evidenced by actions from both the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the State Department.

In recent weeks, the USTR has pursued targeted memorandums of understanding and frameworks to build out critical minerals partnerships with countries including Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand. Though the exact provisions of those agreements vary, they lay a groundwork to facilitate U.S. and partner-country investments in critical minerals and related manufacturing and infrastructure projects through coordinating financing, permitting, pricing mechanisms, mapping efforts, and recycling technologies. Those memoranda and frameworks also include provisions for cooperative project identification, stockpiling systems, rapid-response mechanisms, and (particularly in Malaysia’s case) aligned trade restrictions tied to shared economic and national security concerns.

Alongside USTR’s targeted frameworks, critical mineral provisions have emerged in other administration actions, including recent trade deals, bilateral agreements, and plurilateral engagements. For example, the Cambodia reciprocal trade agreement calls for Cambodia to “allow and facilitate U.S. investment in its territory to explore, mine, refine, process, transport, distribute, and export critical minerals and energy resources . . . on terms no less favorable than it accords to its own investors in like circumstance.” Though not explicitly a critical minerals deal, the text underscores the importance of critical-mineral access to the administration.

On April 30, 2025, the Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund was signed, committing the United States to invest in the reconstruction of Ukraine in exchange for a stake in future Ukrainian mineral production. (Ukraine holds about 5 percent of the world’s raw minerals.) Two months later, the United States brokered the Critical Minerals for Security and Peace Deal between the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ad Rwanda, opening the door to Western investment in rare-earth mining in those countries: the DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, and Rwanda has many minerals including tin, tantalum, and tungsten.

Plurilateral Coordination

Beyond the bilateral frameworks, the State Department has incorporated critical mineral priorities into plurilateral engagements. For example, on November 7, 2025, the State Department issued a Joint Statement of Intent on Economic Cooperation for the C5+1 tenth anniversary, a platform for coordinating economic cooperation between the United States and Central Asian governments: Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Reaffirming commitments on various fronts, the statement includes explicit language to “encourage increased investment and trade in . . . critical minerals,” and to continue efforts to “advance geological exploration, mining, and processing investment opportunities.” Similarly, in July 2025, the Quad allies (the United States, Australia, India, and Japan) launched the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative to advance collective action in securing and diversifying critical minerals supply chains.

Most recently, in late October 2025, the Group of Seven (G7) released the Roadmap to Promote Standard-based Markets for Critical Minerals. The first project in the roadmap under the “critical minerals Production Alliance” commits G7 partners to cooperate in three key areas: strengthening supply chain resilience, reliability, traceability, and transparency; establishing minimum threshold criteria for standards-based markets that address labor, human rights, rule-of-law, anti-corruption, and environmental protections; and securing critical mineral supply chains by reducing dependence on unreliable sourcing through various policy tools such as procurement and financial incentives.

Taken together, those efforts demonstrate a sustained commitment to work with partners to reduce dependence and over-reliance on China and ensure more stable critical mineral supply chains. Without continued collaborative efforts to address supply chain gaps and overreliance on China, U.S. production will remain vulnerable.

Opportunities for Action

Secure access to critical minerals will determine the United States’ ability to sustain leadership in green technology during and beyond the Trump administration. Although the Trump administration’s actions have demonstrated concerted efforts to address this challenge, more can be done to cement international partnerships, as current frameworks with partners are largely bilateral and not legally binding. As overcoming the critical mineral challenge is a decades-long, constantly evolving process, the United States should

• strengthen international collaboration to avoid fragmentation and streamline processes. Not only does the United States have a complex web of international critical minerals partnerships, but so do U.S. allies. By leading the effort to break down those silos, the U.S. government could take a leading role in shaping international coordination. To do this, the Trump administration should consider reinvigorating and expanding the Minerals Security Partnership, originally introduced by the Biden administration as a partnership with fourteen countries and the European Union to collectively accelerate the development of diverse critical minerals supply chains; and
• cement existing partnerships with legally binding clauses. While current frameworks lay important groundwork for partnerships, they do not secure legal commitments and are fairly easy to withdraw from, simply requiring written notification. As the critical minerals challenge is a decades-long endeavor, creating stable, trustworthy frameworks is essential. The administration should work with Congress and the appropriate international institutions to secure durable commitments.

In the coming months, the U.S. government should capitalize on the momentum around securing critical minerals supply chains to ensure stable access to the materials that are both essential to national security and daily life, as well as those that will shape the future of the green technology transition.