Lunes 9 de febrero del 2026

The State Department on February 4 hosted a Critical Minerals Ministerial, welcoming delegations from 54 countries to strengthen these supply chains. The event marked the most explicit U.S. effort yet to reshape global minerals markets around U.S.-led rules with the aim of combatting Chinese dominance in the sector.

Allied Scale: The meeting capped weeks of administration signaling on plans for enforceable price floors, defense of those prices through tariffs, expanded stockpiling, and shared financing tools to pull supply chains out of China’s orbit and anchor them within a trusted U.S.-aligned zone. Officials embraced the concept of “allied scale” in ways Trump administration officials had not previously done. It was framed by senior officials as a direct response to Beijing’s ability to weaponize control over mining and processing capacity.

Rubio with the Diagnosis: Secretary of State Marco Rubio opened the conference noting “the supply of critical minerals is heavily concentrated in the hands of one country,” arguing that this concentration allows those materials to be “used as a tool of leverage in geopolitics” rather than traded on purely commercial terms. “Some competitor will come in, they’ll gut the price, they’ll undercut it through state subsidies and unfair practices, and so it becomes economically unviable,” he said.

Rubio emphasized that the U.S. and its partners were not responding to normal price swings but to a structural distortion created by China’s dominance in mining and, especially, processing.

Vance with the Mechanics: Vice President JD Vance used his remarks to move from diagnosis to mechanics, starting with a system of reference prices that function as enforceable floors.

“Investment is nearly impossible, and it will stay that way, so long as prices are erratic and unpredictable,” he said, describing price floors as a way to prevent China from flooding global markets underpriced minerals that render non-Chinese mining uneconomic. Vance said “we want members to form a trading bloc among allies and partners,” one that protects supply chains from external disruption and gives producers confidence that demand will be sustained inside the bloc.

Forging Ahead: The ministerial included the creation of the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE) as the successor to the Minerals Security Partnership created by the Biden Administration, to be chaired by Korea through June.

In addition, Export-Import Bank (EXIM) Chairman John Jovanovic joined administration officials on February 2 to announce “Project Vault.” The initiative is aimed at establishing the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve, an independently governed public‑private partnership that will store essential raw materials in facilities across the U.S.

In a readout, the State Department pointed to the signing of 11 new bilateral critical minerals frameworks between the U.S. and with various partners. Additionally, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced a critical mineral “action plan” with Mexico outlining steps the countries will take within 60 days. Greer also announced plans for similar frameworks with Japan and the European Union.

DRC President: On the heels of the meetings, the Chamber’s U.S.-Africa Business Center hosted Democratic Republic of the Congo President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo for a high-level roundtable. The event focused on supporting peace and prosperity and strengthening bilateral economic ties with the DRC, whose substantial mineral wealth brought it into the heart of the week’s discussions.