The G7 announced on Friday more than twenty new projects aimed at changing China‘s dominance in critical mineral supply chains with the aim of ultimately rebalancing the global market.
These agreements, announced following a meeting in Canada of Energy Ministers from the G7 countries, concern various essential metals but also rare earths, a sector in which China exercises major influence.
These first steps taken by the new G7 Critical Minerals Production Alliance “send a very clear message to the world,” Canadian Energy Minister Tim Hodgson told reporters.
“We are serious about reducing market concentration and dependencies,” he added, referring to China.
Ministers from the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States met in Toronto days after Washington and Beijing agreed for China to suspend certain restrictions on rare earth exports for at least a year.
The latter make it possible in particular to manufacture magnets essential to the automobile, electronics and even weapons industries. The prospect of limiting exports by China, which dominates this sector, had shaken the markets.
Tim Hodgson acknowledged that expanding supply chains would take time.
According to him, the objective is to build systems going “from mine to magnet”. “This does not exist today in the West (…) It will take time.”
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters that the Trump administration was on the same page as its G7 allies in countering China’s influence. There is “no disagreement within the group,” he said.
“We need to establish our own capacity to extract, process, refine and manufacture rare earth element products,” he added.
According to him, China “used practices contrary to market rules to oust the rest of the world from the manufacture of these products.”
