Renewed Efforts at Multilateralism in the Critical Minerals Sector

In 2022, the United States launched the Minerals Security Partnership to accelerate the development of diverse critical minerals supply chains in cooperation with industry and allied governments. The partnership brought together 14 countries and the European Union (DOS 2025). It aligned with the Biden administration’s “friend-shoring” strategy, which focused on diversifying supply chains by relocating key manufacturing capacity away from China and toward allied economies. Around the same period, the European Parliament passed the Critical Raw Materials Act, which aimed to reduce reliance on any single country—an implicit reference to China. The act set several benchmarks requiring certain percentages of the European Union’s annual mineral consumption to be produced domestically by 2030: (1) at least 10 percent for extraction; (2) over 40 percent for processing; (3) 25 percent for recycling; and (4) no more than 65 percent of annual processing sourced from any single third country (European Commission 2024). It also promised to reduce administrative burdens and shorten timelines for processing and recycling permits.However, these ambitious goals lacked a clear implementation road map and strategy. Long project timelines and unclear financing limited their feasibility; a critical mineral refinery typically requires years to become commercially mature, even with sustained technological and financial support. Few instruments were available to counter perceived foreign coercion, and cooperating governments were left relying on tariffs or export controls in other sectors, particularly semiconductors.