The US is reportedly planning to seek agreements with eight allied countries to enhance the critical minerals supply chain and secure key resources for AI technology.
This initiative is intended to decrease reliance on China, reported Bloomberg, citing a leading official for economic affairs at the State Department.
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Jacob Helberg, Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs, said in an interview that the efforts will commence with a White House meeting in December.
Delegates from Australia, South Korea, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, the UK and the United Arab Emirates are scheduled to meet on 12 December.
Helberg, formerly an adviser at Palantir Technologies, said the gathering will concentrate on establishing cooperation in advanced manufacturing, AI infrastructure, critical minerals, energy, logistics and semiconductors.
He explained that the selection of these nations was based on their roles in semiconductor manufacturing and their reserves of critical minerals.
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By GlobalDataHelberg said: “It is clear that right now in AI, it is a two-horse race – it is the US and China. We want to have a positive, stable relationship with China, but we are also ready to compete, and we want to make sure that our companies can continue building transformative technologies without being subject to coercive dependencies.”
During the first Trump administration, the State Department introduced the US Energy Resource Governance Initiative to help secure supply chains for critical minerals such as cobalt and lithium.
Under the Biden administration, a Minerals Security Partnership was established to attract foreign investment and bring Western expertise to mining industries in developing countries.
Despite these initiatives, China remains the dominant force in the rare earths market, Bloomberg reported.
In August, Reuters reported that the US Government had announced plans to implement price support measures for domestic rare earth projects to strengthen local production and reduce China’s market dominance.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that China refines more than 90% of global rare earths and permanent magnets.
In October, China introduced stricter export controls on rare earths but subsequently agreed to a one-year suspension after discussions between US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping.
As competition between the US and China over critical minerals intensifies, a report from AidData, a research laboratory at William & Mary University in the US, stated that the US is the largest individual recipient of Chinese official credit.
The US has received more than $200bn (1.41tn yuan) through nearly 2,500 projects and initiatives across almost every state between 2000 and 2023.
These investments encompass a wide range of sectors including pipelines, logistics infrastructure, data centres and corporate credit facilities.
China’s global lending and grant activities reached $2.2tn across 200 countries between 2000 and 2023.
The report found that China’s overseas lending mainly targets upper-middle and high-income economies including the EU, with an emphasis on sensitive industries.
