Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 27 December 2025, Codelco and SQM formally closed NovaAndino Litio SpA, the 50:50 joint venture (with a golden share for state-owned Codelco) mandated by the 2023 National Lithium Strategy to bring the Salar de Atacama under state operational control. The vehicle is formed by merging Codelco's subsidiary Minera Tarar SpA with SQM's SQM Salar SpA, governed by a six-director board (three Codelco, three SQM), and runs until 2060 under a CORFO contract amendment that extends operations beyond SQM's previous 2030 lease expiry. SQM manages operations 2025-2030, Codelco from 2031 onward; the Chilean state captures up to ~70% of operating margins through 2030 and ~85% from 2031. As part of the closing, SQM transferred all of its mining concessions in the Salar de Maricunga to Codelco. President Boric and the Cabinet Económico formally endorsed the venture on 29 December 2025, when the first board meeting was held in Santiago.

On 27 October 2025, during the Trump-Takaichi Tokyo summit, the United States and Japan announced the "Framework for Securing the Supply of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths through Mining and Processing", signed by President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on 28 October 2025. The non-binding framework establishes a US-Japan Critical Minerals Supply Security Rapid Response Group co-led by the US Secretary of Energy and the Japanese METI Minister; commits both governments to provide financial support to selected mining and processing projects within six months via grants, guarantees, loans, equity, offtake arrangements, and insurance — mobilising DFC + EXIM (US side) with JOGMEC + JBIC (Japan side); develops a "mutually complementary stockpiling arrangement" leveraging existing national systems; and schedules a Mining, Minerals and Metals Investment Ministerial within 180 days. The framework was subsequently operationalised through the 19 March 2026 "United States-Japan Action Plan for Critical Minerals Supply Chain Resilience" jointly issued by USTR and METI.

H.R.1, the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (Public Law 119-21), was signed into law by President Trump on 4 July 2025. The budget-reconciliation statute is the single largest reversal of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) industrial-policy framework: it accelerates the termination of IRA-era clean- energy tax credits and overlays a new "Foreign Entity of Concern" (FEOC) / "Prohibited Foreign Entity" (PFE) regime on the credits that survive. The §25E used-EV credit, the §30D new clean-vehicle credit, the §45W commercial clean-vehicle credit, and the §30C alternative-fuel-refueling-property credit terminate for vehicles or property placed in service after 30 September 2025. The §25C energy-efficient home improvement credit and the §25D residential clean-energy credit terminate for property placed in service after 31 December 2025. The §45Y clean-electricity production credit and §48E clean-electricity investment credit are eliminated for wind and solar facilities placed in service after 31 December 2027, with a safe harbour for projects whose construction begins on or before 4 July 2026. From 1 January 2026, projects beginning construction must satisfy "material assistance" thresholds limiting the share of components, subcomponents and critical minerals sourced from prohibited foreign entities (PRC, Russia, Iran, DPRK and entities controlled by them). For §45Y/§48E facilities the threshold starts at 40% non-PFE content in 2026 and steps up by 5 percentage points per year through 2030; for §45X advanced manufacturing PTC the analogous schedule begins at 50% in 2026 and rises through the decade. CBO scored the package's energy-credit terminations as generating roughly USD 280bn of revenue (gross), of which USD 77.4bn from §25D termination, USD 21.2bn from §25C, USD 77.8bn from §30D, USD 104.5bn from §45W, and USD 2bn from §30C, partially offsetting the bill's other tax cuts. The bill simultaneously re-authorises and broadens the §48D advanced manufacturing investment tax credit for semiconductor fabs, raising the credit rate from 25% to 35% for property placed in service after 31 December 2025 (preserving the CHIPS Act-aligned semiconductor leg of the IRA-era stack). The OBBBA therefore reshapes the IRA from a broad-based clean-energy + EV + manufacturing pull-through into a narrower, China-decoupling industrial policy concentrated on semiconductors and (residually) §45X battery / critical- mineral processing.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14241 on 20 March 2025 (Federal Register publication 25 March 2025) invoking Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III sections 301, 302, and 303 — and selected Title VII authorities — for domestic critical-mineral production, and delegated those authorities to the Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). The order operationalises the "national energy emergency" declared by EO 14156 (Jan 2025) to waive certain DPA §303 congressional-notification thresholds, designates "mineral production" as an Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program priority, expands the EO definition of "critical minerals" to include uranium, copper, potash, gold (and any further item designated by the Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council), and directs the Departments of the Interior, Energy, Treasury, and EXIM Bank to mobilise federal lands, permitting, and financing to expand US upstream and midstream capacity. EO 14241 is the cross-cutting domestic-mineral umbrella authority of the second Trump administration, paired with FY2025 supplemental appropriations (USD 2bn National Defense Stockpile, USD 5bn Industrial Base Fund) and complemented by the 24 April 2025 follow-on EO on offshore minerals and the 8 April 2025 coal amendment.