Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 26 May 2026 at the Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting in New Delhi, the United States, Japan, Australia, and India signed the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework, committing to mobilise up to USD 20 billion in combined government and private-sector investment for mining, processing, refining, and recycling of critical minerals across the Indo-Pacific. The framework coordinates investment-policy tools, exploration support, market-development instruments, and supply-chain financing across all four members, with the explicit aim of diversifying critical mineral supply chains away from single-point dependencies in processing. It is the first Quad-format multilateral critical minerals commitment and represents a structural coordination layer atop existing bilateral frameworks (US-Japan, US-India, Japan-France) and national strategies.

On 26 May 2026 in Yerevan, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan signed a Critical Minerals Framework ("Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths") alongside a Strategic Partnership Charter and the TRIPP (Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity) Framework Agreement, elevating US-Armenia relations to a "comprehensive strategic partnership." The critical-minerals framework commits both governments to cooperation across mining, processing and supply-chain security, naming molybdenum explicitly and signalling intent to extend to tungsten, tantalum and rare-earths, and to the transit-corridor logistics the TRIPP framework is meant to open across the South Caucasus.

On 26 May 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar signed a Strategic Critical Minerals Cooperation Framework at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, formalising bilateral cooperation across the full critical-minerals and rare-earths value chain — mining, processing, recycling, and downstream investment. The framework commits both governments to protecting sensitive supply chains from coercive market practices and reducing collective vulnerability to single-source monopolies, extending the FORGE (Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement) bilateral architecture from its February 2026 founding phase into a FORGE expansion phase. The US Government is mobilising over $30 billion in letters of interest, loans, investments, and other support alongside the private sector in support of FORGE-aligned projects; simultaneously the four Quad partners (US, Japan, Australia, India) announced a separate Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework targeting up to $20 billion in government and private-sector mobilisation.

On April 30, 2026, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added former Democratic Republic of the Congo President Joseph Kabange Kabila to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List pursuant to Executive Order 13413, as amended by Executive Order 13671 (the DRC sanctions program), for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support to the March 23 Movement (M23) and its political-military coalition the Congo River Alliance (Alliance Fleuve Congo, AFC). Treasury press release SB0480 ("Treasury Sanctions Former Democratic Republic of the Congo President for Ties to Armed Conflict") frames the designation as enforcement of the Washington-brokered DRC-Rwanda framework: M23 controls a substantial share of mineral-rich eastern DRC (cobalt, coltan, tin, tungsten, gold) and AFC's renewed rebellion has fuelled a mass-displacement crisis. The notice was published in the Federal Register on May 5, 2026 (FR Doc. 2026-08672). The designation blocks all property and interests in property of Kabila subject to US jurisdiction and prohibits US-person dealings with him. It is a discrete enforcement step under the broader US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement (4 December 2025 — the "Washington Accords") and complements earlier 2026 designations of Rwanda Defence Force-linked actors. Treasury frames the action as signalling that political support to M23/AFC, not just direct military or commercial activity, will trigger blocking sanctions.

President Trump issued five Presidential Determinations on 20 April 2026 under Section 303 of the Defense Production Act of 1950 (50 U.S.C. § 4533), invoking the authority granted by Executive Order 14156 (Declaring a National Energy Emergency, signed 20 January 2025). The five determinations cover: (1) domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics; (2) large-scale energy and energy-related infrastructure development, manufacturing, and deployment; (3) natural gas transmission, processing, storage, and LNG capacity; (4) coal supply chains and baseload power generation; (5) grid infrastructure, equipment, and supply chain. Each determination authorises the relevant Cabinet Secretary (primarily Energy) to use DPA §303 powers — direct loans, loan guarantees, purchase commitments, and equity investments — to expand domestic capacity in the named category.

On 19 March 2026, USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer and Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, METI, and Ministry of Finance jointly released the "United States-Japan Action Plan for Critical Minerals Supply Chain Resilience" — the operational follow-on to the 27 October 2025 US-Japan Framework. The Action Plan formally commits both governments to develop a plurilateral trade initiative in critical minerals "supported by price floors or other measures", to consult on embedding "border-adjusted price floors" in a binding plurilateral agreement, and to identify specific mining/processing/manufacturing projects in the US, Japan, or third countries for prioritised joint financing. It is the first formal US/Japan trade-policy commitment to administered floor-pricing as an instrument of critical-minerals trade governance, and explicitly invites third countries to join the contemplated plurilateral.

On 26 February 2026 USTR published a Federal Register notice (90 FR 9686, docket USTR-2026-0034) inviting public comment on the design of a plurilateral Agreement on Trade in Critical Minerals and accompanying policy actions to strengthen critical-mineral supply-chain resilience. The notice signals that the agreement under consideration would include "a commitment by all parties to implement minimum prices or other price mechanisms, with appropriate border measures" — a coordinated price-floor/border-adjustment regime across like-minded partners to incentivise ex-China mining, processing, and refining investment. Comments were due 19 March 2026.

On 19 February 2026 Presidents Trump and Prabowo finalised the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) between the United States and Indonesia. The deal locks the US reciprocal tariff on Indonesian imports at 19% (down from the 32% threatened in April 2025), with 0% on a defined list of products and a textile/apparel quota benchmarked to US-cotton/MMF inputs. Indonesia commits to remove export restrictions on all industrial commodities — explicitly including critical minerals across the full value chain — and to grant US investors national treatment in mineral exploration, mining, processing and export. Indonesia also agrees to eliminate tariff barriers on >99% of US-origin goods, while a Freeport-McMoRan MOU extends the Grasberg copper-mine licence (~USD 10bn/yr revenue, world's 2nd largest copper mine) and a parallel commercial package totalling ~USD 33bn (energy USD 15bn, aerospace incl. Boeing USD 13.5bn, agriculture USD 4.5bn) is signed alongside.

On 4 February 2026, in Washington, DC, Guinea's Minister of Mines and Geology Bouna Sylla and US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg signed an intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on critical-mineral supply chains, covering exploration, extraction, processing, and downstream investment. The MoU was one of eleven founding-member bilateral instruments signed simultaneously at the inaugural FORGE (Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement) Critical Minerals Ministerial hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Guinea holds approximately 26% of global bauxite reserves (~3.7bn tonnes) and is the world's largest bauxite exporter and #2 alumina exporter, making it the choke-point upstream node for any non-Chinese aluminium value chain.

On 4 February 2026, in Washington, DC, the United States and the Kingdom of Morocco signed an intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on critical-mineral and rare-earth supply chains, covering exploration, extraction, processing, and downstream investment. The MoU was one of eleven founding-member bilateral instruments signed simultaneously at the inaugural FORGE (Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement) Critical Minerals Ministerial hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Morocco holds approximately 70-75% of the world's known phosphate reserves and is a globally significant cobalt, copper, and nickel producer; the framework explicitly aims to attract Western investment into Moroccan downstream processing capacity rather than raw-mineral export.

On 4 February 2026, in Washington, DC, Peru and the United States signed an intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on critical-mineral supply chains, covering exploration, extraction, processing, and downstream investment. The MoU was one of eleven founding-member bilateral instruments signed simultaneously at the inaugural FORGE (Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement) Critical Minerals Ministerial hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and USTR Jamieson Greer. Peru is the world's second-largest copper producer (~12% of mined supply), a top-two silver and zinc producer, the leading Latin American gold producer, and a globally significant source of tin, molybdenum, and lead — making it the most strategically important Latin American signatory of the FORGE founding cohort alongside Argentina.

On 4 February 2026, in Washington, DC, Philippine Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Raphael P.M. Lotilla and US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg signed an intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on diversifying global critical-mineral supply chains and to promote bilateral investment in mapping, survey, processing, refining, and recycling of critical minerals and rare earths. The MoU was one of eleven founding-member bilateral instruments signed simultaneously at the inaugural FORGE (Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement) Critical Minerals Ministerial hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The framework explicitly aims to push the Philippines' mining sector beyond raw-ore export toward domestic value-add and downstream processing.

On 4 February 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE) at the inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial in Washington, DC, attended by representatives from 54 countries and the European Commission. FORGE is the successor to the 2022 Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) and is structured as a plurilateral coalition that creates a preferential trade-and-investment zone for critical minerals, including coordinated price-floor mechanisms designed to counter adversarial market manipulation — explicitly framed against Chinese mineral-supply dominance. The Republic of Korea chairs FORGE through June 2026. Eleven bilateral critical-minerals frameworks/MoUs were signed simultaneously (Argentina, Cook Islands, Ecuador, Guinea, Morocco, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, UAE, UK, Uzbekistan), and FORGE is paired with Project Vault, an EXIM Bank direct loan facility of up to USD 10 billion to back FORGE-aligned critical-mineral projects.

On 4 February 2026, in Washington, DC, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Uzbekistan Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov signed an intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding on Securing Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths. The MoU was one of eleven founding-member bilateral instruments signed simultaneously at the inaugural FORGE (Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement) Critical Minerals Ministerial and supersedes the September 2024 Biden-era US-Uzbekistan critical-minerals MoU. On 18 February 2026, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and EXIM signed Heads of Terms with Uzbekistan's Ministry of Investment, Industry, and Trade and the Fund for Reconstruction and Development of Uzbekistan establishing a Joint Investment Framework — including a proposed U.S.–Uzbekistan Joint Investment Holding Company — covering critical minerals (exploration, extraction, processing), infrastructure, and energy under a three-year Economic Cooperation Programme valued at up to USD 35bn.

On 14 January 2026 President Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 titled "Adjusting Imports of Processed Critical Minerals and Their Derivative Products into the United States". Unlike the parallel 14 January 2026 semiconductor proclamation and the subsequent April 2026 pharmaceutical proclamation, the PCMDP proclamation does NOT immediately impose tariffs. Instead it directs the Secretary of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative to jointly negotiate bilateral and plurilateral supply agreements with trading partners, with an initial 180-day status report due 13 July 2026. The proclamation reserves residual authority to impose tariffs if negotiations fail or prove ineffective, and explicitly contemplates "price floors" on PCMDP imports as a negotiated instrument.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security issued a final rule (RIN 0694-AK43, 91 FR 1684, signed 13 January 2026, effective 15 January 2026) revising the EAR license-review policy for exports of certain advanced-computing integrated circuits to end-users in China and Macau from a presumption of denial to case-by-case review. Eligibility is limited to commodities controlled under ECCN 3A090.a and 3A090.b with a Total Processing Performance (TPP) below 21,000 and total DRAM bandwidth below 6,500 GB/s — the band that covers NVIDIA H200 and AMD MI325X-equivalents and below. To qualify, exporters must certify (i) sufficiency of US supply such that the export will not delay domestic orders or divert foundry capacity, (ii) that aggregate TPP of advanced-node ICs exported to China or Macau will not exceed 50% of domestic shipments, (iii) compliance with end-use and end-user prohibitions, and (iv) prior performance review by a qualified independent third-party testing lab headquartered in the United States. The rule is the first material rollback of the October 2022 / October 2023 / December 2024 advanced-computing export-control architecture and operationalises the Trump-administration policy of trading H200-class chip access against Chinese cooperation on critical minerals, fentanyl precursors and Taiwan-strait restraint.

The US Department of Commerce awarded Crucible Metals, LLC — a subsidiary of South Korea's Korea Zinc — USD 210 million in direct CHIPS Incentives Program funding to build a smelter and critical-minerals processing facility in Clarksville, Tennessee. The facility, styled "Project Crucible," is an advanced replica of Korea Zinc's Onsan complex and is expected to cost roughly USD 6.6 billion in capital expenditure (USD 7.4 billion in total project financing), targeting first production in 2029. At full scale it is designed to produce 13 critical and strategic minerals — including gallium, germanium, antimony, indium, bismuth, tellurium, cadmium and palladium alongside roughly 300,000 tons/year of zinc, 200,000 tons/year of lead and 35,000+ tons/year of copper. As a condition of the award, Korea Zinc committed to give the US government and US customers priority access to its existing Korean-refined output of 10 critical minerals beginning in 2026, and the project separately secured conditional Department of War (Office of Strategic Capital) loan support and FAST-41 covered-project permitting status.

On 11 December 2025 the US Department of State announced the inaugural Pax Silica Summit, held in Washington D.C. on 12 December 2025, at which the United States, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Israel signed the non-binding Pax Silica Declaration. The declaration commits signatories to coordinate "trusted" supply chains across the full technology stack — software, frontier foundation models, network infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, transportation logistics, minerals refining and processing, and energy — explicitly to reduce "coercive dependencies." The coalition has since expanded to add the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Qatar, Sweden and India (signed 20 February 2026 at the India AI Impact Summit), and on 26 March 2026 State announced a USD 250 million Pax Silica Fund intended to catalyse trusted-capital co-investment in critical-minerals processing and semiconductor supply chains.

On 4 December 2025, the United States and the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement on Trade and Investment, executed at a White House trilateral ceremony alongside the parallel U.S.-Rwanda framework and witnessed by President Trump, President Tshisekedi (DRC), and President Kagame (Rwanda). The Agreement creates a Strategic Minerals Reserve (SMR) and a Strategic Asset Reserve (SAR) under DRC sovereignty, gives U.S. persons preferential access to SAR assets, and commits DRC and its state-owned enterprises to route at least 30% of their commercialised cobalt volumes through the Sakania-Lobito Corridor within five years. A Joint Steering Committee (JSC) co-chaired by State and DRC's Ministry of Economy holds its inaugural meeting on 4-5 February 2026, designating the initial SAR asset list and launching implementation. The DFC announced a proposed equity investment in a Gécamines-Mercuria copper/cobalt joint venture as the first commercial vehicle under the framework.

On 4 December 2025, OFAC assessed a near-statutory-maximum civil monetary penalty of USD 7,139,305 against Gracetown Inc., a New York-based property-management company, for 24 apparent violations of Russia-related sanctions under EO 13660, EO 13661, and EO 14024 between April 2018 and May 2020, and for separately failing to report blocked assets for over 45 months in violation of 31 CFR §501.603. Gracetown was established in 2006 to manage three luxury real-estate properties in Manhattan and Washington DC ultimately owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska; after Deripaska's April 2018 SDN designation — which OFAC communicated directly to Gracetown — the company continued processing 24 payments totalling USD 31,250 on behalf of a Deripaska-linked British Virgin Islands entity (Baufinanz). OFAC found the violations egregious and not voluntarily self-disclosed, driving the penalty to 80% of the USD 8,906,358 statutory ceiling; the ratio of penalty (USD 7.14M) to underlying transaction value (USD 31,250) underscores OFAC's strict liability approach to post-notice dealings.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) entered into an $11,485,352 settlement with IPI Partners, LLC — a US private-equity data-center fund manager (~$10.5bn AUM) — to resolve 51 apparent violations of the Ukraine-/Russia-Related Sanctions Regulations between July 2018 and June 2022. IPI solicited and accepted two $25 million fund subscriptions in September 2017 and March 2018 from Definition Services, Inc. — a British Virgin Islands entity ultimately owned by Heritage Trust, a Delaware family trust established by sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov — and continued processing 18 capital calls, 20 distributions, and 13 management-fee payments for four years after Kerimov's April 2018 SDN designation. OFAC simultaneously issued an unusually direct sectoral warning to the private-equity industry, marking the first major OFAC enforcement against a US PE-fund administrator in the data-center / AI-infrastructure segment and the second Kerimov-linked PE/VC settlement of 2025 (after the June 2025 $216M GVA Capital statutory-maximum penalty).

The US Department of War announced a USD 29.9 million Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III award to ElementUS Minerals, LLC (doing business as ElementUSA) to construct a demonstration facility in Gramercy, Louisiana extracting gallium and scandium (and other critical minerals) from bauxite residue, a byproduct of alumina refining. The company holds proprietary extraction technology and access to over 30 million tons of bauxite residue feedstock, and the award is intended to establish one of the first domestic US producers of both gallium and scandium. Secondary development work occurs at the company's "Critical Resource Accelerator" in Cedar Park, Texas.

On 18 November 2025, during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's White House visit (17-19 November 2025), the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia signed a Strategic Framework for Cooperation on Securing Uranium, Metals, Permanent Magnets, and Critical Minerals Supply Chains. The framework was signed by US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Saudi Minister of Energy H.R.H. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and positions Saudi Arabia (via Ma'aden + Public Investment Fund vehicles) as a regional hub for processing rare earths and producing permanent magnets, supports a US-backed rare-earths refinery in the Kingdom, and channels Saudi capital — alongside the broader USD ~1 trillion Saudi investment commitment in the US announced the same week — into US and allied critical-mineral projects. It is paired with a separate joint declaration on civil nuclear cooperation (Section 123 Agreement contemplated) and was operationalised one day later by the 19 November 2025 binding term sheet between MP Materials, the US Department of War, and Ma'aden to develop a rare-earth refinery in Saudi Arabia (Department of War financing the US side's 49% stake; Ma'aden retaining ≥51%).

The US Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, via the National Energy Technology Laboratory, announced USD 355 million in federal funding across two notices of funding opportunity (NOFOs) on 14 November 2025: up to USD 275 million for pilot-scale facilities recovering critical minerals from coal-based feedstocks and industrial/mining byproducts at existing US industrial sites, and up to USD 80 million for the "Mine of the Future — Proving Ground Initiative," field-scale test sites for next-generation mining technologies (novel extraction, in-situ methods, beneficiation) plus mining-workforce training. Applications were due 15 December 2025.

On 6 November 2025 in Washington, DC, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Kazakhstan's Minister of Industry and Construction Yersayin Nagaspayev signed a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding on Critical Minerals Cooperation during President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's state visit and the C5+1 Presidential Summit. The MoU establishes a framework for joint exploration, processing, and supply-chain transparency for tungsten, uranium, and rare-earth elements, with the explicit objective of building "resilient, non-Chinese supply-chains" for the global energy transition. The instrument is paired with up to USD 900 million in potential US financing to Cove Kaz Capital Group for tungsten development and sits inside a broader USD 17 billion package of Washington-signed agreements that lifts headline US-Kazakhstan economic engagement to a reported USD 117 billion.

On 3 November 2025 the US Department of Commerce's CHIPS Program Office (administered via NIST) announced a non-binding preliminary letter of intent to take a $50 million equity stake in Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina-based rare-earth magnet producer. The CHIPS and Science Act funding is earmarked for equipment to separate, metallize and manufacture Neodymium Iron Boron (NdFeB) magnets, targeting up to 10,000 metric tonnes of annual domestic production capacity. Commerce framed the investment around NdFeB magnets' role in the semiconductor equipment supply chain (EUV lithography, CVD, etch and pump systems). The equity stake is conditioned on final negotiation and approval and runs alongside a separately-tracked $620 million Department of War Office of Strategic Capital loan to Vulcan Elements and ReElement Technologies announced the same day.

On 3 November 2025 the US Department of War's Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), together with the Department of Commerce, announced a joint conditional loan commitment of $700 million to two domestic rare-earth magnet producers: $620 million to Vulcan Elements and $80 million to ReElement Technologies. The loans fund separation, metallization and finished-magnet manufacturing capacity for Neodymium Iron Boron (NdFeB) magnets, targeting up to 10,000 metric tons of annual domestic magnet production. In exchange, the Department of War receives warrants in both companies. This action covers the OSC loan tranche; a related, separately-tracked action covers the Department of Commerce's parallel $50 million CHIPS Act equity stake in Vulcan Elements.

At the APEC Busan summit on 30 October 2025, Presidents Trump and Xi reached the "Economic and Trade Arrangement Between the United States and the People's Republic of China," subsequently implemented on the US side by the executive order "Modifying Reciprocal Tariff Rates Consistent with the Economic and Trade Arrangement" (issued 4 November 2025; effective 12:01 am EST on 10 November 2025; published in the Federal Register on 7 November 2025 as 90 FR 50729 / 2025-19826) and on the Chinese side by a series of MOFCOM and State Council Tariff Commission announcements (notably MOFCOM 2025 No. 90 of 8–9 November 2025). The arrangement is structurally parallel to the already-filed US-Japan, US-Korea and US-Taiwan framework deals but uniquely material because it freezes the highest-stakes bilateral tariff and export-control confrontation of the post-2024 reset. Core US commitments: (i) reciprocal-tariff "additional ad valorem rate of duty" on PRC-origin goods reduced from a prior 20% IEEPA-fentanyl + 10% IEEPA-reciprocal stack to a 10% rate (i.e., the prior 24% / 34% scheduled escalation is suspended), extended through 10 November 2026; (ii) US BIS suspends the so-called "affiliates rule" expanding entity-list controls to majority-owned subsidiaries of listed Chinese firms; (iii) USTR pauses Section 301 maritime / shipbuilding / logistics countermeasures against Chinese vessels for one year. Core PRC commitments: (i) MOFCOM suspends for one year (until 10 November 2026) the 9 October 2025 extraterritorial rare-earth export-control package — including controls on REE processing equipment, lithium-battery manufacturing equipment, and superhard materials; (ii) PRC suspends retaliatory tariffs on a broad swath of US agricultural products through 31 December 2026; (iii) commitment to purchase ≥25 million metric tonnes of US soybeans annually in 2026-2028 and to resume sorghum and log imports; (iv) suspension of MOFCOM antitrust and "unreliable-entity" probes against named US semiconductor and chip-equipment companies; (v) cooperation on fentanyl precursor enforcement. The arrangement does not repeal underlying authorities (IEEPA tariffs, MOFCOM export-control list, Entity List) — it is a calibrated mutual freeze with a one-year sunset and quarterly review checkpoints.

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.

On 26 October 2025 in Kuala Lumpur, on the margins of the ASEAN Summit, President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim signed two complementary instruments structuring the US-Malaysia economic relationship: (i) a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Cooperation to Diversify Global Critical Minerals Supply Chains and Promote Investments, establishing quarterly working-level meetings on bilateral exploration, extraction, processing, refining, manufacturing, and recycling, plus shared commitments on streamlined permitting and protection from non-market policies; and (ii) a legally-binding Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) covering goods (chemicals, machinery, electrical equipment, metals, vehicles, dairy, horticulture, poultry, pork, rice, fuel ethanol), digital trade, services, and investment. Under the ART, the United States maintains a 19% reciprocal tariff on Malaysian imports (with carve-outs for products receiving 0% under EO 14346) while Malaysia commits to refrain from banning or quota-restricting exports of critical minerals or rare earths to the US, ensure no restrictions on rare-earth magnet sales to US firms, and grant extended operating licenses to US partners. The ART enters into force 60 days after exchange of notifications of completed domestic procedures.

On 26 October 2025 in Kuala Lumpur, on the margins of the ASEAN Summit, President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Cooperation to Diversify Global Critical Minerals Supply Chains. The MoU covers exploration, extraction, processing and refining, manufacturing, and recycling and recovery of critical minerals and rare earths, with explicit emphasis on domestic value-addition rather than raw-material exports. It establishes a working-level group meeting on a regular (quarterly or as-needed) basis, commits both sides to information-sharing on best practices and technical expertise, and includes a good-faith commitment to "develop authorities to review and deter certain critical-minerals asset sales on national-security grounds" — language that anticipates investment-screening regimes against Chinese-origin acquirers. The MoU is paired with (but separate from) a parallel Framework for a US-Thailand Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, also concluded the same day, under which Thailand commits to eliminate tariff barriers on ~99% of US goods in exchange for the US maintaining its 19% reciprocal-tariff rate on Thai imports.

On 20 October 2025, President Donald J. Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed at the White House the "United States-Australia Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths" — a non-binding common-policy instrument committing both governments to provide at least USD 1 billion each in financing within six months (USD 3bn+ joint commitment against an USD 8.5bn project pipeline and a stated USD 53bn recoverable-resource pipeline). The framework establishes a US-Australia Critical Minerals Supply Security Response Group co-led by the US Secretary of Energy and the Australian Minister for Resources, mandates streamlined permitting for mining/separation/processing projects, and explicitly couples the US demand-side architecture (DPA Title III + Defense Logistics Agency stockpile) to Australia's Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve. Concurrent with signing, EXIM issued seven Letters of Interest totalling USD 2.2bn (unlocking up to USD 5bn) to Arafura Rare Earths, Northern Minerals, Graphinex, La Trobe Magnesium, VHM, RZ Resources, and Sunrise Energy Metals; the US Department of War separately committed to a 100 metric-ton-per-year advanced gallium refinery in Western Australia, and Australia took USD 200m concessional equity in the Alcoa-Sojitz Wagerup gallium project and USD 100m equity in the Arafura Nolans rare-earths project.

The US Department of War announced a USD 43.4 million Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III award to Alaska Range Resources, LLC — a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nova Minerals Limited — to fund the initial phase of an integrated domestic antimony supply chain at the Estelle Gold and Critical Minerals Project, roughly 150 km northwest of Anchorage, Alaska. The award funds extraction, concentration and refining of stibnite ore into military-grade antimony trisulfide, used in munitions primer production and case hardening. It follows China's December 2024 ban on antimony exports to the US and is intended to establish a "full spectrum" domestic antimony mining and refining hub to reduce reliance on Chinese-controlled supply.

President Trump signed Executive Order "Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security" on September 25, 2025, certifying a restructuring plan as a "qualified divestiture" under the 2024 PAFACA law and directing the Attorney General not to enforce the Act for 120 days while the transaction closes. The plan creates TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, valued at roughly $14 billion, with a new US-investor consortium (Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX at 15% each, plus other investors, totaling 50%), affiliates of existing ByteDance investors holding 30.1%, and ByteDance itself retaining 19.9%. Oracle will run US data storage and algorithm retraining/oversight; the deal closed January 22, 2026.

On 25 August 2025, ARPA-E launched the Magnetic Acceleration Generating New Innovations and Tactical Outcomes (MAGNITO) program, a funding opportunity making up to USD 20 million available for research into new permanent-magnet materials with saturation magnetization or maximum energy product exceeding any known material — using computational materials discovery, AI/machine learning, and high-throughput experimentation. The goal is to unlock stronger, lighter, cheaper motors and generators and reduce US dependence on rare-earth magnets and their foreign-controlled supply chains. The program was announced the same day as the companion ROCKS ore-characterization program, together framed by DOE as a USD 60 million package.

On 25 August 2025, ARPA-E launched the Reliable Ore Characterization with Keystone Sensing (ROCKS) program, a funding opportunity (FOA DE-FOA-0003592) making up to USD 40 million available for projects developing faster, cheaper drilling, sensing, and analysis technologies to characterize rare-earth-element and critical-mineral ore deposits in months rather than years. Individual awards range from USD 2 million to 5 million. The program is part of a wider USD 60 million ARPA-E package announced the same day alongside the companion MAGNITO program for advanced permanent-magnet materials.

On 14 August 2025 OFAC re-designated the cryptocurrency exchange Garantex Europe OU under its cyber authority (E.O. 13694, as amended) for processing over USD 100 million in transactions tied to ransomware and darknet-market actors since 2019, and designated its successor exchange Grinex — created by former Garantex staff to move customer deposits and continue operations after a March 2025 US Secret Service-led takedown of Garantex's infrastructure. OFAC also designated three Garantex executives, the A7A5 ruble-backed stablecoin issuer Old Vector (Kyrgyzstan), and Russian settlement-platform firm A7 and its subsidiaries A71 and A7 Agent — entities linked to sanctioned Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor and sanctioned Promsvyazbank — for supplying the A7A5 token used to compensate Garantex customers and route funds through Grinex.

On August 12, 2025, OFAC designated four entities — armed group PARECO-FF, Congolese mining cooperative CDMC, and Hong Kong traders East Rise Corporation Ltd. and Star Dragon Corporation Ltd. — pursuant to Executive Order 13413 (amended by EO 13671) for financing armed-group violence and laundering conflict-origin coltan/tantalum from the Rubaya mining area through Rwanda into international markets. The designations freeze US-jurisdictional assets and prohibit US-person dealings with all four entities. Rubaya accounts for approximately 15% of global coltan production, making this the first US action targeting the full armed-group → cooperative → offshore-trader laundering chain for that deposit.

The US Department of Defense announced a USD 10 million Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III award to Elk Creek Resources Corp (ECRC), a subsidiary of NioCorp Developments Ltd, to advance a domestic "mine-to-master-alloy" scandium supply chain at the Elk Creek Critical Minerals Project in Nebraska. The funds support feasibility-level engineering, additional reserve drilling and updated cost estimates for the polymetallic deposit (scandium, niobium, titanium and rare earths), and support integration of aluminum-scandium master alloy into aerospace platforms alongside a defense prime contractor. The award notes the US has not mined scandium since 1969 and that current global scandium supply is overwhelmingly foreign-sourced, with China the dominant producer.

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.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14154 "Unleashing American Energy" on 20 January 2025, his first day in office, declaring a national energy emergency and directing a sweeping reversal of Biden-era energy trade and production restrictions. The order directed the Department of Energy to immediately resume processing LNG export licence applications for non-Free Trade Agreement countries — reversing the Biden DOE pause in place since 26 January 2024 — and instructed DOE to weight allies' energy security in the "public interest" determination under the Natural Gas Act. It also rescinded multiple Biden executive orders including EO 14082 (advancing clean energy), EO 14037 (strengthening Buy American), EO 14072, and EO 14151, and reopened offshore drilling, federal coal leasing, and ANWR exploration under expedited permit timelines.

On 14 January 2025 in Washington, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide signed a bilateral Memorandum of Cooperation on High-Standard, Market-Oriented Trade of Critical Minerals. The instrument formalises an intergovernmental framework for cooperation on critical-minerals supply chains and embeds a Non-Market Policies and Practices (NMPP) analysis framework jointly developed by the US Department of Commerce and Norway's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries to identify and respond to non-market distortions in third countries. The MoC sits structurally alongside the parallel US bilateral track with Kazakhstan (Nov 2025), Uzbekistan, Guinea, Morocco, Peru and the Philippines (Feb 2026), extending the post-2024 US critical-minerals MoU architecture into a Western-aligned high-standards producer (Norway hosts the Fen Complex REE deposit and the Engebø rutile/garnet project).