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

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 4 February 2026 USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer and Mexican Secretary of Economy Marcelo Ebrard announced a U.S.-Mexico Action Plan on Critical Minerals — a first-of-its-kind 60-day bilateral work programme to develop coordinated trade policies and supply-chain mechanisms for critical minerals. The Action Plan tasks both governments with identifying a priority mineral list, exploring border-adjusted price floors as a candidate trade instrument, and consulting on how price floors could be incorporated into a binding plurilateral agreement on trade in critical minerals. It is framed as a confidence- building measure ahead of the USMCA Joint Review (statutory deadline 1 July 2026) and as the Mexico-side template that parallels concurrent USTR engagements with the EU and Japan.

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 2 February 2026 the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) Board approved a Direct Loan of up to USD 10 billion to an independently governed public-private partnership establishing the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve ("Project Vault"), alongside nearly USD 2 billion of private-sector investment for an envelope of approximately USD 12 billion. The reserve will physically stockpile the 60 minerals on the USGS 2025 Critical Minerals List across multiple US storage facilities, with participating original equipment manufacturers (Clarios, GE Vernova, Western Digital, Boeing) committing to specific volumes and grades and trading partners (Hartree Partners, Mercuria Americas, Traxys) handling sourcing. EXIM characterises the transaction as the largest single financing in its 92-year history and the first use of EXIM authority as the financing vehicle for a domestic strategic-minerals stockpile rather than for export-credit insurance abroad.

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, the US Department of the Interior (DOI) and the US Geological Survey (USGS) released the final 2025 List of Critical Minerals under the Energy Act of 2020 (30 U.S.C. § 1606), expanding the designation from 50 to 60 minerals. The final list adds 10 newly designated commodities — boron, copper, lead, metallurgical coal, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver, and uranium — based on updated supply-chain disruption modelling, public comment, and interagency recommendations. The list constitutes the foundational statutory anchor for downstream US critical-minerals policy instruments including DPA Title III awards, DOE LPO Title 17 loan eligibility, IRA Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit eligibility, Section 30D FEOC determinations, BIS export-control predicate assessments, Section 232 trade-investigation predicates, and CFIUS critical-technology triggers under 31 CFR § 800.215.

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 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.

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.

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).

The Biden administration announced on 14 May 2024 a package of Section 301 tariff increases on Chinese imports following the four-year statutory review of the original 2018-2019 tariffs. The hikes target sectors central to the US-China industrial-policy contest: BEVs went from 25% to 100%, lithium- ion EV batteries 7.5% → 25% (with non-EV battery cells rising in 2026), battery parts 7.5% → 25%, natural graphite + magnets 0% → 25% (phased to 2026), semiconductors 25% → 50% (phased to 2025), solar cells 25% → 50%, steel + aluminum products in selected categories 0-7.5% → 25%, ship-to-shore cranes 0% → 25%, certain medical products 0-7.5% → 50%. USTR issued the final determination on 13 September 2024 with most items effective 27 September 2024.

Published August 29, 2023, this correction amends the Commerce Country Chart table (15 CFR Part 738, Supplement No. 1) to restore entries for the People's Republic of China and Macau under the Nuclear Nonproliferation (NP) column 2 that were erroneously omitted or mis-rendered in the August 21, 2023 correction notice (FR Doc 2023-18047). The correction is technically procedural but operationally significant: it formally establishes the NP2 "X" markings for China and Macau that trigger BIS licensing requirements for items in ECCNs 1A290, 1C298, 2A290, 2A291, 2D290, 2E001, 2E002, and 2E290. Prior to the underlying August 14, 2023 final rule, neither China nor Macau was subject to NP2 controls in the EAR.

Published August 21, 2023, BIS issued this correction to its August 14, 2023 final rule (FR Doc 2023-17243, 88 FR 55021) that expanded Nuclear Nonproliferation (NP2) licensing requirements for exports to the People's Republic of China and Macau. The correction addressed a typographical error in the Commerce Country Chart table (15 CFR Part 738, Supplement No. 1) as it appeared in the original Federal Register publication. The corrected tabular presentation introduced a secondary error that was subsequently fixed by a second correction notice (C1-2023-18047) published August 29, 2023; the substantive policy — NP2 licensing requirements for ECCNs 1A290, 1C298, 2A290, 2A291, 2D290, 2E001, 2E002, and 2E290 destined for China and Macau — was established by the original August 14 rule and remained unchanged throughout the erratum chain.

Effective August 11, 2023, BIS amended 15 CFR Parts 738 and 742 to add the People's Republic of China and Macau to Nuclear Nonproliferation (NP2) licensing requirements under the Export Administration Regulations. The rule inserts NP2 "X" column markings for China and Macau in the Commerce Country Chart, subjecting exports of eight ECCN families (1A290, 1C298, 2A290, 2A291, 2D290, 2E001, 2E002, 2E290) to a BIS licence requirement. The measure was motivated by China's military modernisation, military-civil fusion strategy, and nuclear force expansion; prior to this rule, neither China nor Macau was subject to NP2 controls in the EAR.

The Inflation Reduction Act (Public Law 117-169), signed by President Biden on 16 August 2022, contains the largest single package of clean-energy and clean-manufacturing subsidies in US history — Congressional Budget Office scored the energy and climate provisions at $369B over 10 years, with subsequent Treasury / academic estimates reaching $800B-$1.2T as uptake exceeded baseline. Core mechanisms include the Section 30D Clean Vehicle credit ($7,500 per qualifying EV), the Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit (per-unit credits for domestically-produced battery cells, modules, electrodes, and critical-mineral processing), the Section 48E Clean Electricity Investment Credit, and the Section 45V Clean Hydrogen Production Credit. Critically, the law contains Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) provisions barring credit eligibility for vehicles or components linked to entities controlled by China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.

The Defense Production Act of 1950 (Pub. L. 81-774, 64 Stat. 798, codified at 50 U.S.C. §§4501–4568) is the foundational US statute governing wartime and emergency industrial mobilization. Signed by President Truman on 8 September 1950 during the Korean War, the Act empowers the President to compel industrial priority-rated ordering (Title I / DPAS), authorize direct investment in domestic production capacity for critical industries (Title III), and conduct investment security review (Title VII, precursor to CFIUS). Reauthorized approximately 50 times, most recently extended through September 2025 by Pub. L. 115-263 (2018) and further extended under NDAA FY2026; it has been invoked by every Administration since 1950 and has accelerated dramatically since 2020 to target critical-minerals processing, semiconductor manufacturing, battery supply chains, biopharmaceuticals, and energy infrastructure.