Numerous countries have entered into agreements with the United States regarding critical minerals following a summit on the subject. Countries involved in deals include Argentina, the Cook Islands, Ecuador, Guinea, Morocco, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan, the State Department said, noting that ten other critical mineral frameworks have been developed over the last five months.
The development comes as the United States government is mobilizing “unprecedented resources to secure critical mineral supply chains, supporting projects with more than $30 billion in letters of interest, investments, loans, and other support over the past six months in partnership with the private sector,” the State Department explained. The investments bolster the existing Pax Silica agreement.
Pax Silica, an agreement signed by the United States, Singapore, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Israel, aims to counter China’s dominance in the rare earth minerals.
This week, President Trump announced Project Vault, an initiative establishing a domestic reserve for critical minerals.
“For years, American businesses have risked running out of critical minerals during market disruptions,” Trump said on February 2. “Today, we’re launching what will be known as Project Vault, to ensure that American businesses and workers are never harmed by any shortage.”
“Just as we have long had a strategic petroleum reserve and a stockpile of critical minerals for national defense, we’re now creating this reserve for American industry, so we don’t have any problems,” he added.
There were 60 critical minerals as of 2025, including: aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, boron, cerium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, copper, dysprosium, erbium, europium, fluorspar, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, holmium, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lead, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, metallurgical coal, neodymium, nickel, niobium, palladium, phosphate, platinum, potash, praseodymium, rhenium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, silicon, silver, tantalum, tellurium, terbium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc, and zirconium.
