Billions of dollars are being pumped into a global critical minerals boom, as the resources are increasingly wielded as trade weapons and countries race to plug their supply-chain vulnerabilities.

And resource-rich countries are eager to come out on top.

Billions of dollars are being pumped into a global critical minerals boom, as the resources are increasingly wielded as trade weapons and countries race to plug their supply-chain vulnerabilities.

And resource-rich countries are eager to come out on top.

Producer countries want “to take maximum advantage of this moment,” said Geoffrey Pyatt, who served as assistant secretary of state for energy resources in the Biden administration.

It’s an all-too familiar story for many of the world’s mineral-rich powers—such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bolivia, and South Africa—which have been flooded by interest before and carry fraught legacies of extraction and exploitation.

“Resource-rich countries have been used as extractive giants,” said Heidi Crebo-Rediker, who was the U.S. State Department’s first chief economist under the Obama administration and is currently at the Council on Foreign Relations. Many “have not seen the benefits of the extraction of many resources over many decades,” she said.

This time around, they want to reap the rewards.

A photo released in 1960 shows a mining site in the Katanga region of the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).AFP via Getty Images

Once relegated to the sidelines of foreign policy, critical minerals are now in the spotlight, buoyed by trade wars and the Trump administration’s nakedly transactional approach to diplomacy.

U.S. President Donald Trump has made no secret of his mineral ambitions as he has scoured the world for new deals, from Ukraine to Japan. In a clear signal of U.S. priorities, earlier this year U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened the first-ever critical minerals ministerial, where U.S. officials pitched representatives from more than 50 countries on a global minerals trading bloc.

As these resources are increasingly seen as a vital national security issue globally, the United States is far from the only power to go all-in on minerals. That surge in interest has been welcomed by the world’s mineral-rich, who are eager to use their growing geopolitical leverage to take greater control over their strategic industries in a wave of resource nationalism.

“Developing countries very much are trying to engage with these different powers,” said Eric Olander, the editor in chief of the China-Global South Project. “The key question is: Who’s actually going to get something done?”

The answer to that question has long been China, which after decades of pouring resources and investments into the sector has now established a commanding chokehold over the world’s mineral supply chains. Beijing is the biggest financier of global critical mineral projects, according to the AidData research group at the College of William and Mary, which tracked how China has doled out some $98 billion for extraction and processing across 47 countries for more than two decades.

“The Chinese have shown that they’ve got an ecosystem of finance, state-backed insurance, and state-backed mining companies that can go ahead and get things done,” Olander said.

But now, more and more offers are on the table, and no one wants to be tied down to just one trade partner.

In dealing with Trump in particular, countries have learned that leveraging their mineral riches can help curry favor and unlock investment. Add elections into the equation,........

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