Flashpoints | Economy

Despite Top-level Tensions, Strategic Mineral Cooperation Among Western Allies Is Quietly Deepening

The effort to reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains is now starting to have tangible results.

The first export shipment of antimony manufactured by Nyrstar in Port Pirie, Australia.

On February 17, the first shipment from the new antimony project at Port Pirie, South Australia was exported. A decade ago, this shipment would have simply received a minor mention in some specialized mining publication; today, it is part of a much larger geopolitical story concerning strategic minerals. 

Antimony is not the most famous critical mineral, nor is it discussed with the same frequency as rare earths or lithium, but it occupies an important place in both civilian industry and defense-related applications. Commercially, it is used primarily in flame retardants and in a range of industrial products, while in higher-purity or differently processed forms antimony also appears in specialized electronics and some energetic materials. What makes the Port Pirie shipment notable is not simply the mineral itself, but what the project represents: a tangible example of allied efforts to reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains in a strategically sensitive material.

That matters because antimony, like many strategic minerals, sits at the uncomfortable intersection of industrial necessity and geopolitical concentration. China has long occupied a dominant position in antimony and rare earth mining and refining. Depending on how one measures ore, metal, oxide, or other downstream products, China’s share of global supply of critical minerals remains extremely high. It mines around 70 percent and refines about 90 percent of the world’s rare earths. It possesses not just market share, but the capacity to turn choke-point dominance into policy leverage. 

Recently Chinese export controls have become a normal instrument of statecraft, and governments have started to recognize that industrial vulnerability is not an abstraction. The 2020 Export Control Law provides the Chinese government with new policy tools and justifications to deny and impose terms on foreign commercial transactions on the grounds of China’s national security and national interest. In 2025, in response to the Trump administration’s imposition of high tariffs and additional technology controls, China implemented a licensing system that, if used, would allow it to control rare-earth shipments outside the country. In January, it imposed stronger controls on dual-use exports to Japan, covering seven types of critical minerals as well as rare metals, to demonstrate its unhappiness with Japanese policy toward Taiwan. 

The United States and its allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific have long heavily relied on imported strategic minerals. As noted by U.S. Secretary of State Mario Rubio at the recent Munich Security Conference, one area for further cooperation among the Western states is ensuring that the Western supply chains for critical minerals are not vulnerable to “extortion” from other powers.

Yet if one reads the headlines there seems to be little coherence to how Western countries are responding to mineral dependence on China. Despite years of speeches, communiqués, and expressions of anxiety, there is still no truly comprehensive top-line Western plan for securing large-scale independent access to many critical minerals. Efforts at collective coordination have remained partial, uneven, and in some cases visibly stalled. Meanwhile, political and trade tensions have grown, and serve to undermine cooperation, as illustrated by the G-7’s recent failure to agree to a coordinated price floor for certain strategic minerals.

Nevertheless, looking beyond the rhetoric, the international picture appears more fractured than it actually is in regards to critical minerals. The Australian Port Pirie antimony shipment suggests something more complicated. 

Even in the absence of a fully coherent multilateral framework, lower-level cooperation continues. Governments, export credit agencies, provincial and state-level actors, private firms, and industrial planners are still moving capital, permitting projects, structuring partnerships, and creating alternative supply lines. The Australia-U.S. critical minerals framework is one example of this broader phenomenon. There are others: from the continued Japanese investments in rare earths extraction and processing in Australia, to Taiwanese investments in the North American strategic minerals sector and Australian efforts through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to increase rare earths production. 

In February international representatives gathered for the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement, which looks to improve coordination on pricing and encourage additional investment in mining and process. Pursuant to these international efforts, the Office of the United States Trade Representative has been working on a trade agreement that would set a “minimum, market base price” for critical minerals that is intended to help cover the cost of the production and processing. This minimum price would prevent Chinese processors from driving higher-cost or start-up non-Chinese producers out of the market through dumping.

These developments, and the international cooperation behind them, should provide better and more reliable access for various critical minerals and remove incentives to use access to these minerals for political and strategic purposes. Indeed, top-level torpor does not mean that there is a lack of agency at lower levels. The global economy is not a command economy, and allied coordination is not fully represented in summits and communiqués. Rather critical mineral security is being shaped by entrepreneurs, mining firms, refiners, defense contractors, state development offices, export-import banks, geological agencies, and investors trying to anticipate future bottlenecks. Mining production from exploration to processing involves small and large decisions and requires years to implement. In that sense, the absence of a grand strategy does not imply paralysis. 

One dominant narrative today says that the West is fragmenting, that alliance systems are weakening, and that Trump-era and post-Trump disruptions have produced a world in which no meaningful coordination is possible. There is some truth in this. However, the underlying system is adapting in a messier but still meaningful way. This is the case with critical minerals. 

Mines, refineries, processing agreements, geological surveys, investment vehicles, and bilateral frameworks do not attract the same attention as a failed summit or a dramatic announcement. Port Pirie is not proof that the West has solved its antimony or critical minerals problem. It nevertheless demonstrates that some actors are no longer waiting for perfect coordination before acting and the “real” geography of cooperation often is not readily apparent below the diplomatic spectacle. 

Within this space, international coordination and alliances continue to be relevant. The Trump administration, for example, may want American domestic capacity, but it still places considerable trust in allied and friendly jurisdictions, including Australia, Indian, Canada, and South Korea, that can provide “supply chain resilience” and secure upstream production. In critical minerals, as in other areas of strategic industries, the future will be decided with appropriate financing and the slow construction of alternative industrial capacity. If that is right, then Port Pirie is not just a local story but a concrete reminder that cooperation continues in the area of critical minerals. 

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On February 17, the first shipment from the new antimony project at Port Pirie, South Australia was exported. A decade ago, this shipment would have simply received a minor mention in some specialized mining publication; today, it is part of a much larger geopolitical story concerning strategic minerals. 

Antimony is not the most famous critical mineral, nor is it discussed with the same frequency as rare earths or lithium, but it occupies an important place in both civilian industry and defense-related applications. Commercially, it is used primarily in flame retardants and in a range of industrial products, while in higher-purity or differently processed forms antimony also appears in specialized electronics and some energetic materials. What makes the Port Pirie shipment notable is not simply the mineral itself, but what the project represents: a tangible example of allied efforts to reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains in a strategically sensitive material.

That matters because antimony, like many strategic minerals, sits at the uncomfortable intersection of industrial necessity and geopolitical concentration. China has long occupied a dominant position in antimony and rare earth mining and refining. Depending on how one measures ore, metal, oxide, or other downstream products, China’s share of global supply of critical minerals remains extremely high. It mines around 70 percent and refines about 90 percent of the world’s rare earths. It possesses not just market share, but the capacity to turn choke-point dominance into policy leverage. 

Recently Chinese export controls have become a normal instrument of statecraft, and governments have started to recognize that industrial vulnerability is not an abstraction. The 2020 Export Control Law provides the Chinese government with new policy tools and justifications to deny and impose terms on foreign commercial transactions on the grounds of China’s national security and national interest. In 2025, in response to the Trump administration’s imposition of high tariffs and additional technology controls, China implemented a licensing system that, if used, would allow it to control rare-earth shipments outside the country. In January, it imposed stronger controls on dual-use exports to Japan, covering seven types of critical minerals as well as rare metals, to demonstrate its unhappiness with Japanese policy toward Taiwan. 

The United States and its allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific have long heavily relied on imported strategic minerals. As noted by U.S. Secretary of State Mario Rubio at the recent Munich Security Conference, one area for further cooperation among the Western states is ensuring that the Western supply chains for critical minerals are not vulnerable to “extortion” from other powers.

Yet if one reads the headlines there seems to be little coherence to how Western countries are responding to mineral dependence on China. Despite years of speeches, communiqués, and expressions of anxiety, there is still no truly comprehensive top-line Western plan for securing large-scale independent access to many critical minerals. Efforts at collective coordination have remained partial, uneven, and in some cases visibly stalled. Meanwhile, political and trade tensions have grown, and serve to undermine cooperation, as illustrated by the G-7’s recent failure to agree to a coordinated price floor for certain strategic minerals.

Nevertheless, looking beyond the rhetoric, the international picture appears more fractured than it actually is in regards to critical minerals. The Australian Port Pirie antimony shipment suggests something more complicated. 

Even in the absence of a fully coherent multilateral framework, lower-level cooperation continues. Governments, export credit agencies, provincial and state-level actors, private firms, and industrial planners are still moving capital, permitting projects, structuring partnerships, and creating alternative supply lines. The Australia-U.S. critical minerals framework is one example of this broader phenomenon. There are others: from the continued Japanese investments in rare earths extraction and processing in Australia, to Taiwanese investments in the North American strategic minerals sector and Australian efforts through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to increase rare earths production. 

In February international representatives gathered for the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement, which looks to improve coordination on pricing and encourage additional investment in mining and process. Pursuant to these international efforts, the Office of the United States Trade Representative has been working on a trade agreement that would set a “minimum, market base price” for critical minerals that is intended to help cover the cost of the production and processing. This minimum price would prevent Chinese processors from driving higher-cost or start-up non-Chinese producers out of the market through dumping.

These developments, and the international cooperation behind them, should provide better and more reliable access for various critical minerals and remove incentives to use access to these minerals for political and strategic purposes. Indeed, top-level torpor does not mean that there is a lack of agency at lower levels. The global economy is not a command economy, and allied coordination is not fully represented in summits and communiqués. Rather critical mineral security is being shaped by entrepreneurs, mining firms, refiners, defense contractors, state development offices, export-import banks, geological agencies, and investors trying to anticipate future bottlenecks. Mining production from exploration to processing involves small and large decisions and requires years to implement. In that sense, the absence of a grand strategy does not imply paralysis. 

One dominant narrative today says that the West is fragmenting, that alliance systems are weakening, and that Trump-era and post-Trump disruptions have produced a world in which no meaningful coordination is possible. There is some truth in this. However, the underlying system is adapting in a messier but still meaningful way. This is the case with critical minerals. 

Mines, refineries, processing agreements, geological surveys, investment vehicles, and bilateral frameworks do not attract the same attention as a failed summit or a dramatic announcement. Port Pirie is not proof that the West has solved its antimony or critical minerals problem. It nevertheless demonstrates that some actors are no longer waiting for perfect coordination before acting and the “real” geography of cooperation often is not readily apparent below the diplomatic spectacle. 

Within this space, international coordination and alliances continue to be relevant. The Trump administration, for example, may want American domestic capacity, but it still places considerable trust in allied and friendly jurisdictions, including Australia, Indian, Canada, and South Korea, that can provide “supply chain resilience” and secure upstream production. In critical minerals, as in other areas of strategic industries, the future will be decided with appropriate financing and the slow construction of alternative industrial capacity. If that is right, then Port Pirie is not just a local story but a concrete reminder that cooperation continues in the area of critical minerals. 

Dr. Guy C. Charlton is an associate professor of Law at the University of New England, Australia.

Averell Charlton Diesch

Averell Charlton Diesch is a research graduate of the University of Hong Kong.

Critical minerals supply chains

U.S.-Australia critical minerals framework

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