U.S. Treasury to Push G7 for Faster Diversification from Chinese Minerals

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will convene roughly a dozen senior finance officials in Washington on Monday to press Group of Seven economies and key partners to speed diversification away from Chinese critical minerals and the processing chains that dominate them. U.S. officials have framed urgency as the meeting’s defining theme and plan to press for concrete, market-shaping tools rather than another statement of intent.

The gathering will include finance ministers or Cabinet-level officials from the seven advanced G7 economies, representatives of the European Union and partner countries including Australia, India, South Korea and Mexico. Officials say the assembled group accounts for roughly 60 percent of global demand for the minerals under discussion. The agenda is expected to focus on rare earths, rare earth magnets, battery metals and other inputs that are central to electric vehicles, renewable energy equipment and defence supply chains.

A senior U.S. official described “urgency” as the theme and said: “The United States is in the posture of calling everyone together, showing leadership, sharing what we have in mind going forward.” The official added: “We’re ready to move with those who feel a similar level of urgency ... and others can join as they come to the realisation of how serious this is.” The official also characterized the effort as “a very big undertaking” and stressed the need to “move faster.”

Participants are expected to discuss a package of instruments aimed at making mining, processing and refining projects outside China financially viable. That list includes targeted industrial policy incentives, coordinated financing and debate over price-support measures. Officials are expected to examine the feasibility of price floors for certain rare earth elements as a tool to stabilize markets and attract long-term investment.

Treasury communications cited by officials point to early signs that trade patterns are shifting: “We’re starting to see the impacts in the data. Across sectors from auto parts to electronics, the U.S. is importing more from key partners like India and Vietnam, as well as from Mexico, and is less dependent on one single country, in this case, China.” The administration is pressing a parallel bilateral track to boost domestic production and secure agreements with producers such as Australia and others to shore up supply.

The meeting is intended as a finance-track complement to political commitments made at last year’s G7 leaders summit, where governments agreed an action plan to strengthen supply-chain resilience and promote alternatives to single-country concentration. But officials acknowledge practical constraints: developing new mines and processing capacity requires time, capital and permits, and non-China projects often face higher upfront costs and environmental and regulatory hurdles.

Market implications could be immediate if participants agree on price-support mechanisms or coordinated incentives. Such tools would raise the expected returns on non-China projects, potentially accelerating investment but also risking short-term price distortion and trade friction. Any move toward collective price floors will draw scrutiny from trading partners and could raise legal and diplomatic questions.

Longer term, finance ministers aim to shift the economics of critical minerals so that diversification becomes self-sustaining. That goal would reshape global supply chains for clean energy technologies and defence manufacturing, redistribute investment flows toward partner jurisdictions and reduce strategic exposure to a single dominant supplier. The Washington meeting will test how quickly major consuming economies can turn policy intent into deployable capital and industrial outcomes.