Executive Summary

Critical minerals are essential resources used in the production of modern defense, energy, healthcare, and consumer technologies. The United States is threatened by significant vulnerabilities related to critical minerals supply chains that could harm the nation’s short- and long-term security. Although significant strides have been made toward addressing these vulnerabilities, there is still a need to solidify a strategic framework for strengthening U.S. control over critical minerals supply chains. This policy brief examines different strategic approaches that the U.S. could take toward achieving critical minerals supply chain resilience.

Three policy options are discussed in this brief. First, the United States could emulate the Chinese model of power over critical minerals by onshoring processing infrastructure and gaining control over mineral exports around the world. Second, the United States could focus on friendshoring the mining and processing of critical minerals in Latin America to shift dependencies to friendly neighbors and counter Chinese influence in the region. Third, the United States could build demand-side industries domestically to stabilize critical minerals markets, bolster U.S. economic power and control over global energy supply chains, and set the foundations for supply-side infrastructure investments in the long term.

This brief concludes that U.S. policy makers in relevant executive branch departments should coordinate efforts to build a strategic framework toward critical minerals supply chain security that focuses on friendshoring supply-side infrastructure and building domestic demand-side manufacturing power. A policy framework built on this approach create a regional critical minerals supply chain that reduces Chinese leverage over the United States, its partners, and the global critical minerals sector.

Background and Context

Critical minerals are essential elements in the production of defense, renewable energy, health, and consumer goods technologies, playing a pivotal role in the technological revolution transforming the world today (Li and Wang 2025; Roy 2025). The United States faces strategic disadvantages related to its production of critical minerals (Woods et al. 2021) and is threatened by significant vulnerabilities related to the ability to access critical minerals could harm the nation’s short- and long-term security.

The United States’ main vulnerability comes from its reliance on critical minerals supply chains that are primarily controlled by China. Beijing controls up to 90% of the world’s critical minerals processing (Crebo-Rediker 2025), produces 65% of the world’s REE extraction (Wood et al. 2021), and uses strategic foreign investments to secure primary ownership in critical minerals mining abroad, which directs the majority of other countries’ mining exports to China (National Security Data and Policy Institute 2025). This vulnerability is compounded by the willingness of China to swiftly flex this leverage over the U.S. or other states, seen in Beijing’s previous demonstrations of its ability to “turn off the tap” of critical minerals flows to its adversaries (Feng 2025; Crebo Rediker 2025; Crebo-Rediker and Khan 2026).

The second Trump administration has paid significant attention to America’s strategic disadvantages in critical minerals supply chains through domestic and foreign policy initiatives. On the foreign policy side, efforts to gain a foothold in global critical minerals supply chains have been primarily driven by the Forum on Resource and Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), a “plurilateral coalition, creating a preferential trade-and-investment zone for critical minerals,” (Blakemore and Harmon 2026). In early 2026, the administration took large strides towards solidifying a comprehensive critical minerals strategy via the Critical Minerals Ministerial, where it signed eleven new critical minerals bilateral frameworks and Memorandums of Understanding (U.S. Department of State 2026). Over thirty billion dollars of potential investments from public and private sources have been coordinated by the U.S. through these initiatives (Blakemore and Harmon 2026). These frameworks are the newest addition in a growing network of bilateral framework agreements in which the U.S. has committed to the exploration of mineral deposits, the planning of financial packages, and the coordination of private sector investment for critical minerals supply chains in partner states (U.S. Department of State 2026).

However, many of these agreements are freshly signed, still in the exploratory and planning stages, and have no concrete funding explicitly connected to them yet (Blakemore and Harmon 2026). Therefore, it is important to analyze the policy options available to the U.S. as it moves forward with building a strategic framework for building critical minerals supply chain security. The approach that the U.S. takes to the critical minerals sector will comprehensively shape the nation’s security in the short- and long-term.

Policy Options

Emulating the Chinese Model: Onshore Processing and Gain Control Over Extraction

Chinese power over the world’s critical minerals supply chains is primarily a result of the monopoly it has over the refining process. Having the infrastructure to process the raw materials into manufacturing-ready minerals utilized in modern technologies is the ultimate source of leverage in global critical minerals supply chains (de Bolle 2026). By controlling up to ninety percent of the world’s critical minerals refining processes, and by either extracting sizeable mineral reserves domestically or directing the necessary mineral inputs towards its processing industries via majority ownership in extraction infrastructure around the world, China maintains leverage over resource rich countries and countries without the capacity for extraction or processing, such as the United States (Crebo-Rediker 2025; National Security Data and Policy Institute 2025).

The United States could attempt to counter Beijing’s leverage over critical minerals supply chains by emulating the Chinese model of power in this sector: funneling significant investment toward building domestic processing infrastructure, expanding domestic extraction capacity, and buying majority ownership of mining projects in resource-rich countries. This policy approach would require federal-level incentives for investing in and developing domestic mining and refining infrastructure alongside an aggressive and capital-heavy push to expand extraction capacities in partner states (where the U.S. would hold majority ownership and the power to funnel mineral exports to its domestic processing facilities). Through emulating the Chinese model, the United States could build up its own domestic supply chain resilience and its leverage over the global critical minerals supply chain. If successful, the United States would diminish Chinese leverage over the United States’ present vulnerabilities, and counterbalance Chinese dominance of the global critical minerals markets.

Under the second Trump administration, the United States has taken several steps in the direction of this policy option. Through the 2025 Unleashing American Energy executive order (among other EOs), the administration has significantly cut down the lengthy permit processes and wait times for building mining infrastructure, although these shortcuts have come at the cost of environmental protection policies that has raised some concern (Campbell 2025). Recently, the Department of Energy announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity for up to $500 million in March 2026 aimed at expanding domestic critical minerals processing and battery manufacturing (U.S. Department of Energy 2026). Further, the U.S. has sought to mobilize public and private investment in resource-rich countries across Latin America, Eurasia, and Africa, most recently making a landmark purchase of one of the world’s largest cobalt mines located in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Wexler 2026).

However, based on the current state of U.S. extraction and processing infrastructure, which has been limited by years of chronic underinvestment (Wood et al. 2021), the United States would only begin to build up power over critical minerals supply chains after the often decade-long processing of bringing mining and processing facilities online (Whitlock et al. 2025). Expanding U.S. extraction and processing capacities also requires heavy investment and education initiatives to develop the necessary human capital needed for these specialized industries (Wood et al. 2021). Additionally, the extent of knowledge about existing mineral reserves within U.S. territory is limited, and the size of many known critical mineral deposits in the U.S. are significantly smaller than the amount of minerals needed to supply rapidly growing demands (Wood et al. 2021; Allan and Goldman 2025; Whitlock et al. 2025). In the short-term, the U.S. risks being left vulnerable to Chinese leverage and the trajectory of Beijing’s growing control over critical minerals supply chains.

Friendshoring Supply Chains: Cooperative Efforts to Build Regional Capacities in Our Backyard

A second approach to creating a strategic U.S. critical minerals policy would focus on investing in the expansion of existing mining and processing capacities of Latin American neighbors, thereby friendshoring important points in the global critical minerals supply chains. Through building regional partnerships, the U.S. would reduce Chinese leverage over global critical minerals supply chains and create the necessary relationships to support diverse and long-term critical minerals demands. This approach would require strategic investment and sustained diplomatic engagement to build strong and trustworthy partners who the U.S. can rely on for resilient critical minerals supply chains.

A friendshoring approach to critical minerals addresses important shortcomings and vulnerabilities for U.S. critical mineral supply chain independence. First, even though the U.S. does have large reserves and online mining capacity for important minerals such as copper, molybdenum, palladium, phosphate, and gold, America does not house all – or enough – of the necessary minerals to meet current and future demands (Allan and Goldman 2025). In 2025, the U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Commodity Summary reported that the United States is 100% net import reliant on 12 of the 50 minerals labeled as critical and had a net import reliance greater than 50% for an additional 28 (U.S. Department of the Interior 2025). Additionally, the process of mineral exploration, building mines, and bringing mining and processing facilities online can take over a decade to fully achieve, leaving the U.S. vulnerable in the short- and medium- term to Chinese supply chain manipulation (Allan and Goldman 2025; Whitlock et al. 2025). Ultimately, even if the U.S. were able to demonstrate unprecedented mobilizing power to get domestic mining and processing capacity online in a short amount of time, the country will be physically unable to meet all of its critical minerals demands alone. Therefore, a friendshoring strategy for the critical minerals sector could shift inevitable dependencies away from China and toward allied partner states who the United States can rely on in the long term.

Latin America has become a particularly pivotal region for critical minerals supply chains. It is estimated that the so-called “lithium triangle” (Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile) holds around 70% of the world’s global lithium reserves, and the world’s top producers of copper, iron ore, and gold are all Latin American states (OECD 2022). Additionally, Brazil is home to the second largest known reserves of REEs in the world, which will play a pivotal role in loosening China’s grip over the global market for these materials (Magnotta 2025; Gortázar 2026). Accordingly, it has become a top destination for foreign investment and trade agreements centered around critical minerals supply chains from China and the United States. Latin American governments who want to expand their own strategic agency in the global network of critical minerals supply chains have sought to increase their own processing capacities to reduce foreign dependencies by balancing investments from both China and the U.S. to achieve domestic goals (Campbell and de la Hoz 2026).

Investing in Latin American critical minerals is critical for countering Chinese power in the critical minerals sector and growing Chinese influence over America’s backyard. Years of strategic investment in extraction infrastructure primarily concentrated in Chile, Peru, and Brazil has made China the number one export destination for many Latin American critical minerals, and has enabled China to mine 20-25% more critical minerals than the U.S. in the region (Santan-Rodda, Camplone, and Mooney 2025). Over time, Chinese investments in critical minerals infrastructure create host-nation trade dependencies, providing China with a larger share of these finite resources, greater ability to push Western firms out of the market, and capacity to restrict other states’ access to these minerals supplies (National Security Data and Policy Institute 2025).

The United States has recent taken steps toward the development of this policy framework. Four of the eleven new framework agreements signed at the 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial were with Latin American countries, adding bilateral partnerships with Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru to a growing list of agreements with resource-rich states like Mexico and Chile to the list of regional partners to likely be on the receiving end of American investments in mining and processing infrastructure (U.S. Department of State 2026; Peña, Wright, and Zabala 2026; Office of the United States Trade Representative 2026). To fully achieve critical mineral supply chain resilience through this framework, the U.S. must quickly transition from the exploratory and planning phases to the investment and building phases of these new agreements to expand U.S. ownership over critical minerals mining in the region. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will also be an important pathway through which the U.S. can build regional critical minerals supply chain ownership and mobilize public and private sector investments (Moerenhout 2025).

To solidify long-term relationships with regional partners, U.S. investment should go beyond extractive capacity to include the strengthening of Latin American processing capacities. For example, current attempts at creating a bilateral framework agreement with Brazil have faced challenges because the middle power state wants the agency to control its mineral resources (Ionova and Faddul 2026). Investment strategies that recognize the mutual security objectives of U.S. partners could prove more attractive than the export-oriented Chinese model and allow the U.S. to establish the trustworthy partnerships in the region necessary for long-term critical minerals supply chain resilience.

An important challenge for the expansion of the critical minerals sector in Latin America is the potential destabilizing effect it can have at the local level. Mining in Latin America faces “persistent conflicts over natural resource governance” characterized by domestic opposition to mining from indigenous leaders who face the environmental, economic, and social impacts of mining (Purdy and Castillo 2022, 2; Mónago 2024; Brain 2017; Chávez 2026). Inequitable distribution of the socioeconomic benefits of the mining sector that exacerbate already deep domestic divides in Latin American nations is another facet of these potentially destabilizing forces (Purdy and Castillo 2022; Mónago 2024). An American investment strategy in Latin American critical minerals that does not account for these negative externalities risks exacerbating destabilizing forces within the region, undermining not only the critical minerals industry but also broader U.S. security goals in the region articulated in the 2025 National Security Strategy, such as stabilizing migratory flows and reducing transnational organized crime (OECD 2025; Dammert and Rodríguez-Soloránzo 2025; The White House 2025). Intentional and responsible investment strategies in Latin America can overcome these challenges through mining and processing infrastructure that creates local jobs, protects surrounding environments, and coordinates with local communities to mitigate the impacts of social, economic, and physical displacement brought on by mining (Rojas-Hayes, Casas, and Sucre 2023; Perez-Ferriero 2025).

Investing in Demand Side Production: Growing Domestic Manufacturing Capacities to Stabilize the Market

A third policy option approaches the critical minerals sector from the demand side. With this approach the United States would prioritize expanding its presence on the higher end of the critical minerals value chain via increased capacity for manufacturing finished goods that offer consistent demand for supply-side outputs. By increasing the manufacturing output and competitiveness of industries that produce high demands for critical minerals, the United States would be able to support supply-side capacity growth in the long term and strengthen the nation’s overall economic power.

Entry into the critical minerals supply chain is difficult for Western investors because of Chinese firms’ ability to manipulate market prices. Chinese critical minerals production has been backed by over a decade of state-level financing and is dominated by SOEs that are virtually immune to changes in profit rates, enabling them to increase production, flood the market with a surplus supply of minerals, push prices below the cost of production, and drive Western firms out of the market (Baskaran 2024; Allan 2025; Yang 2025). The logic of the demand side policy approach is that creating domestic demand for the excess supply of minerals through manufacturing processes would enable the United States to create more favorable market conditions for domestic and friendly firms to enter the market, subsequently increasing American mining and processing capacities in the long run (Baskaran 2026).

This policy option would require a domestic push to support industries that create high demand for critical minerals, especially electric vehicles (EVs), renewable energy technologies, clean energy infrastructure, and lithium-ion batteries (Baskaran 2026; IRENA 2023). This option also requires incentivizing the consumption of these goods in domestic and allied markets to build market-competitiveness against existing Chinese technologies at the high end of the critical minerals global value chain (Baskaran 2026). Policy alternatives that incentivize these industries would be needed to compensate for the renewable energy market shocks and growth losses that resulted from the recent phase-out of as tax credit incentives for the main industries producing demands for critical minerals (renewable energy technologies and EVs) and executive orders restricting off-shore wind, on-shore wind, and solar PV project leasing (IEA 2025; Ohnsman 2026). Domestic incentives for buying from friendly sources and domestic compliance standards for critical minerals sourcing will be important policy tools to generate necessary demands (Baskaran 2026). Sustained diplomatic engagement through FORGE will be important for expanding allied markets that support the growth of demand side manufacturing and developing a coordinated framework that balances price floor policy goals with finished goods producers’ needs (Blakemore and Harmon 2026).

Aside from creating stable foundations from which the U.S. can build its supply-side capacities in critical minerals mining and processing, investing in the demand side of the critical minerals sector will help support the growth of domestic manufacturing and spur domestic economic growth, and expand U.S. power over global energy markets (Abrahams and Majkut 2025). By investing in a competitive domestic EV industry, the United States could help some of its most essential automobile firms (such as General Motors and Ford) reinvigorate their global market strength (Baskaran 2026) and create thousands of jobs at home (Pierce and Callahan 2025). Investments in renewable energy technologies and infrastructure have already seen rates of job growth that outpace the national job market growth rate, and create thousands of jobs through the increased demand for manufacturing and construction related to energy infrastructure (Goyal et al. 2025). The onshoring of battery manufacturing processes to support the EV industry and the storage of increased energy capacities from renewables could also help create thousands of domestic jobs (Isenstadt and Slowik 2023).

Risks and Tradeoffs

There are two key balancing acts that a strategic U.S. critical minerals policy must consider. First, each policy option must strike a balance between pushing for greater domestic independence over critical minerals, and engaging in cooperative efforts to diversify supply chains among friendly states (Woods et al. 2021; Allan and Goldman 2025). The need to diversify critical minerals supply chains is fundamental (Blakemore, Harmon, and Engelke 2025), but to what extent does the U.S. risk future vulnerabilities and dependencies on external actors for the fate of key technologies in defense, energy, healthcare, and consumer goods (Roy 2025)?

Second, a strategic U.S. critical minerals policy must consider timing constraints alongside the tradeoffs between short-term and long-term goals. A failure to take decisive action on a strategic critical minerals policy risks allowing China to fully solidify its grip on global critical minerals supply chains, and therefore power over the key components of the current global technological revolution and the future of the world’s energy supply (National Security Data and Policy Institute 2025). Policy makers must balance investing in the lengthy processes surrounding domestic infrastructure developments with the need for supply chain resilience against Chinese leverage in the short-term.

Working Toward U.S. Critical Minerals Security

Policy makers across relevant executive-branch departments should coordinate to build a strategic approach to critical minerals security centered on friendshoring supply-side capacities in Latin American partner states and building up demand-side capacities inside the United States. Latin America is a pivotal region for critical minerals supply chains, housing large and diverse mineral reserves that already contribute significantly to the overall global supply. Investment in regional supply-side capacities will require reliable sources of demand for the critical minerals produced, and therefore the growth of American manufacturing of electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies will play a pivotal role in creating economic conditions hospitable for investment throughout the region. Creating a regional critical minerals supply chain with mining, processing, and manufacturing capacities would strengthen regional partnerships, bolster U.S. economic power, and counter growing Chinese influence in the region.

Friendshoring supply-side infrastructure might risk continued U.S. vulnerabilities to dependence on external sources of critical minerals. However, this policy approach attempts to balance the inevitable interdependencies of critical minerals supply chains and the need for short-term resiliency. By working with reliable partners around the region, the U.S. can address the shortcomings of its domestic critical mineral reserves and infrastructure, mitigate Chinese leverage over the United States until it can fully develop the capacity for greater critical minerals independence, and build trustworthy partnerships that will support supply chain resilience in the future.

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