China's dominance of critical mineral supply chains is not as absolute as it may appear…Cobalt is a case in point…China accounted for 78% of global refined output of the battery metal in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency. But it lacks significant domestic mining capacity, leaving it highly dependent on imports of raw materials…That vulnerability has been exposed by the export controls imposed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, the largest source of cobalt intermediate products for Chinese processors…Shipments to China then ground to a near standstill over the fourth quarter of last year, with local prices now surging amid a scramble for units…Competition for Congolese cobalt is only going to heat up as the U.S. tries to loosen China's grip on the country's mineral riches…The price of refined cobalt traded on the CME has surged from $10 per lb in early 2025 to $25 thanks to Congo's export controls…But that is only part of the story…Intermediate products such as Congolese hydroxide are priced on the basis of the cobalt content. This "payable" was trading at around 55% of the metal price in February. It is now regularly quoted at an unprecedented 100%...China's problem is that there are few alternative suppliers to the Congo…The main one is Indonesia, where cobalt is mined as a by-product of nickel. But even allowing for increased Indonesian production this year, it won't be enough to fill the gap left by Congo's restricted export flows, according to BMI…Congo's cobalt export controls are part of a bigger restructuring of its mineral sector as the country seeks to earn more from its natural resources wealth…The U.S. has helped mediate a peace deal between Kinshasa and Rwanda to stop the fighting that has engulfed Congo's eastern regions…The deal has opened the country up to U.S. investment…Chinese cobalt buyers are facing not just lower imports from the Congo but increased competition for what is being mined.

Securing a resilient supply chain for critical minerals is fundamental to national security and the economy, said Michael P. Cadenazzi Jr., assistant secretary of war for industrial base policy, who testified today at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington…He noted that there is a growing demand for U.S. capabilities from allies and partners, such as fifth-generation aircraft, precision-guided munitions, satellite constellations and next-generation naval vessels. Cadenazzi said those capabilities all depend on a reliable supply of rare earth elements, including gallium antimony and germanium, as well as dozens of others…"For decades, we have outsourced and offshored mining and processing, creating a strategic vulnerability of the highest order. Today, our primary strategic competitor, China, controls the global supply chain for numerous critical minerals," he said…To address this vulnerability, the War Department developed a comprehensive, multiyear strategy designed to create a secure, resilient and sustainable supply chain ecosystem, Cadenazzi said…Included in that approach is a commitment to reshore and onshore the production of critical minerals. Congress provided funding to do this, he said, utilizing the Defense Production Act…Cadenazzi said his office partners with colleagues in the Office of Strategic Capital to offer loans, loan guarantees and debt financing options to bring mineral supply chains to friendly shores…Although DOW prioritizes domestic production, Cadenazzi said no single nation can achieve complete self-sufficiency. Therefore, the supply chain includes allies and America's closest partners…"We are conducting a rigorous, data-driven analysis of our strategic requirements for 21st-century contested environments and [we] are taking action to acquire materials that face the most acute supply chain risks," Cadenazzi said.

The Trump administration plans to use a Pentagon-created artificial intelligence program to help set reference prices for critical minerals as it works to build a global metals trading zone, three sources with direct knowledge of the effort told Reuters…Those reference prices will be set by the U.S. Department of Defense's Open Price Exploration for National Security (OPEN) AI metals program, according to the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly…The move sheds light on how the administration aims to shape market pricing, even as the AI technology has faced skepticism for whether it can retool how critical minerals are bought and sold…The OPEN program was launched in 2023 by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with the goal of calculating what a metal should be priced at when labor, processing and other costs are factored in and when alleged Chinese market manipulation is factored out…China is the world's largest miner or processor of many of the minerals considered critical by the U.S. government. Beijing has used that advantage in recent years to produce minerals at a loss and dampen market prices, a backdrop that has forced Western rivals to close…The AI model is aimed at promoting metals supply deals between Western miners and manufacturers by giving both sides more pricing certainty…It was not immediately clear if the AI-derived prices would oscillate or be fixed, nor if they would be set between the U.S. and individual allies or applied across the trading block…The timeline for implementation is also unclear as the Trump administration must first convince dozens of allies to join the block to guarantee effectiveness…Canada's Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources said in a statement to Reuters it was "working to comprehensively understand and analyze" the minerals trade block proposal…The move comes as the Trump administration is stepping away from guaranteeing price floors for individual companies due to the lack of congressional funding, even as many miners have sought such support…The plan to create a minerals reference price and support it with tariffs has sparked questions about whether the tariff would apply to all products containing critical minerals.