The United States and the European Union are moving to tighten cooperation on critical minerals, opening a new front in their broader economic-security agenda as both sides try to reduce dependence on highly concentrated supply chains that feed advanced manufacturing. The latest official steps build on earlier U.S.-EU talks but go further by explicitly backing joint action on export restrictions, supply-chain resilience and trade tools for minerals used in batteries, semiconductors, magnets and defence technologies.
A key marker came in the U.S.-EU trade framework announced in August 2025. In that joint statement, Washington and Brussels said they would strengthen cooperation and action related to export restrictions on critical minerals and similar resources imposed by third countries. That language did not name China directly, but the strategic target was hard to miss, given Western concerns over concentrated mineral processing and Beijing’s leverage in several downstream segments.
The effort has since widened. In February 2026, the United States, the European Commission and Japan said they would develop action plans for critical-minerals supply-chain resilience and explore a wider trade initiative with like-minded partners. Those plans include possible coordinated trade mechanisms such as border-adjusted price floors, standards-based markets, price-gap subsidies and offtake agreements — in other words, not just diplomacy, but market-shaping tools meant to make non-Chinese supply more viable.
Why the urgency? Because the market is still heavily concentrated. The International Energy Agency said in its 2025 outlook that the average share of the top three refining countries for key energy minerals rose from about 82% in 2020 to 86% in 2024, with China driving supply growth in cobalt, graphite and rare earths. The IEA also said China’s already-dominant position in refining is expected to grow further, from 45% to 50% of the global refining market share in its regional snapshot.
That matters well beyond clean energy. Critical minerals sit underneath electric vehicles, grid equipment, permanent magnets, aerospace systems, chips and defence manufacturing. The EU has been blunt about the strategic risk: its own Critical Raw Materials policy work is built around reducing dangerous dependencies as demand for battery materials, rare earths and other inputs keeps climbing.
This is not a brand-new transatlantic idea. The U.S. and EU had already announced, in 2023, their intention to negotiate a critical minerals agreement aimed at strengthening supply chains, especially around electric-vehicle batteries. But progress since then suggests the conversation has shifted. What began as a trade-and-sourcing discussion now looks much more like industrial policy with a geopolitical edge. That’s an inference from the sequence of official statements and policy documents, but it is strongly supported by the way both sides are now linking minerals to resilience, security and coercion risks.
For manufacturers, the implications could be significant. If the U.S. and EU follow through, companies may see more subsidies for alternative supply, tighter standards, more coordinated sourcing arrangements and stronger incentives to process or recycle minerals outside dominant hubs. None of that will loosen China’s grip overnight. Still, the policy direction is now pretty clear: Washington and Brussels are no longer treating critical minerals as a narrow trade issue. They are treating them as strategic infrastructure
