Toronto (Canada) (AFP) – G7 countries will have to use “non-market” tactics to curb China’s dominance in rare earth production, the US energy secretary said Friday, calling the effort a “strategic necessity.” Energy ministers from the Group of Seven meeting in Toronto this week are working on a coordinated effort to diversify supply chains of the materials vital to high-tech products, where China has built outsized control.
“China, frankly, just used non-market practices to squish the rest of the world out of manufacturing those products, so it got strategic leverage. Everybody sees that now,” US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters. “We need to establish our own ability to mine, process, refine, and create the products that come out of rare earth elements,” Wright said. “We’re going to have to intervene and use some non-market forces.”
Repeating a widely shared accusation made against Beijing, Wright said China had used its rare earth stockpiles to manipulate global prices. “As soon as you start to invest, someone floods the market and crushes the prices. (China has) chilled investments,” he said. Wright did not specify what type of non-market practices President Donald Trump’s administration would support. But experts have called on the G7 and its allies to back policies that favor suppliers which bypass Chinese-controlled firms and use public subsidies to support new initiatives that could broaden the market.
Energy ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States are meeting in Toronto after Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping reached a deal that will see Beijing suspend certain rare earth export restrictions for at least one year. Rare earths are needed to make a range of sophisticated products, and the prospect of China limiting exports had rattled markets.
Trump’s tariffs have strained relations within the G7, but Wright said there was “no disagreement within the group” on the need to diversify rare earth supply chains. Canada’s Energy Minister Tim Hodgson, who is hosting the meeting which ends on Friday, said the G7 is aiming to launch a new alliance to upend the global supply of critical minerals, including rare earths. The alliance would mobilize private investment and advance other policies to expand critical mineral production that bypasses China.
© 2024 AFP
