Overview
- G7 leaders at their summit formally created a non-binding Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance and set a target to limit any single non‑G7 supplier to under 60% of imports by 2030 with an ambition to reach 50%.
- The alliance will start IEA-supported traceability pilots for lithium and nickel and an IEA market‑stress alerting program to monitor supply risks and share early warnings among members.
- Members agreed to align and coordinate national stockpiles and shared emergency-release rules, and Canada privately offered G7 partners priority access to its stockpile ahead of the summit.
- Governments are still debating concrete market tools such as price-gap subsidies, joint procurement, quotas and price floors to make non-Chinese midstream processing commercially viable while private investors pledge billions to new projects.
- China publicly defended its export controls and criticised the G7 effort as exclusionary, underscoring that breaking Beijing’s deep processing and magnet‑making lead will require large capital, time and technical work following export curbs in 2023 and 2025.