Vice President JD Vance has advocated a trade system involving price floors for critical minerals.
"This morning, the Trump administration is proposing a concrete mechanism to return the global critical minerals market to a healthier, more competitive state: a preferential trade zone for critical minerals protected from external disruptions through enforceable price floors," Vance said at the Critical Minerals Ministerial Meeting Wednesday at the State Department.
"For members of the preferential zone, these reference prices will operate as a floor maintained through adjustable tariffs to uphold pricing integrity," Vance added.
"For those of you who join, we offer you a necessary foundation for private financing and secure access to the critical mineral supplies your nation would require in an emergency," he continued.
The vice president said some countries had joined, but did not say which ones.
More than 50 countries attended the talks aimed at boosting their access to critical minerals, in a bid to loosen China's grip over vital industrial inputs that has allowed it to control global supply chains.
The gathering comes after President Donald Trump on Monday launched a strategic stockpile of critical minerals called Project Vault.
It is backed by $10 billion in seed funding from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and $2 billion in private funding.
China has wielded its chokehold on the processing of many minerals as geo-economic leverage, at times curbing exports and suppressing prices and undercutting other countries' ability to diversify sources of the materials used to make semiconductors, electric vehicles, and advanced weapons.
Representatives of South Korea, India, Thailand, Japan, Germany, Australia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were among those attending the meeting.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on Tuesday that 11 more countries would be named to a critical minerals trade club this week, joining the U.S., Australia, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand.
He said 20 more countries showed "strong interest" in joining the coalition.
The Trump administration struck a price-floor agreement last year with the rare-earths producer MP Materials, but Reuters has reported the administration may be moving away from company-specific deals in favor of a broader, international approach.
Washington's Group of Seven partners and the European Union have considered price floors to promote rare earth production, as well as taxes on some Chinese exports to incentivize investment.
Australia, which has been positioning itself as a critical minerals alternative to China, has also said it would establish a strategic reserve of minerals, expected to be ready by the second half of 2026.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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