# Minerals Diplomacy The 2025–26 wave of state-to-state critical-minerals agreements — and the reason the human-rights due-diligence agenda documented at [[Conflict Minerals Hub]] is losing. The policy question stopped being *how do we make this supply clean* and became *how do we get this supply at all.* ## The scale, and the gap **More than seventy critical-minerals agreements have been signed since 2021, over fifty of them in the eighteen months to June 2026. The United States alone has signed more than twenty.** And then the qualifier that should attach to every headline figure in this field: > [!warning] Most of it is not binding, and most of it is not published > **Over 60% are non-binding** memoranda, partnerships or cooperation frameworks. Public Citizen's tracker identifies 59 instruments, of which **text has been released for fewer than half**, and **only two MOUs have been published by the US government**. Most of these headline numbers cannot be independently verified because the instruments are secret. Mining.com counts genuinely binding deals with teeth in only a handful of cases — Australia, Japan, Argentina, Ukraine, the DRC. > > Instruments with real teeth are price floors, stockpiles, co-financing and procurement guarantees. They are largely absent. Note also that an **EXIM "letter of interest" is not a loan** — it is the most systematically overstated instrument in the entire wave. ## The announced-versus-realised ledger This is the most useful discipline the vault can apply to the subject. | Deal | Announced | Actually delivered by August 2026 | |---|---|---| | **Ukraine** — Reconstruction Investment Fund (30 Apr 2025) | Framed politically as up to **"$500 billion"** | **Capitalised at $150 million** ($75m each side). Sixty thousand Soviet-era geological documents digitised. **First investment, announced March 2026, was not a mineral — an equity stake in a drone-communications company.** The one real mineral item is the Dobra lithium award to a US-backed JV, minimum commitment $179m | | **Japan** (27 Oct 2025) | **"$550 billion"** strategic investment pledge | Not a cash transfer — project-by-project loans and guarantees through Japanese state finance, with Trump approving projects. Consultation panel first met December 2025. Projects have since been **selected, but none is reported as disbursed**: a first tranche of three worth about $36bn, announced 17 February 2026 (an Ohio gas-fired power plant, a Gulf of Mexico crude export terminal, a Georgia synthetic-diamond plant), and a second batch of up to $73bn in energy projects on 19 March 2026. None is a mine or mineral processor. The minerals track proper is a March 2026 action plan that begins with price floors for a small, unnamed set of minerals (The Standard, March 2026). The $550bn belongs to the tariff deal, not the minerals framework; conflating them is the commonest error in coverage | | **Saudi Arabia** (Nov 2025) | **"almost $1 trillion"** | The concrete item is one joint venture — see below | | **Argentina** (Feb 2026) | **"$130 billion"** | A $20bn US credit line plus **US guaranteed minimum-price purchases for Argentine lithium** — a genuine price floor, and rare. The $130bn is unsubstantiated in the reporting | | **Australia** (20 Oct 2025) | $1bn minimum joint financing; $2.2bn EXIM letters of interest | The $1bn and the LOIs are concrete; **price support and coordinated screening of Chinese acquisitions are aspirational** | | **[[US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement]]** (4 Dec 2025) | DFC letters of interest ~$1bn each for mining and infrastructure | A non-binding $9bn MOU for 40% of [[Glencore]]'s Congolese cobalt; [[KoBold Metals]] holding exploration licences; the [[Rubaya Coltan Mine]] offered to the US **while rebels hold it** | ## The genuinely new instruments Two things in this wave are structurally novel and worth naming, because they are not trade agreements at all. **The US government taking equity.** [[MP Materials]]'s July 2025 arrangement with the Defense Department included a **ten-year price floor at $110/kg** for its rare-earth output — a state guaranteeing a commodity price to defeat a competitor's ability to crash it. Then in **November 2025 the Department of War took a 49% equity stake** in a rare-earth refinery joint venture with Saudi Arabia's Maaden. A US military department as a minority shareholder in a foreign refinery is industrial policy conducted through the Pentagon. **Development finance as an acquisition vehicle.** The **US International Development Finance Corporation** is a party to the consortium buying into Glencore's Congolese copper-cobalt assets. The DFC was built to finance development in poor countries; it is being used to take equity positions in strategic supply. Both are recognisably the instruments China used first — Sicomines, the state-financed acquisition of Congolese and Indonesian processing capacity — adopted by Washington and justified in national-security terms. ## Why this is the end of the due-diligence era The two agendas pull in opposite directions and one of them is winning. The human-rights framing says *source more carefully, even if it costs more.* The security framing says *source more, faster, from wherever you can.* In June 2026 the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee asked the President to waive or terminate [[Dodd-Frank Section 1502]] on the grounds that it had **"weakened U.S. access to critical mineral supply chains"** and let Beijing strengthen its position in central Africa. That is the collision stated in one sentence, by the people making the decision. Meanwhile the EU cut its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive's scope by roughly 70% and deleted the civil-liability provision, in the same months. See [[OECD Due Diligence Guidance]]. ## What to watch - **The China rare-earth truce agreed at Busan on 30 October 2025 became operative on 10 November 2025 and expires on 10 November 2026** — not late October, as commonly reported. No renewal reporting as of August 2026. That is the single largest scheduled event in this subject. Note that China has continued tightening inside the truce, adding ten US entities to its export-control list in June 2026 including [[MP Materials]]. - Whether any of the announced money converts. The Ukraine fund is the control case: sixteen months, $150 million, one non-mineral investment. - Whether producer states start refusing terms. **Zambia reportedly rejected proposed US conditions** — the first sign that the demand side's leverage is not unlimited. - Africa is structurally underweighted in the deal wave relative to its reserves, holding over 60% of global cobalt. ## See also [[Critical Minerals]] · [[US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement]] · [[Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity]] · [[Conflict Resources Atlas]] · [[Dodd-Frank Section 1502]] · [[Deep-Sea Mining]]