U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said \u200bAustralia and several other countries would join a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of Seven advanced economies that he is hosting in Washington on Monday to discuss critical minerals. Bessent said he had been \u2060pressing for a separate meeting on the issue since last summer’s summit of G7 leaders, \u200cand finance ministers had already \u2060held a virtual meeting in December. India was also invited to attend the meeting, Bessent told Reuters in an interview after \u200dtouring the Minneapolis-area engineering lab of RV and boat maker Winnebago Industries. He said he was unsure if it had accepted the invitation. It was not immediately clear which other \u2060countries had been invited. The G7 includes the United States, Britain, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Canada, as well as the European Union, most of whom are heavily dependent on rare earths supplies from China. The group last June agreed \u200con an action plan to secure their supply chains and b
oost their economies. Australia signed an agreement with the U.S. in October aimed at countering China’s dominance in critical \u2060minerals. It included an $8.5 billion project pipeline and leverages Australia’s proposed strategic reserve, which will supply metals like rare earths and lithium that are vulnerable to disruption. Canberra has said it has subsequently received interest from Europe, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. China dominates the \u2060critical minerals supply chain, refining between 47% and 87% of copper, lithium, cobalt, graphite and rare earths, according to the International Energy Agency. These minerals are used in defense technologies, semiconductors, renewable energy \u200dcomponents, batteries and refining processes. Western countries have sought to reduce their dependence on China’s critical minerals in recent years, given moves by China to impose strict export controls on \u200crare earths. Monday’s meeting \u200bcomes days after reports that \u200cChina had begun restricting exp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said \u200bAustralia and several other countries would join a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of Seven advanced economies that he is hosting in Washington on Monday to discuss critical minerals. Bessent said he had been \u2060pressing for a separate meeting on the issue since last summer’s summit of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n