G7 Leaders Launch Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance

On June 17, G7 leaders released a joint “Declaration on Securing Supply Chains for Critical Minerals” during the June 15–17 G7 Leaders’ Summit in Évian-les-Bains. The declaration establishes a nonbinding G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance, supported by a new G7 platform for Critical Minerals Cooperation intended to strengthen supply chain diversification, coordinate financing and market-support tools, improve transparency and traceability and support crisis response. Australia, a G7 partner country, also supported the declaration.

The declaration marks an important step in G7 efforts to move from high-level critical minerals coordination toward more specific targets and implementation mechanisms. It builds on the 2025 G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan and the Critical Minerals Production Alliance established under Canada’s 2025 G7 Presidency. In October 2025, Canada, G7 partners and industry partners announced the first round of investments, partnerships and measures under the Critical Minerals Production Alliance, including 26 initiatives expected to accelerate and unlock $6.4 billion in critical minerals projects. To read more about progress on the G7 Critical Minerals Production Alliance, see here.

G7 Declaration on Securing Supply Chains for Critical Minerals

The G7 declaration frames critical minerals as essential to economic prosperity and security, including for digital and energy sectors, and expresses concern over market concentration, arbitrary trade restrictions, non-market policies and economic coercion. The leaders committed to working with partners to reduce critical dependencies and to coordinate, where necessary, against attempts to weaponize economic dependencies. The declaration also reaffirms the G7 Roadmap to Promote Standards-based Markets for Critical Minerals.

A central feature of the declaration is a new supply chain dependency target for rare earths and permanent magnets. G7 leaders stated that they aim to reduce dependencies on a single supplier outside the G7 and partner countries for rare earths and permanent magnets to under 60% by 2030, with an ambition to reach 50% as soon as possible. For other critical minerals, G7 leaders tasked relevant ministers with setting a specific dependency-reduction target before the end of the year. The declaration also cites progress through 195 critical minerals projects announced since the beginning of 2026, representing €64 billion in investment, including equity participation and offtake agreements.

The financing section focuses on mobilizing public and private capital to build processing, recycling and other industrial capacity needed for diversification. The declaration calls for equity investments, guarantees and offtakes, as well as more stable investment frameworks, market transparency and valuation mechanisms to help bridge the investment gap before 2030. G7 leaders also tasked G7 development finance institutions (DFIs) and export credit agencies with enhancing coordination and collaboration on critical minerals and enabling infrastructure, including with the private sector.

The declaration also gives leaders-level support to continued discussion of market-structuring tools, including potential plurilateral trade agreements with trusted partners. G7 leaders stated that future mechanisms may include “resilience criteria, standards-based approaches, transparency and traceability mechanisms.” They also agreed to continue exploring demand- and supply-side measures, including “diversification requirements, revenue stabilization mechanisms including price-gap subsidies, joint procurement instruments and trade-related instruments such as quotas and price floors.” This language aligns closely with ongoing U.S. efforts to develop trade and pricing mechanisms for critical minerals, while leaving room for further negotiation over the scope and governance of those tools.

On transparency and traceability, the declaration commits G7 members to work toward harmonized and interoperable mechanisms for tracking the origin of critical minerals. The initial pilots will focus on lithium and nickel, with the goal of extending the framework to five additional critical minerals each year, with particular attention to rare earths. The declaration also calls for improved market data, shared analytical tools, better visibility into prices, supply, demand and processing capacity and structured engagement with businesses through the new G7 platform, drawing on the work of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

On stockpiling, the declaration stops short of endorsing a single shared stockpile. Instead, G7 leaders committed to developing and increasing domestic stockpiling capacity in the public or private sector, where appropriate, while exchanging information on stockpiling systems, best practices, procurement and release mechanisms. The declaration also commits G7 members to establish a joint cooperation mechanism with support from the IEA to share data and alerts on future market stress or supply and demand disruptions.

The declaration also includes commitments on recycling and circular economy measures. G7 leaders agreed to work toward recycling targets by the end of the year for selected critical minerals or derivatives and stated that they aim to increase collective recycling capacity capable of producing a significant share of G7 members’ annual consumption by the end of 2030. The recycling section also highlights recovery from mine waste and tailings, trade in recyclable materials among trusted partners, digital traceability and extended producer responsibility schemes.

B7 Critical Minerals Investment Forum

The G7 leaders’ declaration followed a June 10 Critical Minerals Investment Forum convened by the French government in Paris on the margins of the Business 7 (B7) Summit. Organized under France’s 2026 G7 Presidency by Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industrial, Energy and Digital Sovereignty Roland Lescure, the forum brought together more than 100 leaders from mining companies, industrial firms, financial institutions, export credit agencies, multilateral development banks and public authorities from G7 countries and partner countries, including Australia, Brazil and South Korea. The forum, first previewed at the May 18–19 G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ meeting, focused on financing challenges across critical mineral value chains and concrete solutions to accelerate investment.

The forum centered in large part on financing and investment barriers facing early-stage critical mineral projects, including risk-taking and profitability challenges that constrain mining and processing projects in the feasibility and development stages. At the conclusion of the forum, 39 companies, financial institutions and professional federations endorsed a joint statement calling for increased private capital mobilization, closer public-private coordination, expanded use of equity and blended finance instruments, long-term offtake agreements, greater use of risk-sharing instruments and stronger coordination with multilateral development banks.

Signatories included Airbus, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Ivanhoe Atlantic, JP Morgan, Orano, Siemens Energy, Société Générale, Solvay, USA Rare Earth, BusinessEurope, Keidanren and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. U.S. government officials in attendance included U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) Chair John Jovanovic, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) Head of Investments Conor Coleman and National Security Council Senior Director for Global Supply Chains David Copley.

Analysis

The G7 declaration comes as the Trump administration is taking steps toward a plurilateral critical minerals agreement with like-minded partners. In February 2026, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) requested public comment on the design of a “plurilateral Agreement on Trade in Critical Minerals” and on potential “strategic trade policy and border mechanisms, such as price floors and tariffs.” USTR has also announced critical minerals action plans with Mexico, Japan and the European Union, each of which contemplates coordination on price floors or related border measures as part of a potential binding plurilateral agreement.

The G7 declaration does not adopt the U.S. approach outright, but it creates a leaders-level framework for continued negotiation over many of the same tools, including price floors, quotas, price-gap subsidies, joint procurement, standards-based approaches, transparency and traceability mechanisms and plurilateral trade agreements. The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to present binding bilateral proposals to Japan and the European Union before the end of June, building on the previous action plans. The first agreements could potentially cover five to 10 minerals, including heavy rare earths, antimony, graphite and tungsten.

The administration is also considering using the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-backed Open Price Exploration for National Security (OPEN) artificial intelligence (AI) pricing model to help establish reference prices for certain critical minerals. However, G7 allies and industry participants remain divided over this approach, including who would pay price premiums, how far down the supply chain supports would apply and how governance of a pricing system would work. European officials have reportedly raised concerns about relying on a U.S.-developed AI pricing model.

These divisions are reflected in the G7 declaration’s careful language. Rather than committing to a specific pricing system, the declaration states that G7 members will continue to discuss the feasibility and development of tools needed to support supply chain resilience and diversification. Similarly, while France has reportedly favored a permanent administrative secretariat within the IEA or OECD to track G7 critical minerals initiatives across presidencies, the final declaration instead establishes a nonbinding G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance and a G7 platform for Critical Minerals Cooperation.

The stockpiling language also reflects the challenges of establishing joint stockpiling initiatives. Rather than creating a common G7 stockpile, leaders committed to increasing domestic stockpiling capacity where appropriate and exchanging information on systems, best practices and release mechanisms. This approach may allow G7 members to improve coordination and crisis response without requiring countries to surrender control over national reserves or agree on a single shared procurement and release mechanism.

Next Steps

For companies, investors and foreign governments, the declaration signals that critical minerals projects will increasingly be judged by their contribution to supply chain security, diversification, traceability and financing readiness. Projects involving rare earths, permanent magnets, lithium, nickel, graphite, antimony and tungsten as well as processing and recycling infrastructure may be particularly well-positioned for further public financing, export credit, DFI engagement, offtake support and participation in future G7 or plurilateral initiatives. However, projects will also need to navigate quickly changing standards, traceability expectations and potential market-support mechanisms that remain under negotiation.

Brownstein’s International and Critical Minerals teams bring deep experience in the critical minerals space and work closely with the agencies involved in advancing U.S. financing, trade and diplomatic engagement on critical minerals. We coordinate with private industry, investors and foreign governments to support supply chain security, navigate U.S. financing tools and identify opportunities for public-private partnerships. Our team also has extensive experience connecting private industry leaders with U.S. government officials on issues related to supply chain security, global investment strategies, project financing, offtake structures and other issues impacting clients. We are prepared to assist clients in assessing project eligibility, coordinating with relevant agencies and developing strategies to secure federal support in a rapidly evolving investment environment. If you have any questions, please contact the authors of this alert.

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