President Donald Trump’s recent Asia trip unfolded at a precarious moment in U.S.-China trade relations. Weeks before his visit, Beijing imposed new licensing restrictions on critical mineral and permanent magnet exports, reviving long-standing fears that the United States could again be cut off from minerals essential to both basic civilian manufacturing and key defense systems.
China holds unmatched global leverage through its dominance of the rare earths, a particularly useful subset of critical minerals. These minerals underpin the production of everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to F-35 jets and precision-guided munitions. Today, China controls roughly 60 percent of global rare earth mining and nearly 90 percent of processing. This chokehold over key resources exposes the United States to strategic coercion.
Although the licensing rules are now frozen for a year, the episode underscored a growing strategic priority in Washington: securing reliable access to critical minerals. Earlier this year, the administration issued executive orders to expand and accelerate seabed mineral development and domestic mineral production.
>>> India’s Pitch to the Pacific Islands
The South Pacific and Pacific Islands offer credible resource options that can reduce exposure to Chinese resource dominance. Among America’s most capable allies is Australia, home to the world’s fourth-largest rare earth reserves at 5.7 million metric tons. Crucially, it houses one of the few significant producers of heavy rare earths outside of China: Lynas Rare Earths.
Thankfully, Canberra has already taken steps to align more closely with Washington. Last month, the two signed a minerals framework that increases financing for exploration projects and, importantly, restricts Chinese acquisitions of new mining assets.
In addition to land-based reserves, seabed mining is another promising opportunity for securing critical minerals. The deep seafloor is littered with slow-forming, potato-sized polymetallic nodules that contain copper and cobalt, both of which China maintains a significant global market share over.
The Pacific Islands sit amid some of the world’s richest undersea deposits, estimated to be worth as much as $20 trillion. Nations such as the Cook Islands have been eager to pursue the possibility of deep-sea mining, but currently lack the infrastructure and financing to properly pursue commercial ventures.
Well-structured mineral partnerships can become a strategic win-win for these small Pacific Island nations. Revenue generated from companies developing these resources could sustain long-term economic growth, create new jobs, and deepen scientific and technological development.
Washington took an important first step this August by announcing cooperation on seabed minerals with the Cook Islands. However, this was after China also agreed to cooperation arrangements with the Cook Islands months earlier.
Considering that both countries now have access to the Cook Islands’ rich seabed, rectifying Chinese dominance will require dealing with other segments of the supply chain. The U.S should consider integrating other countries with complementary strengths across the critical mineral process, from mining and separation to processing and refinement.
>>> American Samoa Is America’s Strategic Hub in the South Pacific
Consider cobalt, a resource that China has a near-monopoly hold on. Policymakers are investigating alternative supply routes sourcing cobalt from the Cook Islands’ Exclusive Economic Zone, where polymetallic nodules in the Penrhyn and Samoa basins contain commercially significant cobalt concentrations.
American-mined raw nodules from the Cook Islands could later move to a secure processing hub, such as the proposed Electra Refinery in Canada, Kokkala Refinery in Finland, or Kwinana Refinery in Australia, for eventual conversion into battery-grade materials. The refined cobalt from these diverse and secure supply chains can then be exported to trusted partners in North America, Europe, and Asia.
American companies are already encouraging this shift. Noveon Magnetics recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Lynas Rare Earths to use Australian rare earths in the domestic manufacturing of permanent magnets. Replicating such realignments among trusted countries and vendors is of grave importance for any American-led critical mineral supply chain.
China’s restrictions on rare earth minerals and permanent magnets have put immense pressure on American manufacturing, including core defense systems like F-35 fighter jets, Tomahawk missiles, and Predator drones. Critical minerals sustain U.S. economic strength and national security readiness, and Washington should move to diversify supply chains with trusted partners in the Pacific Islands and beyond. Should it hesitate, the United States will continue to operate at the mercy of resource supply chains that Beijing can weaponize at will.
This piece originally appeared in The National Interest
