Top diplomats from “the Quad” nations of Australia, India, Japan and the United States have agreed to work more closely to secure supply chains for critical minerals, including rare earths — a sector dominated by China — in a bid to cut back their reliance on Beijing.
In a joint statement released after a summit hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on Tuesday, the four Indo-Pacific countries announced the launching of the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative, which they called “an ambitious expansion” of the partnership that will “strengthen economic security and collective resilience by collaborating to secure and diversify critical minerals supply chains.”
Rubio said the plans would allow “not just access to the raw material but also access to the ability to process and refine it to usable material.”
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