In the first week of February, the Donald Trump administration of the United States unveiled Project Vault, an independently governed and operated public-private partnership aimed at establishing a strategic domestic reserve of critical mineralsin the United States. The partnership, backed by $10 billion in financing by the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) and an additional $2 billion in private funds, aims to store 60 critical minerals listed in the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2025 Critical Minerals List to strengthen the resilience of civilian industries against supply chain disruptions. Under this development model, EXIM provides long-term loans to purchase and store critical minerals in the country. This stockpile build-up represents a whole-of-government transformative approach to reduce dependence on foreign-controlled supply chains prone to geopolitical risks and economic coercion, complementing other major policy efforts to build substantive domestic production and processing of critical minerals.
Why build a strategic reserve?
The concept of strategic reserves in the United States goes back to 1975 when it established its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to protect its economy from the energy shocks caused by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In the 21st century, critical minerals are foundational to modern economic and technological power, and China dominates different stages of mineral production such as mining, processing, and magnet manufacturing. In 2025, China retaliated against U.S. tariffs by restricting exports of rare earth magnets, causing a near shutdown of the operations of car manufacturing in the United States and across the world. The unprecedented disruption forced production lines to rethink shifting some production to China, whose finished exports had minimum restrictions. Importantly, the disruption laid bare the vulnerabilities in the supply chain and caused a decisive blow to the Trump administration’s plan to shore up manufacturing in the United States. Therefore, the project to maintain critical mineral strategic reserves is underlined by the growing risks posed by the concentration of critical minerals and rare earth elements in the hands of one player, which directly affects access, affordability, and geopolitical leverage.
In this context, Project Vault is intended to function as a long-term insurance for domestic manufacturers, who could procure minerals without geographic restrictions, based on supply availability and commercial considerations, and store them. Moreover, withdrawal from the reserves and their replenishment are guided by clear and predefined conditions of market disruption, and the participants are levied a security premium for storage costs while ensuring supply certainty and protection against volatile spot-market prices during a crisis. In short, Project Vault represents not another industrial policy but a new strategic doctrine, in which critical minerals and rare earth elements are not just commodities but strategic assets that underpin comprehensive national power.
‘America First, Allies Second’ in the realignment?
EXIM chairman John Jovanovic emphasised that Project Vault will initially focus on building and securing domestic manufacturing capacity in critical minerals, with a broader focus on allied engagement to strengthen shared supply chains through partnerships. However, analysts point out that given the deep pockets of the U.S. and the exhaustive list of stockpiles, its intervention could directly help non-Chinese producers, who have struggled in competing against cheaper Chinese mining. Diversified purchases by the United Statescould directly contribute to the strengthening of alternative supply chains globally if partner countries also agree to trade minerals between each other at border-adjusted price floors (minimum price). In this regard, the U.S. administration has already signed 11 new bilateral agreements, with Japan, the EU, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, announcing action plans to develop border-adjusted price mechanisms.
On a multilateral level, the Trump administration’s decision to host 54 countries, including India and the European Commission, at the Critical Minerals Ministerial signalled a welcome return to plurilateral initiatives to create a preferential trading bloc that would enforce similar rules. The multilateral initiative was named by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), as the successor of the Minerals Security Partnership under the Biden administration, whose broader objectives are to coordinate on critical minerals policy, pricing, and project development. For allies and partners, the FORGE initiative provides a platform to collaborate at the policy level on investments and access to critical minerals and set the price floor to build resilient supply chains.
Pax Silica: Reconciling global ambitions with ‘America First’
The Pax Silica initiative was launched by the United States in December 2025 to form a coalition of capable countries committed to building secure and resilient supply chains foundational to artificial intelligence (AI), which includes energy, critical minerals, and semiconductors. Its members include Australia, Greece, Israel, Japan, Qatar, Singapore, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates, with India being invited to join as a full member and the European Union, Canada, the Netherlands, and Taiwan as guest contributors. The U.S., through Pax Silica and several bilateral agreements with allies such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates, intends to combine capital, energy, mineral reserves, knowledge, and demand across allied jurisdictions to multiply capabilities in AI by coordinating investment and aligning regulatory standards.
However, even as Project Vault and Pax Silica complement each other and represent a holistic approach to critical minerals diplomacy, their implementation remains vulnerable to being dominated by ‘America First’ politics, which tends to treat partners hierarchically and prefer absolute alignment with American national security priorities. This behaviour is already evident in the asymmetrical nature of U.S. trade deal negotiations as partner countries had to not only assess the risks of long-term commitments to join U.S.-led supply chains but also hedge against the volatile and coercive behaviour of the Trump administration. Such an approach remains relevant here against the backdrop of the recently released U.S. National Security Strategy, which asserts that U.S. exports in technology and U.S. standards drive the world forward. In the end, coalitions on supply chains deliver best when there is predictability, trust, and less volatility, and ensuring these will remain the biggest challenge for the U.S.-led initiatives.
Harisundar Kumar is a NASP Fellow at the Takshashila Institution.
Published – February 18, 2026 04:48 am IST
