“It’s coercion. We need to see how we will respond,” said the other Commission official, who like the others cited in the story was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive discussions.
Codependency risk
China’s export curbs triggered an escalatory threat from President Donald Trump to hit Beijing with 100 percent tariffs. While Washington has since scaled back the confrontation, top U.S. officials are also drawing the consequences of Beijing’s lockdown on critical minerals.
“China’s actions have once again demonstrated the risk of being dependent on them, on rare earths, and for that matter, anything,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. “If China wants to be an unreliable partner to the world, then the world will have to decouple. The world does not want to decouple.”
Hodgson and Canadian Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin will host their G7 counterparts from top global economies, including the U.S., Japan, Italy, Germany, the U.K. and France, in Toronto from Oct. 30-31.
Beijing’s new restrictions are an “amping up” of curbs on critical minerals China has announced this year, Hodgson said. G7 allies, he added, are working on “a number of actual contracts” with private sector firms that they hope to announce at the Toronto meeting.
The G7 is encouraging international firms and other countries to use financial tools to increase global supplies of critical minerals. “That would include things like stockpiling agreements, that would include things like off-take agreements, that would include things like potentially contract for differences on critical minerals,” Hodgson said.