If U.S. President Donald Trump’s cold, realpolitik, interest-driven critical minerals diplomacy is unlikely to fundamentally shake China’s dominance of the global critical minerals supply chain, it may nevertheless begin to shift certain fault lines and push Chinese interests into spaces where they had previously gone largely unchallenged.
In the years before Trump, Beijing had grown accustomed to the Western foreign policy “utility belt”: multilateral initiatives, regulatory frameworks, and legislative measures aimed at countering China’s dominance in critical mineral supply chains. These efforts rarely translated into concrete action, largely because of either persistent mismatches between private-sector incentives and policymakers’ ambitions or a lack of real political will to see these initiatives through. As a result, they posed little immediate concern for China. At times, Beijing saw Western private companies signing partnerships and buying China’s critical mineral assets, much to the dismay of Western policymakers.
