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Australia eyes completion of US critical minerals pact this year

Australia expects to conclude an agreement with the US over critical minerals before the end of the year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. Critical minerals and their supply chain will be very important for global growth going forward, Albanese told reporters in Philadelphia on Friday (Sep 20) after a meeting with US President Joe Biden.

“As we move forward and we look at the drivers of global growth in this century, Australia has the entire periodic table basically of what will be needed,” he said. “That presents an opportunity not just to get access to those resources, but how value is added to it and the supply chain issues that are related to that.”

He and Biden “had a really good discussion about progressing that and we are hopeful that that will be finalised by the end of this year”, Albanese said. The two nations began talks about the Australia-US Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact more than a year ago.

The cooperation is aimed at ensuring a sustainable and stable supply of a range of rate earth minerals used in high technology at a time when China is dominant in the market and controls about 70 per cent of global output.

Albanese said he and Biden discussed how they can cooperate in developing critical minerals and also “the potential that’s there as well for further work to involve other nations like Canada and other like-minded countries to achieve our objectives”.

Albanese was speaking ahead of a meeting with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue which also includes India and Japan. His comments were broadcast by ABC News. BLOOMBERG