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Breaking China’s Grip on Rare-Earths Markets a ‘Pipe Dream,’ Australia Says
By Ben WestcottNovember. 1 2022
Australia’s resources minister said it was a “pipe dream” that Western countries could soon end their reliance on China for rare earths and critical minerals -- vital for the defense, aerospace and automotive industries -- due to the Asian powerhouse’s existing grip on global markets.
“That’s a country that has seen this need coming and made the most of it,” Resources Minister Madeleine King told Bloomberg News in an interview.
That won’t stop Australia and the US from working together to boost investment in these critical minerals in an attempt to break China’s monopoly on international supply chains, King said. It was Canberra’s aim to “make the most of the natural endowment we have of these resources, so that we can provide an alternative source of them from China,” she added.
Lithium and other critical minerals including cobalt, platinum and rare earths are used in the manufacturing of a wide range of products which are crucial for national security and the fight against climate change, including jet engines, solar panels and electric vehicles. Australia has some of the world’s largest reserves of these resources and is among the biggest producers of critical minerals globally.
Much of the country’s production capacity for lithium and rare earths is in Western Australia. Siriana Nair, the US Consul General in the state capital Perth, said Australia and the US shared a “strong strategic interest” in securing critical mineral supply chains.
While Nair wouldn’t specify China as the target of growing cooperation between the US and Australia, the US diplomat said having a single source of any critical resource was a “big drawback and a huge flaw.”
“I don’t think anybody in any country wants to have global supply chains dependent on kind of a single point of failure,” she said in a separate interview. “It’s just smart policy.”
Australia’s King said some exploration was still underway for additional deposits and the peak could still be five or 10 years away. “This is going to be an ongoing demand for a long time. So we need to get there and keep pumping it out,” she said.
