G7 host France is pushing companions to agree on a commentary on crucial minerals on Wednesday that might come with measures to lend a hand the West scale back its reliance on China and defend buyers from counter-measures and dumping, diplomats stated.
The leaders will speak about securing mineral provide chains, a central theme of France’s G7 presidency, along a broader effort to treatment world financial imbalances at the ultimate day of the June 15-17 summit in Evian-les-Bains.
China spooked the worldwide financial system final yr when some industries just about floor to a halt after Beijing imposed export curbs on everlasting magnets manufactured from uncommon earths – an episode which highlighted how reliant Western provide chains within the power, protection, and generation sectors are on those items.
“We are negotiating texts that are significant on critical minerals and, as a consequence, on economic sovereignty,” a French presidency legitimate stated forward of the summit.
Measures below dialogue in contemporary months have incorporated value helps, marketplace requirements, subsidies, and assured purchases, in addition to way to scale up personal funding in crucial mineral provide chains outdoor China. Alternatively, any measures introduced on the G7 usually are first steps.
The G7 summit, in Evian-les-Bains, France, June 16, 2026. (credit score: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/REUTERS)Over-reliance on China may well be destabilizing
The 2025 restrictions had been the most recent in Beijing’s sluggish tightening of its area of interest subject matter and battery steel exports. It has additionally curbed American corporations’ get entry to to tungsten and antimony, amongst others.
Western powers are racing to protected offtake from mines and building up processing and recycling capability, however it’ll take years to dent China’s dominant place, which was once many years within the making.
The US proposed in early 2026 a buying and selling bloc for crucial minerals. Alternatively, international locations are at odds over how this bloc may just function, particularly within the context of the White Area’s “America First” time table.
G7 leaders will even speak about methods to rebalance world business and cope with “predatory competition,” basically via China. France summarizes the imbalances as: China produces an excessive amount of, america consumes an excessive amount of and the Europeans make investments too little.
There may be rising alarm in Europe at China’s report business surplus and its transfer up the cost chain, in what analysts describe as a “second China shock” following its dominance of low-value industries within the 2000s.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron sought to interact China forward of the summit in a last-ditch effort at cooperation. Beijing rejects EU claims of unfair subsidies and has many times vowed “strong” countermeasures to the EU’s proposed “Buy European” and revised tech sovereignty regulations.
EU leaders will one after the other debate harder and a extra systematic use of business protection measures towards China’s surging imports at a summit in Brussels on Thursday.
The EU final yr recorded its largest-ever business deficit with China of over €360 billion.
“This is, of course, not sustainable. As you know, in Europe, our strategy is very clear: de-risk, not decouple,” Eu Fee President instructed journalists in the beginning of the summit.
G7 leaders will even speak about AI over lunch on Wednesday, together with the legal responsibility of bots and brokers, and the way AI items what is right and false. OpenAI founder Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are anticipated to wait the lunch.
