Albanese scrambles to lock in minerals deal before Trump meeting

3 hours ago 4

Australia would mandate price floors for critical minerals and pump money into new rare earth projects, according to leaked plans about a resources deal with the US that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is trying to lock in before meeting President Donald Trump.

Officials from the prime minister’s department have started contacting Australian miners about how they could contribute to the new $1.2 billion critical minerals strategic reserve, according to the confidential departmental brief obtained by this masthead.

Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump posing for a selfie in New York last month.

On Saturday, Trump threatened to impose a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese goods and cancel a meeting with President Xi Jinping after China moved to dramatically expand export restrictions on critical minerals.

In another sign of the importance of rare earths to the Washington trip, Ukraine has urged Australia to provide the war-torn nation with mining expertise to make Trump’s minerals deal with Volodymyr Zelensky workable.

The departmental brief was sent to miners over the past two weeks, shortly after Albanese’s October 20 meeting with Trump was locked in, and there have been a series of closed-door talks between companies and officials in the past week.

“By anticipating and responding to the critical minerals requirements of key international partners, and by addressing supply chain barriers, the reserve can be of strategic benefit to Australia,” the brief states.

Critical minerals are crucial to green energy, defence products such as nuclear-powered submarines, car making and powering artificial intelligence data centres. Securing a supply of key elements such as lithium, nickel and vanadium has become a priority of the Trump administration and underpinned its contentious claim to deposit-rich Greenland, as well as its deal-making with Ukraine.

The push to secure critical minerals stems from fears of China’s dominance in the sector – the country produces more than 90 per cent of the world’s processed rare earths – and that it will be used to thwart manufacturing and sovereign capacity in Western nations. Earlier this year, China started blocking exports to the US, causing carmakers to warn that they would need to wind down production.

Concern over the key elements has burst into public view in recent days after Trump reacted furiously to China’s move on Thursday to dramatically expand rare earths export controls, adding five elements to the restrictions.

On Saturday, AEST, Trump posted on Truth Social to say the US would impose a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese goods from November and place export controls on “any and all” critical software sold to China, wiping $4.4 trillion off the US sharemarket.

Trump added that Xi’s move meant “there seems to be no reason” to meet the Chinese leader at scheduled talks at the APEC summit in South Korea at the end of the month, and he called out China’s “extraordinarily aggressive position on trade”.

Details about the Australian critical minerals reserve have been vague amid concerns that Australia lacked the funds to invest in hugely expensive extraction and processing.

Labor has invested billions in companies such as Iluka and Arafura to increase Australia’s rare earths processing capabilities. There is growing anticipation among government officials about projects in Gippsland, Victoria, including the Fingerboards project, which contains terbium required for US defence products.

The departmental brief confirms Australia is exploring “offtake agreements”, in which a government would commit to buying a certain amount of a resource.

The document reveals Labor is considering setting price floors, government loans and guarantees, together with other countries investing directly in Australian projects, in a sign of the government’s focus on defending local companies from heavily subsidised competition from China.

“Australia’s critical minerals processing and refining capabilities are relatively underdeveloped,” the document states. “We do not currently have the depth and breadth of mid- and downstream expertise and technologies as some other countries.

“Are there design features that would enable the reserve to crowd in private investment and financing, and lower risk to the government?”

US ambassador Kevin Rudd has sought to bring Australian miners and US officials together for the best part of two years, attempting to tie Australia into a global supply chain of the elements needed for car making, smartphones and a range of new defence systems.

After Trump and Zelensky’s White House meeting in April, the countries signed a deal to give the US a stake in Ukraine’s minerals supply. This masthead reported last month that Labor was working to lock in a similar deal with the US before Albanese’s White House visit.

Vasyl Myroshnychenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia.

Ukrainian ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko said Ukraine wanted Australia to help it search for rare earths, build mining infrastructure and encourage Australian miners to invest in the war-torn nation’s resources sector.

Ukraine has large deposits of critical minerals, and Myroshnychenko said Australia’s status as a mining powerhouse meant its help was needed to get the minerals out of the ground.

“Your know-how and new technology and the standards of mining in Western Australia – they’re probably the best in the world,” he said. “They’re much better than those in the EU and anywhere else.

“Trump knows about your expertise in mining. You could definitely help Americans and Ukrainians to work on that minerals deal.”

Myroshnychenko said Ukraine still required Australia’s help for its war with Russia, arguing that aiding Ukraine was in Australia’s strategic interests because China had backed Russia and was taking lessons from the illegal invasion for its own thinking on retaking Taiwan.

Rudd, speaking to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in August, said Australia had built unique expertise in universities and mining companies over 150 years, making it first in line “to help meet the president’s objective of making the US secure in its supply”.

“We have the best mining companies in the world and the biggest mining companies in the world, some of whom have just been meeting with president Trump,” he said.

China’s industrial policy was clear, Rudd said: “To ensure that the world is dependent on China while China is not dependent on the world.”

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