Australia aims to finalise critical minerals agreement with US this year

Australia expects to wrap up an agreement with the United States over critical minerals before the end of the year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Critical minerals and their supply chain will become vital to global growth from here onward, Albanese said, addressing reporters in Philadelphia on Friday 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.”

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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.

Over a year ago, the two nations started discussing the Australia-US Climate, Critical Minerals, and Clean Energy Transformation Compact. The collaboration seeks to ensure a stable and sustainable supply of a range of rare earth minerals used in high technology at a time when China dominates 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 reported by ABC News.