Highlights

• At the 2025 Kananaskis Summit, G7 leaders launched the Critical Minerals Action Plan and a Canada-led alliance, mobilizing over $6.4 billion across 26 projects to diversify rare earth supply chains beyond China.
• Ahead of the 2026 summit, G7 officials are debating bold interventions including price floors, tariffs on Chinese exports, joint stockpiles, and stricter investment screening to counter China's market dominance.
• Despite concrete investments in mining and processing projects across G7 nations, execution lags rhetoric as members remain divided on how confrontational to be with Beijing, leaving China's leverage largely intact.

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The G7 (Group of Seven) is moving from rhetoric to action on rare earths. In 2025, it launched a Critical Minerals Action Plan and a Canada-led alliance to bolster non-China supplies. This yielded tangible investments (over $6.4 billion) in new mines and processing projects across G7 nations and partners. Ahead of the 2026 summit, G7 officials are debating bolder steps – from price floors to stockpiles – but many ideas remain speculative.

The G7 is an informal forum of seven major advanced economies—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—plus the European Union, meeting annually to coordinate on global economic, political, and security issues, focusing on shared values like democracy and pluralism, though its relevance is sometimes debated alongside groups like the G20.

G7 2025: From Plan to Partnership

At the June 2025 Kananaskis Summit, G7 leaders treated critical minerals as the linchpin of economic security. They unveiled a G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan (CMAP) (opens in a new tab) to diversify supply, drive investment, and spur innovation in rare earths and other critical materials. Building on prior G7 efforts from 2023–24, the plan emphasized “standards-based” markets (ensuring ethical, sustainable sourcing) and vowed (opens in a new tab) to anticipate shortages and counter “non-market” disruptions in supply. Leaders also welcomed a Critical Minerals Production Alliance, led by Canada, to coordinate G7 efforts to secure and diversify production globally.

Tangible Moves and Alliances Formed

Unlike past summits heavy on talk, 2025 yielded concrete collaborations. By October, G7 ministers had announced 26 new projects and partnerships under the alliance, mobilizing $6.4 billion to bolster supply chains. These span from Canadian graphite mines with Japanese and EU offtakes to new rare earth processing in Ontario backed by Germany and the U.S.. The flurry of deals – UK’s export credit agency co-financing Canadian projects, Italy’s ENI eyeing investments in Canadian lithium and rare earth recycling, and a Canada-Australia critical minerals pact – underscores a web of G7-allied cooperation. Supply chain resilience is no longer abstract: the G7 is co-funding new mines, refining plants, and even novel recycling tech to reduce reliance on China.

Ahead of 2026: High-Stakes Discussions

As one G7 insider put it, rare earths have become a “raw nerve” in geopolitics, as cited in Mining Journal (opens in a new tab). G7 finance ministers are gathering in Washington (January 12, 2026) for a special meeting on rare earth supply security. On the table are ideas once considered drastic. Officials are weighing price floors (minimum prices backed by subsidies) to make non-Chinese rare earth projects viable. They’ve even floated a form of carbon tariff on Chinese rare earth exports and tighter investment screening to prevent China-bound takeovers.

The United States – now under Trump administration 2.0 – is actively pressing G7 and EU allies on measures to prevent Chinese “price dumping,” including tariffs or coordinated floor prices. (Tellingly, President Trump’s long-shot idea of buying Greenland for its minerals has resurfaced in earnest discussions, highlighting the strategic premium on rare earth deposits.) Since the aggressive moves in Venezuela, talk of Greenland has surfaced, spooking at least some in Copenhagen.

Yet these proposals remain unresolved. A September 2025 G7 technical meeting in Chicago saw divisions: members agreed on reducing dependence but split on how confrontational to be with Beijing. Some favored stricter sourcing rules; others balked at antagonizing China. The EU has mused about joint rare earth stockpiles or collective purchasing, but no G7 consensus has formed. Indeed, while Japan had earlier diversified its rare earth sources, most G7 economies still depend heavily on Chinese supply.

Achievements and Ambitions

Since 2025, the G7’s rare earth strategy has shifted from abstract concern to partial execution. A formal Critical Minerals Action Plan is in place, and capital is moving: billions are being directed toward mining, processing, and early-stage refining projects from Canada to Australia, marking the first coordinated multilateral effort to weaken China’s structural dominance. At the same time, policy ambition has expanded. Ideas once considered politically unrealistic—price floors, tariffs, strategic reserves, and market intervention to counter Chinese price suppression—are now openly discussed within G7 finance and industry circles. That alone signals a material change: rare earths are no longer treated as niche commodities, but as strategic infrastructure.

Gaps, Friction, and the China Question

Yet execution lags rhetoric. Price supports, collective stockpiles, and joint purchasing mechanisms remain concepts rather than policy. There is no shared reserve analogous to strategic petroleum stocks, no binding demand aggregation, and no clear public timeline beyond broad promises of future “roadmaps.” Investment progress, while real, still trails demand growth—especially as EVs, hybrids, defense systems, and grid technologies scale simultaneously.

Most critically, the G7 lacks a unified posture toward China. Members agree on vulnerability but diverge on confrontation. The result is a patchwork of national subsidies and bilateral deals rather than a coordinated response to export controls and market leverage. As the 2026 summit approaches, rare earths sit at the center of economic security debates. The foundation exists. What remains unresolved is whether the G7 can move from aligned intent to collective action—or whether hesitation will leave China’s leverage fundamentally intact.

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