Washington is pushing an aggressive new plan to prop up production of critical minerals with coordinated price supports, tariffs and other tools, and some allies are already quietly reaching for the brake. Framed as a way to loosen China's grip on Western supply chains, the proposal took center stage this week at G7 meetings in Évian-les-Bains, France. At issue is a simple but high-stakes question: can government-backed reference prices and AI-built benchmarks really reshape markets that China has dominated for years?
As reported by Reuters, U.S. negotiators are circulating a draft that would explore price supports, market standards, subsidies or guaranteed purchases to jump-start production. Diplomats told Reuters that Washington wants binding bilateral agreements with Japan and the EU by the end of June, initially covering a tight list of five to ten minerals. Heavy rare earths, antimony, graphite and tungsten are among the minerals on the table.
The Pentagon's AI Steps Into the Pricing Game
The administration's draft leans heavily on the Pentagon's Open Price Exploration for National Security program, known as OPEN, to generate what it calls reference prices that reflect labor, processing and other real-world costs. According to DARPA, OPEN is built to boost transparency in critical materials pricing and supply forecasts by modeling fundamental input costs rather than simply following spot quotes.
Skeptics counter that an algorithmic benchmark might be useful for clarity and planning, but it cannot by itself create trading liquidity or guarantee that different jurisdictions will treat the numbers as a fair basis for contracts.
A Working Example: MP Materials' DoD Deal
There is at least one real-world test case for the kind of price backstop Washington is now floating. In July 2025 the Department of Defense struck a public private package with MP Materials that included a 10-year commitment setting a 110 dollar per kilogram floor for neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr), according to a press release by MP Materials. Inside policy circles and industry memos, that deal is frequently cited as a template for how demand guarantees or price collars might be structured in a way that aims not to permanently warp markets.
Europe's Alternative: Market-Based Indexes
European officials are wary of building the system around OPEN and have instead argued for benchmarks derived from real transaction data. The EU-backed EIT RawMaterials has been working with the digital trading platform Metalshub to grow spot trading and create transparent price indices for niche minerals, an effort listed on Metalshub's partner pages. Supporters say a market-driven index would be a far easier sell for investors and European policymakers than signing onto a U.S. AI-generated price book.
Industry Split and Negotiating Posture
U.S. trade negotiators, led by USTR Jamieson Greer, have argued that price supports can "protect production" while the bloc scales up new mines and processing plants. Many in industry are less enthusiastic. As Reuters noted, the National Mining Association urged officials to steer away from price setting and to emphasize incentives and tax credits instead. Large manufacturers, meanwhile, have offered their own proposals that do not always line up with one another, let alone with Washington's first draft.
The split leaves negotiators with a tricky choice. They can sprint toward quick bilateral deals that lock in specific price support tools, or they can start the slower work of building a more formal multilateral governance system around minerals trade.
What Comes Next
Policy analysts warn that how any new trading zone is wired will matter just as much as whether it exists at all. A transparent index or carefully managed stockpiles could nudge investment without spooking capital, while opaque or overly rigid price floors might cause some financiers to walk, according to a report by Resources for the Future.
Rice University's Baker Institute likewise cautions that demand guarantees and stockpiles can reduce short term risk, but have to be designed so they do not distort markets over the long run and still comply with procurement and budget rules. In the coming weeks, Washington will find out whether partners are willing to sign onto an American-led approach, pivot toward a Europe-style index model, or instead push for incentive-heavy strategies that keep most pricing power in private markets.
