Last week, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad and consisting of the United States, India, Japan, and Australia, met in New Delhi and hammered out, among other things, a Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework. The framework is meant to reduce reliance on China, which dominates the mining and refining of many key minerals and materials that underpin a host of advanced computing, energy, and defense technologies. The agreement would harness government and private investment to diversify across the entire critical minerals supply chain, from extraction through processing.

On paper, it is the kind of multilateral arrangement that could help loosen China’s dominance. But it is also an important reminder of how much that goal depends on healthy diplomatic ties and open trade with the other countries scattered across the rest of the critical minerals supply chain. 

The meeting took place against a backdrop of diplomatic tension between the U.S. and India. The relationship has been strained over the past year, chiefly by tariffs, and a Quad leaders’ summit set to be hosted by India in November 2025 was quietly canceled. Yet India could be an important partner in reducing China’s dominance over critical minerals, and the tensions and disruption of Quad cooperation exemplify how a broad protectionist strategy undermines more urgent and specific minerals-security goals.

Decoupling trade from China would, on its own, create large economic costs. Whether those costs are justified on national security or other grounds is up for debate. But what is clear is that decoupling from China while simultaneously straining ties with the other countries crucial to critical-minerals security will compound the economic costs. Alienating trade partners restricts the set of alternative suppliers and narrows the number of nations across which the burdens of diversification can be spread. Achieving an alternative critical minerals supply chain will require buy-in from countries with mining and processing capacity, as well as the large consuming markets that make non-Chinese production commercially viable.

India could be one of these countries. It depends on China for a large share of its rare earth magnets and other key materials, which makes it a major buyer whose inclusion in critical-minerals initiatives offers a market for supply developed elsewhere. India also brings decades of experience processing minerals such as iron, aluminum, copper, and zinc, and could become a future powerhouse for refining others.

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Japan, another member of the Quad, is likewise a large buyer of critical minerals. It has also been at the center of rare earths trade disputes with China, giving it a strong interest in diversifying supply. Japanese companies have been key investors in projects outside China, most notably in Lynas, an Australian company that operates a rare earth oxides mine in Australia and a refinery in Malaysia. As with India, however, the U.S. imposed steep tariffs on Japan last year, including a blanket 15 percent tariff and a 50 percent tariff on steel, aluminum, and copper. The two countries did separately reach a bilateral critical minerals framework, showing that there is some positive movement towards cooperation. But signing minerals deals with one hand while raising tariffs with the other sends a mixed signal to partners.

The clearest case of how tariffs threaten critical-minerals objectives is Canada, the single largest source of U.S. mineral imports, supplying uranium, nickel, aluminum, copper, and niobium and accounting for tens of billions of dollars in mineral trade. Despite this reliance, the U.S. imposed a 10 percent tariff on energy and critical resources and a 25 percent tariff on other goods. In response, Canadian officials suggested cutting off mineral and uranium flows in retaliation, exemplifying how trade barriers elsewhere threaten to undermine the goal of reducing reliance on China.

What these cases demonstrate is a contradiction at the heart of the current U.S. critical minerals strategy. On one hand, there is a clear desire to rebuild domestic critical minerals capacity through protectionism and tariffs. On the other hand, there is a recognition that any policy solutions will require multilateral and bilateral cooperation. But a domestic U.S. critical minerals industry will not be able to meet projected U.S. demand for at least a decade, which means care should be taken to understand how tariffs and other trade restrictions threaten the potential benefits of broader cooperation, whether through new critical minerals agreements, such as the Minerals Security Partnership and the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), or existing strategic frameworks, like the Quad.

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Most importantly, we need to ensure that our critical-minerals strategy is proportionate to the problem that Chinese dominance actually poses, with firm guardrails to ensure that the economic costs of supply-chain diversification do not come to outweigh the risks of disruption they are meant to address. Protectionism, subsidies, government loans, and stockpiles all pose a serious risk of creating more economic harm than they offset, and each demands careful weighing of net costs and benefits.

Removing trade barriers with countries that may be crucial to future critical minerals frameworks does not face that tradeoff. It would signal seriousness about critical minerals and help foster conditions for future cooperation. If diversifying critical minerals supply chains is a serious objective, that is an easy place to start. 

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.