{"id":404209,"date":"2026-01-10T13:17:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T13:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/404209\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T13:17:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T13:17:19","slug":"india-australia-invited-to-g7-meeting-on-critical-minerals-bessent-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/404209\/","title":{"rendered":"India, Australia invited to G7 meeting on critical minerals, Bessent says"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. Treasury Secretary<\/a> Scott Bessent \u200dsaid Australia<\/a> and several other countries would join a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of \u2060Seven advanced economies that he is hosting in Washington on Monday to discuss critical minerals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bessent said he had been pressing for a separate meeting on the issue since last summer’s summit of \u200cG7 leaders, \u200cand finance ministers had already held a virtual meeting in December.<\/p>\n

India<\/a> was also invited to attend the meeting, \u200cBessent told Reuters in an interview after touring the Minneapolis-area engineering lab of RV and boat maker Winnebago Industries<\/a>. He said he was unsure if it had accepted the invitation.
It was not immediately clear which other countries had been invited.<\/p>\n

The G7 includes the United States, Britain, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Canada, as well as the European Union, most of whom are heavily dependent on \u200crare earths supplies \u200dfrom China. The group last June agreed on an action \u200dplan to secure their supply chains and boost their economies.<\/p>\n

\"ETLive Events
Australia signed \u200can agreement with the U.S. in October aimed at countering China’s dominance in critical minerals. It included an $8.5 billion project pipeline and leverages Australia’s proposed strategic reserve, which will supply metals like rare earths<\/a> and lithium<\/a> that are vulnerable to disruption.
Canberra has said it has subsequently received interest from Europe, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. China dominates the critical minerals supply chain, refining between 47% \u200dand 87% of copper, lithium, cobalt, graphite and rare earths, according to the International Energy Agency. These minerals are used in defense technologies, \u200dsemiconductors, renewable energy components, \u2060batteries and refining \u2060processes.<\/p>\n

Western countries have sought to reduce their dependence on China’s critical minerals in recent years, given moves by China to impose strict export controls on rare earths.<\/p>\n

Monday’s meeting comes days after reports that China had begun restricting exports to Japanese companies of rare earths and powerful magnets containing them, as well as banning exports of dual-use items to the Japanese military.<\/p>\n

Bessent said China was still living up to its commitments to purchase U.S. soybeans and ship critical minerals to U.S. firms. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent \u200dsaid Australia and several other countries would join a meeting of finance ministers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,183237,8268,164,214491,1209,40444,8261,76342,214492,214493],"class_list":{"0":"post-404209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-china-export-restrictions","12":"tag-critical-minerals","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-g7-meeting","15":"tag-india","16":"tag-lithium","17":"tag-rare-earths","18":"tag-supply-chain-security","19":"tag-u-s-treasury-secretary","20":"tag-winnebago-industries"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}