SYDNEY, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Australia on Friday said it would support its critical mineral supply chains after the U.S. stepped back from plans \u200bto guarantee a minimum price for such projects.<\/p>\n
Shares of Australia’s rare \u200cearth miners fell sharply on Thursday after Reuters reported on the Trump administration’s retreat.<\/p>\n
The sector was \u200cstill in the red on Friday. Lynas, the world’s biggest producer of rare earths outside China, was down by more than 4%.<\/p>\n
The backdown was communicated to U.S. mining executives by Trump administration officials and indicated a lack of congressional funding for \u2060price floors and the complexity \u200cof setting market pricing, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
That “won’t stop Australia (from) pursuing our critical minerals strategic reserve programme to make sure Australia has \u200daccess to the resources it needs to build a future made in Australia,” Resources Minister Madeleine King told Sky News on Friday.<\/p>\n
“We know from what we’ve seen in reports and \u200bwe will let that play out … the U.S. has introduced a price \u200cfloor for one particular project and that’s the only one it has done it for, and that was a game-changer.”<\/p>\n
Australia has been positioning itself as a critical minerals alternative to China, the world’s biggest producer, for use in the automotive and defence sectors.<\/p>\n
It has said it would establish a A$1.2 billion ($840 million) strategic \u2060reserve of minerals that it believes is \u200bvulnerable to supply disruption.<\/p>\n
The stockpile, which will prioritise \u200bantimony, gallium and rare earth elements, is expected to be ready by the second half of 2026.<\/p>\n
The government is also considering setting \u200da price floor to \u2060support local critical minerals projects as part of its strategy.<\/p>\n
“We’ll have a number of mechanisms, a floor price will be one through offtake agreements,” \u2060King said. “We are determined to make sure there is value for taxpayer money in the \u200creserve and in any floor price.”<\/p>\n
($1 = 1.4278 Australian dollars)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Christine \u200cChen in Sydney; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Australia on Friday said it would support its critical mineral supply chains after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,231766,8268,164,124083,231765,231767,1037],"class_list":{"0":"post-447259","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-critical-mineral","12":"tag-critical-minerals","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-madeleine-king","15":"tag-minimum-price","16":"tag-price-floors","17":"tag-trump-administration"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447259","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=447259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}