'Concentrated in the hands of one country..': Marco Rubio warns of China’s grip on critical minerals

U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday (February 04) unveiled plans to marshal allies into a preferential trade bloc for critical minerals, proposing coordinated price floors as Washington escalates efforts to loosen China's grip on materials crucial to advanced manufacturing. At a ministerial forum on critical minerals at the U.S. State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that building a trade bloc was crucial to preventing any one country or an international crisis from disrupting supply chains. China has wielded its chokehold on the processing of many minerals as geo-economic leverage, at times curbing exports, suppressing prices and undercutting other countries' ability to diversify sources of the materials used to make semiconductors, electric vehicles and advanced weapons.