Feb 09, 2026
3 min read
Washington is building alliances with Brussels and Tokyo to protect supply chains from Beijing's monopoly.
If not returning to support partners, the development of supply chains in partner countries is very similar.The US, EU and Japan have agreed to deepen cooperation on resources and economic security.The joint memo talks about a memorandum "within the next 30 days" and action plans aimed at creating trade relations to access basic resources for new economies and the defense industry.The right goal: to protect us from China's dominance over many important supply chains.
"The world's largest market economies are seeking to develop a new paradigm for preferential trade in essential minerals," concluded US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer: The three laid the foundation for a "binding multilateral agreement" focused on trade with "like-minded partners," countries with common goals: "friends."
This agreement is the result of a ministerial meeting with more than 50 countries, including Italy, represented by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.Like the summit, the plan also reflects a new approach for this White House: it is based on a multilateral and deeply cooperative trade policy: minimum prices at borders to protect producers in the alliance, coordinated subsidies to fill price gaps and purchase agreements to ensure the long-term profitability of mining projects, structurally slow and sensitive.
Friends again?
"We are all friends here," said Vice President JD Vance when he introduced the minister.The words clashed with the deterioration of relations between the United States and its allies due to Donald Trump's shift in foreign policy to a more isolationist and trade-oriented approach.On the same day of the ministerial meeting, which he did not discuss, the US president had a "good conversation" with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and they also discussed trade.Trump said he was "looking forward" to visiting Beijing in April and feared "very positive results" from Xi, with whom he says he has a "very good" personal relationship.
But on the practical side, the United States does not forget that China during 2025 is not only not afraid of Trump's tariffs, but also responds to attacks until the White House withdraws, but panics many US (and European) industries by imposing heavy export controls on rare sectors.(And Tokyo knows about it) But this is the heaviest use in its history.
Therefore, Washington seems to have remembered that the network of traditional friends is its first better competition, minus the written national security strategy, remains its true competition.After the administration shutdown, Britain also announced it had signed a critical equipment deal with the United States, and U.S. Home Secretary Doug Burgum has hoped the administration will focus on 11 documents promised to the two parties this week.
"Life in a material world"
The United States' strategy travels along three lines: the first is the increase in domestic mining activity, the second is the creation of a brand new "Project Vault", a strategic reserve of critical minerals (including $12 billion in public-private investments) to counter geopolitical unrest.The third, according to the Ministry, is friendship.It exists," Vance said in front of "friendly" ministers. National interest remains the guiding star, he stressed, but the US administration "recognizes that this is an area where our alliances and our friendships can really help each other."
We seem to be witnessing a resurgence of friendship in the Joe Biden era.Vance repeated the use of the term like-minded partners, but the renewed cooperation is based on a more realistic premise.Biden talked about shared values and Trump implemented bilateral deals that fit short-term national interests.In this respect, this agreement looks like a qualitative leap of strategy: the inclusion of other like-minded partners in the joint statement and functional international cooperation, such as the "G7 and Mining Security Partnership" talks at the forum, a body that includes the US, the EU and 13 other countries with the aim of stimulating investment in new supply chains, seems to have been forgotten since Trump's return.
Is it the desire to place ourselves in the "Great Game" of great wealth that has been acquired in the form of isolation?It is still difficult (but not impossible) for this cooperation mechanism to extend to steel, a sector that suffers from Chinese influence and the US and the EU agreed to cooperate before Washington changed tariffs to lock in the EU's digital rules.At the moment, the need to strengthen the supply chain is affecting the geo-economy to change the chessboard: the language powers like Brazil are giving direct access to their resources in the hope of becoming alternative suppliers, while others like Vietnam are restricting exports and developing internal capacity to strengthen the industry.
For its part, the EU is dividing its suppliers by entering into trade agreements, not with the Mercosur group, which will facilitate imports from important producers such as Argentina and Brazil.On the African side, the Global Gateway maxi-investment strategy (defined in Italy in the Mattei plan) has a clear objective to encourage the development of local refining, allowing countries to export products with added value instead of exporting products to China, the real control of this sector will be through refining.And in December the United States and the EU announced an agreement to complete the Lobito Corridor, a major infrastructure project that will connect the heart of the Great Lakes mining region with the Angolan port of the same name.
Likewise, the opening of the Greenland crisis between the US and the EU, where critical materials were actors with defense interests.Paradoxically, the events have led some EU countries, aware of Russia's use of gas as a weapon and concerned about China's dependence, to think about how to lessen the burden on the US.As critical materials, these are processes that require decades, political will and high investments.But the direction of travel, at least in the field of supply chains, is clear: after the fall of the Biden era, rebirth under the sign of pragmatism in the second trumpet era of cooperation can ensure a more concrete basis to face the challenge of the Chinese system.
