WASHINGTON (UNITED STATES) (ITALPRESS) – Critical minerals must be seen as “fundamental resources” for world economic security, “pillars” which must be subtracted from monopoly attempts. This is the message sent by the American administration in the first ministerial dedicated to critical minerals, organized in Washington and which counted the participation of 54 states plus the institutions of the European Union. Critical Minerals Ministerial was opened by US Vice-President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who underlined the strategic importance of the issue addressed. “The global economies depend on these materials,” Vance said, inviting allies to collaborate to reduce dependence on “external suppliers”. Vance also announced the intention of the United States to create a trading block of critical minerals between allied countries, aimed at ensuring reliable access to the resources and stability of markets. “What we have ahead is an opportunity of self-sufficiency, in which we must not depend on anyone except on each other for critical minerals necessary to support our industries and growth,” he said.
The Vice-President also pointed out that the current markets were “displaced”, penalizing long-term investments and planning, and proposed mechanisms to make raw material costs more stable, reducing the risk of unfair competition. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in his speech, defined the critical minerals a “pillar of economic and technological security” and stressed the need for international cooperation “solid and sustainable”. He recalled how the domain of a few suppliers represents a strategic vulnerability and invited allied countries to build “ resilient systems that guarantee industrial continuity and technological autonomy”. Rubio and Vance also presented the new configuration of the Mineral Security Partnership, transformed into a multilateral platform to cooperate on the extraction, processing, recycling and resilience of supply chains, in support of key sectors such as semiconductors, electric batteries, clean energy and advanced technologies.
For Italy, Antonio Tajani was present at the meeting. In a press point at St. Regis Hotel in Washington, before the beginning of the work, Tajani reiterated that “critical raw materials are fundamental to industrial countries” like Italy. “We are the second European industrial power, the fourth world commercial power and if we want to be competitive on the market we cannot pay raw materials in a monopoly regime. So we must have the free market for raw materials,” he added. “This is competition, this is free market,” said Tajani.
– photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
