The Quad foreign ministers, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, India’s S. Jaishankar, Japan’s Toshimitsu Motegi and Australia’s Penny Wong, met in Atlanta on October 31 on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting and put critical minerals at the centre of their economic security agenda. It was their third meeting in less than six months, after New Delhi in May and Manila in July.
Under the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework announced in May, the four governments welcomed a United States commitment of 10 million dollars to support infrastructure and facilities in India and ASEAN countries for recovering critical minerals from waste, including electronic waste and scrap. The ministers also welcomed private investment in collection, processing and refining, and said export credit agencies would meet in Tokyo on November 18 to explore financing cooperation.
Rubio closed the wider G20 meeting with the same message. Secure supply chains are essential for growth, he said, critical trade routes including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait must remain secure and open to commerce, and critical mineral supply chains must be strengthened and expanded. Jaishankar called on the G20 to resist predatory practices, promote the right to industrialise and work toward the depoliticisation of markets. The G20 meeting itself ended without a joint communique, and the Quad statement is a coordination commitment, not a treaty or a funded project pipeline.
For miners, the read is demand side and processing side at once. Recovery from waste is the fastest route to new units that does not need a mine permit, and a standing Quad financing conversation in Tokyo gives recovery and refining projects a named place to go. The amounts announced so far, 10 million dollars for recovery facilities and more than 85 million dollars of technical and financial assistance for trusted artificial intelligence technologies, are seed money next to the capital a single refinery requires.