The G7’s critical minerals declaration: from supply chain security to sourcing reality? 

The G7 Leaders’ Declaration on Securing Supply Chains for Critical Minerals marks an important step in the shift from critical minerals as a clean energy issue, to critical minerals as an economic security issue. The declaration reflects among governments that diversified, resilient, and sustainable mineral supply chains will not emerge through market forces alone.

The Declaration is organised around seven pillars:

• industrial cooperation,
• financing,
• market structuration,
• transparency and traceability,
• stockpiling,
• recycling, and
• production alliances.

These pillars represent a comprehensive approach to tackle the structural issues evident in critical mineral supply chains, which are currently highly concentrated, particularly at the processing and refining stages. Export controls, geopolitical tensions, price volatility, and underinvestment have made governments more willing to intervene directly in minerals markets. The G7 Declaration moves away from narrow focus on securing volumes and towards a broader agenda: building supply chains that are traceable, investable, politically resilient, and aligned with high environmental and social standards.

But declarations do not mine, process, refine or transport minerals, and therein lies the problem. As we pointed out in our February article, the question remains how far such declarations and deals translate into concrete, measurable supply chain change. New Chinese export controls on rare earth elements targeting US companies just days after the G7 Declaration underscore the urgency of tangible action.

What does the Declaration cover?

The Evian declaration emphasises industrial cooperation and financing, recognising that new supply chains require more than diplomatic alignment.

In order for a meaningful shift in global supply chains of critical minerals to occur, projects need bankable offtake, permitting certainty, technical capability, risk-sharing mechanisms and credible market demand, and all of these factors need to function in a coordinated manner. This is particularly important for upstream and midstream projects outside existing dominant processing hubs.

Pioneering producers face higher capital costs and exposure to price competition from established players that benefit from decades of serious state-backed investment domestically and overseas in resource-rich critical minerals sourcing countries.

Yet this is also where the G7 agenda becomes most difficult. Market structuration requires coordination not only on supply, but also on demand. China’s dominant position in critical minerals today has not been built only through processing capacity alone, it is also made possible by downstream industrial demand, including its enormous domestic market. If the G7 wants to create credible alternative markets for critical minerals and the products they enable, it will need to match demand-side uncertainty as seriously as supply-side investment.

This is where political tension becomes unavoidable. The Declaration notably includes the United States and signals alignment between Washington and its G7 partners on critical mineral security, a departure from the America-first stance seen through the recent US Dominance Act (Developing overseas Mineral investments and New Allied Networks for Critical Energies, Bill HR 7037).

However, recent trade frictions, tariff disputes, and uncertainty over market access sit uneasily alongside the language of coordination, and critical analysts note the constrained role of the G7 today. It is difficult to build integrated supply chains while companies are also being asked to navigate sudden tariff exposure, shifting industrial policy incentives, and competing national approaches to economic security. Indeed, a key lesson of Chinese investment in critical minerals is that time and scale matter to make mining and processing investments predictable.

Moreover, the references to ‘market structuration’ in the Declaration require perhaps the most coordinated effort, but are also the most paradoxical. Market structuration requires not just increased supply, but heightened demand to match it, China has done so by becoming not just a major processor of critical minerals and manufacturer of electric vehicles, for example, but also by representing the largest market globally for EVs today. In order for the G7 to put in place a serious and coordinated effort to drive demand for critical mineral, and the end-products they make up, will require overcoming much of the tense, unpredictable trade standoffs that have made market access risk and uncertainty increasingly burdensome for downstream manufacturers.

The practical question, therefore, is how progress will be measured. It will need to be seen in projects reaching final investment decision, responsible offtake agreements being signed, new processing and recycling capacity coming online, traceability systems becoming interoperable, and environmental and social standards being embedded into financing and procurement decisions.

In short, the G7 has recognised the right problem: critical mineral supply chains cannot be made secure through existing procurement and tools like stockpiling alone. The test will be whether G7 governments can move from shared language to shared implementation while managing the trade tensions and industrial competition that currently undermine the very coordination they are trying to build.

TDi’s Perspective on the G7 Declaration

At TDi Sustainability, we see the G7 Declaration as a useful signal, but also as a reminder that supply chain security is ultimately built at project, supplier, and site level. Critical minerals strategies will only become credible when they are translated into bankable, long-term projects. For companies, investors and governments, the next phase is not simply about finding alternative sources of supply. It is about understanding where risks sit across the value chain, how those risks affect commercial resilience, and what systems are needed to manage them before they delay or block market access.

TDi works with actors across mineral value chains to assess sourcing risks, strengthen due diligence and assurance systems, and support responsible production and processing. As the G7 agenda moves from declaration to delivery, the test will be whether critical minerals partnerships can build supply chains that are not only diversified, but trusted, investable and demonstrably responsible.

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