U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Thursday that the administration is preparing the text of a plurilateral trade agreement meant to create a market for critical minerals among a limited set of trading partners. The proposal, Greer told a congressional budget hearing, would combine market-based pricing among participants with a price floor for any country outside the pact that seeks to trade with member nations.
According to Greer, the intent of the arrangement is to guard against prior episodes in which China supplied large volumes of critical minerals to the U.S. market at low prices. "We want to create an agreement where among the parties to the agreement we have a market in critical minerals among us, and we would trade at market-based prices," Greer said. He added that countries not party to the agreement would need to trade "at a certain level" if they wished to access member markets.
Greer said officials are in the drafting phase for the plurilateral text but did not identify which nations would be invited to join. He characterized the initiative as involving a "select group" of trading partners, leaving membership and the final contours of the pact unspecified at this stage.
The planned mechanism would establish two distinct trading rules: market-based prices applied within the group of participants, and a minimum price requirement for external countries wanting to transact with members. The USTR framed the price floor as a tool to prevent what he described as dumping that had previously affected the U.S. market for critical minerals.
Officials have so far limited public detail to the broad structure and objectives of the pact. Greer’s testimony to Congress indicates the initiative remains in the drafting phase, with key elements - including the identity of potential partners and the operational details of the price floor - not yet disclosed.
As the administration continues to draft the agreement text, questions remain about the pact’s membership and the specific mechanisms that will enforce pricing rules for non-members. For now, Greer’s statements provide the primary public accounting of the proposal: a plurilateral critical minerals market among a select group of countries, market-based pricing within that group, and a price floor applied to outside traders aimed at addressing prior instances of low-priced imports into the U.S. market.