Deal with Australia: The U.S. sets a long-term plan to replace China-sourced critical minerals by expanding processing capacity

On October 20, 2025, Donald Trump signed an agreement with Anthony Albanese during the Australian Prime Minister's visit to the White House, which is called "the most significant bilateral cooperation in the field of mineral extraction."

Under the agreement, the US and Australia will invest over $1 billion each over the next 6 months in initial projects, and the US will finance the construction of a plant for the production and processing of gallium, whose supplies the PRC has banned to the US, in Western Australia.

The agreement between the US and Australia demonstrates how Washington is changing the strategic logic of confrontation with China: containing Beijing is being replaced by its systemic substitution, forming a parallel infrastructure for processing and refining critical minerals that detaches the global economy from the Chinese technological core.