Leveraging U.S.-Japan-ROK Trilateralism for Critical Mineral Policy Cooperation

“Economic security is national security, and national security is economic security.” This was hailed as the consensus among participants at the December 2025 Pax Silica Summit, the flagship minilateral framework the Trump administration has established to strengthen supply chains around critical minerals and advanced technologies towards the goal of winning the AI race. The 2025 National Security Strategy, U.S.-Ukraine critical minerals deal, and Trump’s interest in the natural resources of Greenland reflect Washington’s increasing focus on critical minerals as part of a strategy to counter Chinese economic coercion. According to a 2025 Congressional report, China has used state-backed investment and a manipulative legal framework to artificially deflate the price of rare earths for decades. Over recent years, however, China has doubled down on its market control, such as by lowering the market price for several key rare earth minerals by more than 60 percent. To address China’s trade weaponization, Washington should advance trilateral coordination on critical mineral policy with Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK). 

As U.S. allies facing shared challenges, Japan and the ROK are uniquely positioned to support the United States as they continue to deepen their bilateral ties with each other and demonstrate leadership on critical minerals policy. Beijing has routinely employed export controls against Tokyo and Seoul. This has led Japan and the ROK to devise countermeasures and upgrade their bilateral cooperation, as highlighted at the September 2025 Economic Security Dialogue and the historic bilateral summits in Nara and most recently in Andong, where they expanded their cooperation to energy security, particularly in LNG, in line with their Supply Chain Partnership Arrangement. Simultaneously, both are also deepening their engagement with Washington. Japan has put critical minerals centerstage with bilateral initiatives, such as the U.S.-Japan Framework for securing critical minerals, an MOU on deep sea mineral mining, and the U.S.-Japan Action Plan on Critical Minerals, and prioritized the sector in its $550 billion strategic investment framework. South Korea also plans to invest $350 billion in the United States, which includes a $7.4 billion commitment towards critical minerals and upstream processing capacity by Korea Zinc, one of the world’s largest metal processing firms. In parallel, the Korean government is pursuing the National Critical Minerals Strategy (2023) and most recently finalized the critical minerals framework with the United States. 

The United States, Japan, and the ROK can leverage their trilateral partnership to counter Chinese coercive statecraft and build consensus in minilateral forums. Since the Camp David Summit in August 2023, there have been sustained efforts at institutionalizing the trilateral partnership despite leadership changes in all three capitals. In 2025 alone, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended five summits with his Japanese and Korean counterparts and continued to enhance trilateral dialogue through initiatives such as the Trilateral Early Warning System that promote cooperation on critical minerals in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Victor Cha, Ellen Kim, and Andy Lim argue that countries that are highly dependent on China such as Japan and Korea can push back together by pursuing a deterrent strategy of collective resilience, leveraging Beijing’s own vulnerabilities in high‑dependence, low‑substitutability goods to impose targeted and credible costs. In fact, Seoul and Tokyo are already playing active roles as signatories in Pax Silica, with the ROK chairing the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE) as announced at the 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial. Japan has also authored the preamble to Pax Silica and co-hosted the Indo-Pacific Energy Security Ministerial and Business Forum in Tokyo that led to over $56 billion in investment projects including critical minerals and supply chain resilience. These initiatives speak to Japanese and Korean leadership and potential to help Washington realize its policy objectives of reorienting critical mineral supply chains.  

The United States, Japan, and ROK can capitalize on their complementary strengths to create joint leverage vis-à-vis China in targeted industries. One illustrative example is the process for securing minerals and production capabilities for battery technology, specifically the potential to formalize mechanisms for midstream coordination and division of labor. The United States can offer advantages in the downstream electric vehicle market, as exemplified by Tesla and LG’s recent partnership on battery supply chains. Japan has an edge in cathode precursor materials, separators, and electrolyte additives and can focus on purification and advanced grades of batteries. South Korea specializes in battery manufacturing, midstream scaling, and cathode and anode integration. Taken together, the three countries can create trilateral working groups on lithium supply chains and institutionalize the Trilateral Economic Security Dialogue (2023). This mechanism could also utilize a Japanese financing model for facilitating public-private partnerships (PPPs) among relevant agencies for foreign affairs, commerce, energy, and technology across the three governments to build out “trilateral assembly chains.”  

Leveraging the U.S.-Japan-ROK trilateral partnership can serve to synthesize their respective economic security strategies, critical minerals policies, and industry supply chains. A tailored minilateral framework among the three countries will enhance their capacity to counter Chinese economic coercion and their competitiveness in a rapidly evolving economic environment driven by the proliferation of emerging technologies.