Trump Assembles Seemingly Motley Crew Of Allies To Stop China From Becoming World’s #1 Power

President Donald Trump is assembling a coalition of US allies across the globe to challenge China’s dominance over rare earth minerals and technology.

Singapore, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, the UK and Israel are among a band of nations working with the U.S. under the “Pax Silica” agreement signed Friday to challenge China’s near-total grip on rare earth mineral processing and extraction. The agreement aims to secure the supply chain for rare earths essential in the fabrication of advanced computer chips that are utilized in a wide range of applications from AI systems to America’s arsenal of weapons.

The coalition brings together a seemingly scattered band of U.S.-aligned nations from across the globe, including many long-time allies like Japan and Australia alongside relatively new partners such as the UAE.

“The United States is organizing a coalition of countries around the principle of building a secure, resilient, and innovation-driven ecosystem across the entire global technology supply chain — from critical minerals and energy inputs to advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, AI infrastructure, and logistics,” the State Department wrote in a statement outlining the agreement.

While the U.S. has a plethora of rare earth deposits, the ability to use them in applications like computer chips is heavily dependent on refinement capability. Currently, China holds nearly all of the world’s capacity for rare earth refinement.

The U.S. has made multiple moves to rectify the disparity, such as the Pentagon purchasing a majority stake in MP Minerals, which