This paper examines the trade dimensions of the policy instruments employed by the United States to secure critical minerals supply chains. Drawing on policy statements, executive orders, tariff schedules, and six bilateral critical minerals agreements announced in 2025, it assesses how US trade policy has been repurposed to advance supply-chain security objectives. The paper finds that recent US initiatives reflect bipartisan trends in reconfiguring trade policy that predate the Trump administration, even as they introduce new and consequential trade coordination mechanisms that operate outside the World Trade Organization and beyond conventional free trade agreements. Specifically, US critical minerals security strategy now relies on a differentiated set of sector-specific arrangements that combine familiar elements of US international economic engagement with more novel features that increasingly utilize trade policy instruments. What distinguishes these six minerals deals is their systematic coupling with parallel reciprocal trade negotiations, their incorporation of an explicitly ‘America First’ approach to reciprocity, the absence of a clear ideological hierarchy among partner countries, an emphasis on domestic processing and industrialization, and the growing use of exclusion mechanisms targeting third-party actors. The recurrence of these novel elements across diverse minerals deals suggests deliberate design rather than ad hoc experimentation that may have durable restructuring effects across global mineral supply chains. The paper concludes by outlining implications for US policy makers, for partner countries—particularly mineral-producing low- and middle-income economies—and for the architecture of the global trading system.
