G7 Sets a 60% Cap on Rare-Earth Reliance and Launches a Minerals Alliance to Counter China

The most concrete thing to come out of the 2026 G7 summit was not about Ukraine or Iran. It was about dirt — specifically, the rare-earth elements and permanent magnets that power everything from electric motors to guided missiles, and which China overwhelmingly controls. Meeting in Évian, France, on June 17, G7 leaders agreed that no single country should supply more than 60% of their rare-earth and magnet imports by 2030, with an aim to push that exposure toward 50% as soon as possible afterward.

It is the bloc’s most direct collective move yet against the one form of leverage where Beijing holds a commanding, and uncomfortable, advantage.

The commitment in detail

The 60% target was set out in a leaders’ statement issued at Évian. Alongside it, the G7 agreed to establish a new critical-minerals coordination platform — with a role for the International Energy Agency — plus pilot stockpiling mechanisms to cushion against sudden supply shocks. The idea is to move from each country fending for itself toward a coordinated Western response: shared stockpiles, shared intelligence, shared diversification.

Why now

The urgency is a number: China controls roughly 90% of global output of processed rare earths and magnets. That dominance turned into a weapon during export-control episodes in 2025 and 2026 that rattled Western manufacturers and defense planners. France, holding the G7 presidency, made countering Beijing’s “non-market practices” and the macroeconomic imbalances driven by its export surge an explicit summit priority.

When one country can throttle the inputs to your car industry and your weapons programs, supply-chain resilience stops being an abstraction.

The trade backdrop

The minerals cap sat within a broader trade agenda built on four pillars: industrial overcapacity, supply-chain resilience, modernizing the multilateral trade system, and safer cross-border e-commerce. France also invited partner countries — Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya and South Korea — into the Évian process, a recognition that no diversification away from China is possible without the resource-rich and processing-capable nations of the Global South.

The energy shock running alongside

The summit unfolded against a sudden easing in energy markets. A U.S.–Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — through which some 20 million barrels of oil pass each day — sent Brent crude briefly below $80 for the first time since March. Cheaper energy lightened the economic mood at Évian and, at the margin, made the leaders’ more confrontational stance on China easier to strike.

Can the target actually be met?

Here skepticism is warranted. Cutting reliance on a supplier that controls 90% of processed output to under 60% in four years is analytically daunting. Building rare-earth processing — the dirty, capital-intensive middle of the supply chain — takes years and runs into environmental permitting and economics that long favored China precisely because others didn’t want the trouble.

A numeric cap without enforcement teeth signals intent more than capability. Stockpiles and a coordination platform help, but the binding constraint is processing capacity that the West has spent decades outsourcing.

What to watch

The real measures of seriousness will be concrete: money for processing plants outside China, binding offtake agreements with partner nations, and whether the stockpiling pilots become permanent reserves. Évian set a target. Meeting it will require the G7 to do the unglamorous industrial work that the headline number, on its own, cannot.

Sources

1. Bloomberg — G7 aims to ensure China supplies no more than 60% of rare earths (June 17, 2026)
2. Mining.com / Reuters — G7 aims to see China supply no more than 60% of rare earths (June 2026)
3. U.S. News — G7 sets up critical-minerals alliance and crisis platform (June 17, 2026)
4. France Diplomatie — G7: Priorities for the Évian Summit