Comment on the Design of a Plurilateral Agreement on Trade in Critical Minerals

Today, I filed a comment to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Docket No. USTR-2026-0034, to suggest a Critical Minerals Pricing Compact (“Compact”) comprising four pillars: price controls, anti-dumping levies, rules-of-origin requirements, and a phase-out.

VIA ELECTRONIC FILING

OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES TRADE REPRESENTATIVE

600 17th Street NW

Washington, DC 20508

Re: Request for Comments on the Design of a Plurilateral Agreement on Trade in Critical Minerals and Policy Actions to Strengthen the Resilience of Critical Mineral Supply Chains; USTR Docket No. USTR-2026-0034

Dear Mr. Goettman,

On behalf of the Bull Moose Project, I respectfully submit these comments in response to USTR’s request for comment on the design of a plurilateral agreement on trade in critical minerals.[1] The Bull Moose Project is dedicated to reindustrializing the United States, and mining is a crucial component of such work. As such, we propose a framework to establish a resilient, market-based ecosystem for critical minerals among allied trading partners.

This comment is submitted following Proclamation 11001, in which the President concurred with the Secretary of Commerce’s finding that processed critical minerals and their derivative products are imported in quantities threatening U.S. national security, directing negotiation of agreements under Section 232 authorities.[2] The key problem is that China remains the leading refiner of 19 of 20 strategic minerals, holding an average of 70% of global market share.[3] In 2024 alone, China controlled over 90% of gallium and magnesium production, approximately 80% of natural graphite, and roughly 70% of rare earth mining.[4] This dominance enables predatory pricing that has suppressed global prices, deterred domestic investment, and prevented U.S. projects from reaching viability. Since 2022, lithium prices have fallen by over 80%, while cobalt, nickel, and graphite declined by 10–20%. Due to persistently low prices, global investment growth slowed from 14% to just 5%.[5]

The Bull Moose Project proposes a Critical Minerals Pricing Compact (“Compact”) comprising four pillars: price controls, anti-dumping levies, rules-of-origin requirements, and a phase-out. First, the Compact establishes administered price floors for critical minerals supported by strategic reserve purchases from qualified producers. Second, it imposes variable anti-dumping levies on non-market-economy imports to both prevent undercutting and finance the Compact’s reserve purchases. Third, it implements beneficial ownership screening and rules-of-origin requirements. Lastly, the Compact has a capacity-linked phase-out that reduces administered pricing as allied capacity reaches self-sustaining levels.

Compact Overview

To ensure minimum prices with appropriate border measures, we recommend a mechanism in which anti-dumping duties finance the purchase of critical minerals at established floor prices.[6] The adversary’s non-market pricing effectively subsidizes the purchases of critical minerals at the floor rates, without requiring legislative appropriations from Compact member governments. The levy should be calibrated so the total landed cost of such imports always exceeds the floor price by 15–20%. The rough formula can be along the lines of the following: Levy = (Floor Price × 1.175) − Landed Import Price. The revenue can be deposited into a jointly administered Compact Reserve Fund dedicated to purchasing qualifying minerals at floor prices. This not only creates a guaranteed demand signal, but it also compresses Chinese margins by excluding them from profitable allied markets.

For the minerals covered by the Compact, we recommend focusing on those where China controls most of the refining capacity and has deployed export controls as a coercive measure. These include, but are not limited to, rare earth elements, gallium, germanium, and antimony. These minerals should receive the most aggressive floor pricing and the highest levy margins. Below, we can focus on other minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite, where refining is concentrated, but mining is more distributed. The focus for these minerals is more on enforcing origin requirements, though they would still be covered by floor pricing.

Pricing and anti-dumping duties should be established by a technical working group of Compact members to determine initial reference prices for each priority mineral, drawing on methodologies comparable to those used in agricultural price-support programs and defense procurement cost-plus contracting. Specifically, this working group should establish mineral-specific reference prices calculated as the weighted average cost of production among Compact members, including extraction costs, processing expenses, environmental and labor compliance costs, and a risk-adjusted capital return margin sufficient to incentivize new investment. These prices should be recalibrated quarterly using audited cost data submitted by Compact-qualified producers to prevent undercutting and economic inefficiencies.

To ensure compliance, favorable pricing should be available only to qualified producers, as determined by the following criteria. First, they must be domiciled and have principal operations within any Compact member state (though they can have operations in several member states). They must also comply with minimum labor standards, including prohibitions on forced labor. Labor standards should be set at a minimum threshold, rather than aspirational levels that would needlessly exclude essential producers in resource-rich developing nations, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chile, or Argentina, from the Compact. Thirdly, they must demonstrate that they are independent of control by an adversary nation, as defined by the beneficial ownership threshold described later.

Qualifications

In terms of qualifications, these are intended to prevent Chinese firms from using third countries to bypass the Compact’s mechanism, given their previous tactic of using third countries to evade tariffs. To ensure only eligible companies receive the floor price, we have a three-layer approach.

The first layer is that any entity with more than 10% direct or indirect ownership by entities domiciled or subject to the jurisdiction of an adversary nation cannot receive the floor price. This threshold should apply on a look-through basis, aggregating ownership across related persons and affiliated entities. The second layer should be mineral-specific rules of origin, under which at least 60% of the value is added within Compact member jurisdictions, from mining through refining. This layer should also cover derivative products, namely permanent magnets, battery cathodes, and semiconductor-grade materials, with a standing mechanism to add new products as circumvention patterns emerge. Lastly, Compact member firms should be prohibited from licensing proprietary processing or refining technology to entities in non-member adversary nations. Together, these three layers require all Compact members to maintain robust compliance operations to prevent non-member countries from circumventing these regulations. If a single member does not meet these compliance standards, the Compact can fail in its purpose.

Given the geography of these minerals, we encourage the USTR to leverage the State Department's work through Pax Silica on who should be part of the Compact. We recommend prioritizing Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the European Union as core members, given aligned national security interests, existing critical minerals cooperation agreements, established financial and regulatory infrastructure, and significant existing or prospective mining and refining capacity.[7] We also recommend adding countries with significant mineral deposits or processing capacity to ensure a robust supply chain. Potential candidates can include the Republic of Korea, India, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, the Philippines, and South Africa.

We should note that some countries, despite having significant mineral deposits, lack the regulatory or political infrastructure to qualify for membership. The Compact should include a membership pathway for these countries to develop their regulatory and mining capabilities, in exchange for technical and financial assistance, thereby enabling them to become members. This ensures the Compact is perceived as an open framework for responsible producers rather than a closed club of wealthy nations, allowing more nations to start restricting Chinese investment in their mining industries.

International Tin Agreement

In the comment request, you state more information on how the International Tin Agreement (“ITA”), which operated from 1956 to 1985, could inform the design of a future initiative.[8] The ITA collapsed after the International Tin Council borrowed over £900 million to defend the set price. What caused its collapse were three factors. The first was that tin prices were six times their initial 1956 baseline by the mid-1980s, despite declining tin demand due to packaging substitutions, leaving them disconnected from market fundamentals. The second factor was dependence on open-market buffer-stock purchases, which led to the accumulation of unsustainable financial liabilities. Lastly, the council could not control supplies from non-member countries, which undermined its market interventions by allowing them to flood the market and causing the ITA to collapse.

What we propose accounts for the ITA's failures by using audited, quarterly-updated production cost data rather than aspirational targets to ground reference prices in economic reality. Secondly, financing the floor prices occurs through anti-dumping duties rather than open-market buffer-stock operations, ensuring that countries do not have to appropriate cash or borrow capital to defend the floor. The variable levy system addresses the problem of non-member supply by ensuring imports from outside the Compact cannot sell at the established floor price. Granted, this system would work so long as members agree on and ensure robust enforcement; this Compact builds upon the lessons learned from the ITA.

Lastly, the Compact’s phase-out mechanism ensures that prices will not remain artificially elevated but will instead serve as a provisional demand signal for mining companies to scale to be globally competitive. Specifically, the floor price will gradually decrease as refining capacity increases until it matches a certain threshold, at which point the floor price can be eliminated. The Compact’s governing body should publish annual capacity assessments, with safeguard provisions that allow temporary restoration of floor pricing if market manipulation by an adversary nation threatens to reverse capacity gains.

WTO Mechanism

One concern that wasn’t explicitly mentioned but should be addressed is potential WTO objections to the Compact. While WTO disciplinary measures have diminished due to the Appellate Body's ineffectiveness, we still want to minimize U.S. litigation exposure and strengthen the Compact’s legitimacy with prospective members. The Compact’s primary legal basis is GATT Article XXI(b)(iii), permitting measures a member considers necessary for essential security interests in a time of emergency in international relations.[9] Given the current geopolitical situation involving Russia and China, there is a strong case for these measures. Additionally, the WTO panel in Russia – Traffic in Transit confirmed Article XXI permits derogation when an emergency can be objectively observed, with substantial deference to the invoking member. China’s weaponization of critical mineral export controls since 2023, combined with its 70% concentration in refining, provides a stronger factual basis than the steel and aluminum cases, where WTO panels found violations, but the U.S. declined to comply.[10]

Domestically, Section 232(c)(3)(A)(i) provides explicit authority for negotiating agreements to address import-related national security threats.[11] The Compact’s design is also consistent with GATT Article XX(g) on conservation of exhaustible natural resources, and to the extent the variable levy responds to below-cost pricing, WTO anti-dumping provisions offer an independent legal basis.[12] Lastly, the Compact’s plurilateral structure reduces political exposure compared with unilateral tariffs, as allied coordination signals collective security objectives rather than disguised protectionism.

In conclusion, the Critical Minerals Pricing Compact offers a self-financing, legally defensible framework that addresses the central market failure identified by the administration earlier this year.[13] By tying administered prices to genuine production costs, financing the system through levies on the imports it displaces, and building in capacity-linked phase-outs, the Compact avoids the historical pitfalls of administered commodity pricing while creating the demand signal necessary to catalyze private investment at scale.

We are ready to provide additional analysis and briefing to USTR on any aspect of this proposal, including mineral-specific price modeling and strategic assessments of prospective Compact member capacities. We welcome the opportunity to engage further as the Administration advances its critical minerals strategy.

Respectfully submitted,

Heberto A. Limas-Villers, Policy Fellow

Bull Moose Project

Washington, D.C.

March 13, 2026

[1]USTR, Request for Comments on the Design of a Plurilateral Agreement on Trade in Critical Minerals, Docket No. USTR-2026-0034, 91 Fed. Reg. (Feb. 26, 2026).

[2]Proclamation No. 11001, 91 Fed. Reg. 2439 (Jan. 20, 2026) & Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, 19 U.S.C. § 1862.

[3]IEA, Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 (June 2025).

[4]USGS, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025.

[5]IEA, Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025.

[6]Exec. Order 14272 (Apr. 15, 2025); Proclamation 11001 at § 4 (directing consideration of price floors and trade-restricting measures).

[7]U.S.–Japan Framework for Securing the Supply of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, signed Oct. 28, 2025.

[8]Int’l Tin Agreement, Mar. 1, 1954, 256 UNTS 31. See McFadden, “The Collapse of Tin,” 80 Am. J. Int’l L. 811 (1986); Prest, “The Collapse of the International Tin Agreement,” IDS Bulletin 17(4): 1–8 (1986).

[9]GATT Art. XXI(b)(iii). See WTO Panel Report, Russia – Traffic in Transit, WT/DS512/R (Apr. 5, 2019).

[10]See WTO Panel Reports, US – Steel and Aluminum Products, WT/DS552/R et al. (Dec. 9, 2022). The U.S. has asserted Art. XXI non-justiciability.

[11]19 U.S.C. § 1862(c)(3)(A)(i).

[12]GATT Art. XX(g) (conservation of exhaustible natural resources).

[13]White & Case, “President Trump Orders Critical Minerals Trade Negotiations” (Jan. 2026). The administration proposed price floors for rare earths at the G7 finance ministers meeting on Jan. 12, 2026.