Canada and Japan are considering cooperation in critical mineral projects and a potential plan of joint stockpiling of key metals as the two G7 economies look to reduce China’s outsized dominance in the market, Canada’s Minister of International Trade, Maninder Sidhu, told Reuters in an interview published on Friday.
“We’re offering Japan that avenue to do more with Canada in terms of critical minerals,” said Sidhu, who led a Canadian delegation on a visit to Japan. Japanese and Canadian companies signed more than C$1 billion, or US$705 million, in commercial deals during the visit, Sidhu said.
The minister also discussed a potential expansion of the partnership with Mitsubishi, which is a major investor in Canada’s first LNG export project, LNG Canada Phase 1.
“We talked about expanding that partnership even further to enable more energy exports to Japan,” the Canadian minister said.
The closer cooperation in energy and critical minerals between Canada and Japan follows the major strategic alliance on key metals the G7 leaders struck last week.
The leaders of the G7 set up a strategic alliance on critical minerals in a coordinated effort to break China’s oversized control of the metals and minerals and rare earth elements crucial to the defense, automotive, and clean energy industries.
At the G7 summit in Evian, France, the leaders of G7 issued a declaration in which the nations committed “to coordinating efforts within the G7 and with partner countries to establish and develop the necessary processing and industrial capacities for diversification of our critical minerals value chains.”
Without explicitly mentioning China, the declaration stated the urgency of diversifying critical minerals supply from the current high degree of concentration. It also expressed concerns about “the use of non-market policies and practices and economic coercion, including arbitrary export restrictions and retaliatory measures on critical minerals and their related dual-use items, all of which undermine economic security and resilience.”
By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com
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