ExIm Explores Critical Minerals Finance

EXIM has prioritized critical minerals that are part of the supply chain for transformational export areas and clearly align to the capacity to produce and foreign demand for U.S. goods and services in transformational export area industries.

To understand how EXIM financing can better support U.S. exporters in this sector, diversify supply chains, and ensure access to critical minerals by U.S. users, EXIM is seeking public comment on the financing gaps stakeholders face.

EXIM has identified specific questions for specific stakeholders but welcomes feedback from all relevant stakeholders not specifically identified here.

(A) For U.S. exporters to critical minerals projects:

(1) What part of the supply chain do you supply ( e.g., mining, refining, or processing)?

(2) What goods and services do you provide to such projects ( e.g., services, capital equipment, intermediate components, consumables)?

(3) What are the financing challenges, if any, that prevent securing sales with foreign buyers?

(4) Are you aware of or facing competition backed by foreign government financing?

(5) If so, please identify the competition and the type of foreign government financing provided.

(6) Have you previously used financing tools from the Export-Import Bank of the United States?

(7) If you have not utilized EXIM financing, please explain why not ( e.g., no need, fees too high, could not meet policy criteria such as content).

(B) For U.S.-based users of critical minerals:

(1) Which critical minerals are most important to your operations?

(2) In what geographies are you most likely to seek access to those minerals?

(3) Is there now or expected to be in the future competitive U.S.-based sources of those minerals?

(4) What financial hurdles are there to obtaining critical minerals? Please distinguish between short-term hurdles (such as insufficient access to working capital to import specific cargos) and longer-term (such as requirements of foreign projects for large down payments in exchange for long-term supply contracts).

(5) What impact does lack of access to critical minerals have on your operations, particularly regarding employment and exports?

(6) To what extent are you aware of foreign competitors gaining access to critical minerals resources via foreign government support (such as lending to a foreign mine conditional on selling output to a particular company)?

(7) What form does such support take?

EXIM encourages respondents, when addressing the points above, unless raising other challenges to financing critical minerals transactions, to identify which point they are responding to by using the same numbers and heading as set forth above. For example, a user of critical minerals submitting comments responsive to (4), “What financial hurdles are there to obtaining critical minerals”, would use that same text as a heading followed by the respondent's specific comments responding to it. This formatting will assist EXIM in more easily reviewing and summarizing the comments received in response to these specific points of inquiry.