USTR Floats “Price Mechanisms” Plurilateral for Critical Minerals

The Office of the United States Trade Representative is soliciting public comment on the design of a legally binding plurilateral agreement on trade in critical minerals and related policy actions intended to strengthen supply-chain resilience for minerals and downstream industries viewed as strategically essential.  The notice is notable less for its diagnosis—U.S. dependence on foreign sources and vulnerability to non-market distortions—than for the remedy it puts on the table: minimum prices or other price mechanisms, paired with border measures, to create “secure and fairly-priced markets” among participating countries and thereby induce market-based investment in mining, processing, and refining.