US President Donald Trump said the deal had been negotiated over the past four to five months.
Published October 20, 2025
US President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed an agreement on rare earths and critical minerals as China tightens its control over global supplies.
The two leaders signed the agreement at the White House on Monday.
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President Trump said the agreement was negotiated over four to five months. Trump said the two leaders will also discuss trade, submarines and military equipment.
Mr. Albanese described this as an $8.5 billion pipeline that is “ready to go.”
The two countries will each invest $1 billion in mining and processing projects over the next six months, according to a copy of the agreement provided by the prime minister’s office. It also sets minimum price floors for critical minerals, a measure long sought by Western miners.
China has the world’s largest reserves of rare earths, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey, but Australia also has significant reserves.
The two leaders were also scheduled to discuss a $239.4 billion deal agreed in 2023 under then US President Joe Biden for Australia to buy US nuclear submarines in 2032 before building a new class of submarines with Britain.
U.S. Navy Secretary John Phelan told the conference that the U.S. and Australia were working very closely to improve the original framework for all three parties and “clarify some of the ambiguities that were in the previous agreement.”
President Trump said these were “just little things.”
“I don’t need to explain any further, because we’re just working as hard as we can right now to build,” Trump said.
Australian officials said they were confident the review would proceed, and Defense Minister Richard Marles said last week that he knew when it would be completed.
China’s rare earth export regulations
Ahead of the two leaders’ summit on Monday, Australian officials highlighted Canberra’s commitment to funding under AUKUS, the trilateral military partnership between the US, Australia and the UK, to commit $2 billion this year to boost production rates at US submarine shipyards and prepare to maintain US Virginia-class submarines at Indian Ocean naval bases from 2027.
Trump’s official meeting has been delayed for 10 months since Trump took office, sparking unrest in Australia as the Pentagon asked Canberra to increase defense spending. The two leaders met briefly on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month.
Australia intends to sell stakes in planned strategic reserves of critical minerals to allies including the UK, as Western governments scramble to end their dependence on China for rare earths and minor metals.
U.S. officials last week denounced China’s expansion of rare earth export restrictions as a threat to global supply chains. China is the world’s largest producer of materials essential to products ranging from electric cars to aircraft engines to military radars.
Resource-rich Australia wants to extract and process rare earths, and prioritized access to strategic reserves was on the table during U.S. trade negotiations in April.
