President Donald Trump announced Monday a $12 billion strategic mineral reserve to combat China’s domination of critical mineral supply chains, a major step toward tackling China’s advantage in a crucial sector of the U.S. economy.
Trump said the reserve, known as Project Vault, will combine $10 billion of Export-Import Bank financing and $2 billion of private sector financing. He expects the structure of the loan to bring in a profit for the U.S. taxpayer while ensuring that companies will not have to worry about the possibility of shortages of critical minerals.
“For years, American businesses have risked running out of critical minerals during market disruptions,” Trump said. “Just as we have long had a strategic petroleum reserve and a stockpile of critical minerals for national defense, we are now creating this reserve for American industry,” Trump said from the Oval Office, with cabinet officials surrounding him.
Bloomberg first reported on the creation of Project Vault Monday morning. Stock prices of U.S. rare earth mineral companies jumped upon the pending announcement of a critical mineral reserve.
“We are taking back critical minerals. We are taking back mining. We’re taking back the auto industry. You’re gonna watch us take back pharmaceuticals. We’re gonna take back semiconductors,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said.
The Export-Import Bank said its $10 billion loan is meant to provide long-term financing for a partnership between many equipment manufacturers and private capital providers.
“Project Vault is designed to support domestic manufacturers from supply shocks, support U.S. production and processing of critical raw materials, and strength America’s critical minerals sector,” said Export-Import Bank chairman John Jovanovic. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve will help manufacturers in the United States compete, grow, and lead globally while creating jobs domestically, strengthening our economy, and advancing the national interest.”
Top executives in the relevant sectors also welcomed the announcement of Project Vault, because it aligns the private sector with U.S. national security imperatives and it promotes domestic manufacturing.
The creation of a critical mineral reserve is one of several recommendations from a report that the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released last year detailing China’s decades-long strategy to gain control of the world’s critical mineral supply chains. In October 2025, China flexed its muscles by enacting new export restrictions on critical minerals and rare earth materials, a move that shocked global markets and made clear China’s willingness to use its economic power for geopolitical purposes.
House China Committee Chairman John Moolenaar (R., Mich.) has sounded the alarm about those restrictions and likened them to the moment when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite during the Cold War.
“President Trump and his administration are leading on critical minerals and building a stockpile that will counter China and secure the future of American manufacturing,” Moolenaar said Monday.
“China’s attempt to cut off our supplies of critical minerals was a declaration of economic war against the United States and a threat to supply chains around the world. Project Vault will protect our economy from China’s mineral manipulation, create jobs, and send a signal to American miners and our allies that there is a demand for their product.”
Creating a strategic mineral reserve will ensure that U.S. companies are more prepared the next time China enacts export restrictions in a moment of heightened geopolitical tension. A meeting in late October between Trump and Chinese ruler Xi Jinping prompted the Chinese government to relax some of the new restrictions as the world’s two largest economies sought to lower the temperature.
Project Vault is not the Trump administration’s only attempt to use the government to promote critical mineral production. Last month, the Trump administration invested $1.6 billion in USA Rare Earth, a company that controls rare earth deposits used in national defense.
It was not the first time that the Trump administration has poured taxpayer dollars into a private company to bolster its mineral processing and magnet manufacturing. Those investments reflect the Trump administration’s willingness to get the government involved in the private sector in order to promote industries it prioritizes, an outlook that takes a page out of China’s playbook.