Rubio Announces Expanding Of Quad Cooperation On Minerals And Maritime Security With Eye On China

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]I now invite Secretary of State of the United States of America for his remarks to the media. So, the floor is yours.

[00:00:07]Thank you. Let me begin by thanking India for hosting us. We appreciate it very much to Ministers Jaishankar, Wong, and and Motegi. Thank you for this very productive discussion and the work that our teams have been doing leading up to this as we continue to build out this partnership into something that is a partnership of action. I'll talk about that more in a moment. Let me first point out that on the stage today is represented countries that collectively are about a third of the world's GDP.

[00:00:35]Over an almost 2 billion people. And not these aren't just countries that have economic reach. A third of the world's GDP, 2 billion people. They are countries who share strong values, strong vibrant democracies, who also are committed to many of the same concepts with regards to economic development, and and have many aligned interests in those fields as well.

[00:00:58]And so, the goal is to turn the Quad and and and 16 months ago before we came secretary when I became secretary of state and we began our conversations, we all agreed that we wanted this gathering, this partnership to be more than just a place where we got together every now and then and discuss the problems of the world that we held in common, but a place of action, a forum of action where we can begin to turn our collective interests into action to the benefit of the people of our countries, but ultimately to the benefit of many other countries who around the world who would benefit from some of the things we're working on today. And I'm very happy today that as a result of the work that our teams have been doing leading up to this conversation today and our conversations today, we have real concrete achievables that we can announce to our respective countries and to the world. On the issue of maritime security, there are two big announcements. The first is the the launch of the Indo-Pacific maritime surveillance corporation initiative, which is going to leverage each of our countries' maritime surveillance capabilities in the Indo-Pacific to enhance information sharing. Related to that is also the expansion of the Indo-Pacific maritime domain awareness initiative, which provides and can provide near real-time commercial maritime domain awareness data to countries throughout the throughout the Indo-Pacific.

[00:02:17]And uh and last, I also want to thank India for committing to hosting the next iteration of the uh Quad at Sea mission, which brings together our respective coast guards together in one place on one ship. And and the reason why maritime security is so important, beyond the fact that uh current events remind us of what can happen when maritime security is impeded, is the fact that 60% 60% of global maritime trade passes through the Indo-Pacific. And it's a vital national interest not just to the four countries represented here today, but to dozens and dozens of countries, countless countries around the world.

[00:02:54]The second initiative is an exciting one, and that is that we're going to be partnering on issues of port infrastructure.

[00:02:59]Uh in particular, in response to insufficient port capacity in the Pacific Islands, we're announcing plans to work with Fiji to advance that country's port infrastructure. It'll be the first time that uh that the Quad partners work together on a project on a port infrastructure project. We believe it'll be very successful and that it will serve as a model for other projects in the future.

[00:03:22]The third topic, which we hear a lot about these days uh that we'll have some deliverables on today, is the issue of critical minerals. We'll announce the the Quad critical minerals framework, which will guide each of us uh to leverage economic policy tools and coordinate investment uh to strengthen critical mineral supply chains, including in mining and processing and in critical minerals recycling.

[00:03:46]Uh finally, on energy and fuel security, uh we'll be announcing the Quad initiative on Indo-Pacific energy security that will help uh strengthen regional energy resilience and through this initiative the partners will work to identify areas of cooperation in technology and management and policy and international market analysis we want we'll be releasing a standalone statement on this initiative and the Department of Energy from the United States will be hosting Quad partners later this year for a fuel security forum to further expand on this. So we are beginning to show real achievements and real accomplishments.

[00:04:27]We are deeply committed to this partnership. It is a Lynchpin and a Cornerstone of our global strategy as a nation in the United States. That's why we're so happy to be here today and that's why we're excited about the initiatives that we're announcing and we're even more excited about the initiatives we're going to be working together as these take life and new opportunities present themselves and I want to thank all of you all three of you for being here. I want to thank you for hosting us Minister Jay Shankar and I want to thank India by the way for being a tremendous host. We've been here now for 4 days and it's been a phenomenal visit. So thank you as well for everything you've done to extend such a welcome and allowing us to meet with so many people and and and just as importantly to be you're hosting this event. Thank you.

[00:05:08]Thank you sir.

[00:05:10]With that ladies and gentlemen we come to the close of this session.

[00:05:13]We thank the ministers for their participation and all of you for your presence. Thank you.

[00:05:20]all of you all three of you for being here. I want to thank you for hosting us Minister