How Does India Benefit From The Bilateral Agreem On Critical Minerals With The US? | Explained

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Uh we are today signing a uh bilateral India US framework on securing of supply of mining and processing of critical minerals and rare earths.

[00:00:11]>> The US and India recently signed a bilateral agreement on mining and processing of critical minerals and rare earths. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and SJI Shankar the Minister of External Affairs of India signed the deal on the sidelines of the Quad gathering in New Delhi. The agreement touches upon the entire critical minerals and rare earth supply chain including mining, processing, recycling and related investments.

[00:00:39]>> Not everybody has the ability to process rare earths. Uh so that has become a huge challenge because uh not many countries have uh put resources into into processing and extraction of uh some of these rare earth resources and as we advance and focus more on uh new technologies uh the the demand for critical minerals is only going to rise.

[00:01:04]So how do you ensure that for example all of you are using smartphones. So smart the amount of critical minerals that could get into a smartphone is something that we need to think about.

[00:01:15]So as your automoils are are becoming extremely smart. The the if you look at an an average automo today the dashboards are completely digital all of them require rare earths. So as we keep growing and the societies and technology becomes more smarter uh and in a country of large as large as India you need access to uh critical minerals. So you are looking at the entire value chain of the critical minerals including recycling because end of the day uh if you have the technology to extract critical minerals out of uh uh uh electronics that have been used but are going to be anyway disposed of. So that will be a huge gamecher and it is this area wherein we think that uh India can come together.

[00:02:05]>> Amid ongoing conflict the US and India have signed such a deal because China accounts for 70% of global rare earth mining. Roughly 90% of global rare earth's processing is in China. So my gut feeling is that America and India truly are working as natural partners.

[00:02:26]We complement each other. what America can offer in terms of technology innovation in terms of uh high precision defense, digital data centers, quantum computing equipment of very high caliber in the medical devices sector. All of these are areas where we do need to work closely with America.

[00:02:55]Likewise, America is looking for a trusted partner, certainly somebody who doesn't steal your IP.

[00:03:04]And I think India has proven track record over decades of truly working as a country as a set of businesses here who respect the intellectual property of uh foreign companies who can be trusted to deliver high quality on time. Before signing this deal with India, US President Donald Trump visited China to meet President Xi Jinping. America even tried to extract the supply of critical minerals from Pakistan. But now the deal is signed with India.

[00:03:42]>> Why the US is talking to these 55 nations is to ensure a smooth, resilient and trusted supply chain. There are some nations who are causing obstructions to existing supply chains. We want to invite investments in mining, refining, processing, recycling so that essential industries like security, energy and defense can acquire critical minerals.

[00:04:07]>> Friends, India and the US share a very very strong powerful partnership.

[00:04:14]We are both friends. We are both consequential and important trading partners. We are both democracies.

[00:04:26]India the mother of all democracies. The largest democracy.

[00:04:32]The US the oldest democracy since we had landed up with colonial rule.

[00:04:41]We have a strategic partnership on critical minerals. We are working together on new technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, machine learning.

[00:04:55]We are co-designing and co-producing technologies of the future.

[00:05:01]We have finalized an interim phase one of a bilateral trade agreement while with which India will get preferential access compared to our competitors to the large nearly $30 trillion US market.