G7 leaders signed a critical minerals declaration at Évian-les-Bains on June 17 that puts a number on what had been a slogan. The signatories commit to “significantly reduce our dependencies on a single supplier outside the G7 and partner countries for rare earths and permanent magnets to under 60 per cent by 2030 and continuing to decrease further over time, with an ambition to reach 50 per cent as soon as possible” [Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, June 17, 2026]. For other critical minerals, ministers are tasked with setting specific targets by the end of 2026. Australia signed as a partner country.

The 60 percent figure is the first quantitative ceiling the G7 has put on rare earth source concentration. Bloomberg, in pre-release reporting, framed it as a defense-led mandate likely to require quotas in at least some industrial sectors to actually deliver [Bloomberg via Mining.com, June 17, 2026]. The 2025 International Energy Agency global critical minerals review, cited in the same Bloomberg piece, found China controls roughly 70 percent of refining for the majority of critical minerals, 85 percent of processed cobalt and 99 percent of primary gallium [Mining.com / Bloomberg, June 17, 2026]. Closing the gap between current concentration and the 60 percent ceiling by 2030 with offtake, processing, and recycling capacity that does not yet exist is what the declaration is asking the alliance to deliver.

The mechanism is the G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance, a rename and broadening of the Critical Minerals Production Alliance set up under Canada’s 2025 G7 presidency [PM of Canada, June 17, 2026]. The CMRPA is non-binding, open to like-minded partners on the approval of existing members, and underwritten by a separate G7 Platform for Critical Minerals Cooperation. The platform will lean on the IEA Critical Minerals Security Program and OECD for data, run a crisis-anticipation mechanism for “future market stress or disruption in supply or demand,” exchange information on stockpiling including JOGMEC’s, and pilot traceability standards on lithium and nickel first, extending to five new minerals per year with rare earths flagged for particular attention [PM of Canada, June 17, 2026].

What’s happening

The Canadian bilateral round, and where Brazil is not

The substantive deal flow at Évian was bilateral, and it ran through Ottawa. Canada announced 13 new CMRPA partnerships with more than eight countries, unlocking, per the PM’s office, more than $5 billion in capital across the Canadian critical minerals value chain [PM of Canada, June 17, 2026]. Named deals include Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation supplying Ucore Rare Metals output to Japanese and North American magnet makers, Italy’s Eni taking a stake in Nouveau Monde Graphite’s Matawinie mine in Quebec, France’s Schneider Electric partnering with Torngat Metals on Quebec rare earths, Germany’s RCT Solutions building a solar manufacturing hub in Manitoba with Sio Silica, and Portugal’s Lifthium Energy partnering with NORAM Electrolysis Systems on lithium refining [PM of Canada, June 17, 2026]. France, Germany, Italy and the Republic of Korea also indicated they intend to partner with Canada on critical minerals stockpiling.

Brazil is on the guest list. Brazil is not in the bilateral list. None of the 13 named partnerships routes through Brazilian capacity. The publicly reported bilaterals Lula did hold at Évian were about the September 3 European Commission decision removing Brazil from its approved meat exporter list over antimicrobial enforcement (a separate track from the Mercosur tariff-quota architecture) and steel-trade frictions, not about minerals [Agência Brasil, June 17, 2026; S&P Global, May 14, 2026]. Brazil’s R$15 billion Sovereign Brazil Plan Credit Line and the Vale-anchored R$1 billion Critical Minerals FIP, both designed to absorb this kind of trans-Atlantic offtake flow, are not visible inside any of the named structures.

What it means

The declaration creates a perimeter. Inside it, the 60 percent cap does not bind. Outside it, the ceiling is operationalized through stockpiling, traceability pilots, price-gap subsidies, and quotas under discussion. The strategic question for non-G7 producer states is which side of the perimeter they want to sit on.

For Brazil, the question is concrete in a way it was not a week ago. Phase I production at Serra Verde, the only large ex-Asia heavy rare earth operation, is locked into a 15-year offtake to a US government-anchored vehicle as of April [Tantalum, June 16, 2026]. CBMM’s vacuum-grade ferro-niobium runs to a five-year DLA base contract [Tantalum, June 17, 2026]. The ATL stake in St George’s Araxá project routes Brazilian rare earth and niobium tonnage bilaterally into a Japan-anchored battery supply chain [Tantalum, June 16, 2026]. Three lanes, three counterparties, no Brazilian processing layer in any of them.

The 60 percent declaration could change that arithmetic if Brazil is invited into the partner perimeter for follow-on processing capacity. Accession is open-ended (“subject to the approval of participating countries”), and the multilateral development banks and G7 development finance institutions are tasked with “design and implement strategies” before the end of the year. Lula’s posture at Évian, consistent with the speech Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira read on his behalf at the CELAC summit in Bogotá on March 21, was that resource-rich countries should (paraphrasing) rewrite the region’s historical pattern by capturing value chain stages rather than exporting concentrate [Agência Brasil, March 23, 2026 (event March 21)]. That argument has now been formally received by the G7. The first iteration of Carney’s deal book did not act on it.

What to watch