Trump’s $12B Project Vault: offtake, price and supply signals for mine planners
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Trump’s “Project Vault” will create a $12 billion US strategic stockpile of critical minerals such as gallium, cobalt and rare earths, funded by a $10 billion US Export-Import Bank loan plus $1.67 billion in private capital, to shield civilian manufacturers from Chinese supply and price shocks. More than a dozen major users including GM, Stellantis, Boeing, Corning, GE Vernova and Google have signed on, with traders Hartree, Traxys and Mercuria mandated to procure material. Fixed-price, buy-and-rebuy contracts aim to stabilise prices and give long-term offtake certainty to domestic mining and processing projects.
Technical Brief
- Structure mirrors the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but for minerals like gallium and cobalt.
- Funding stack also sits alongside Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s $7.5 billion critical minerals allocation.
- That Act earmarks $2 billion to expand the existing defence stockpile by 2027.
- A further $5 billion under the Act targets supply‑chain investments, including mining and refining capacity.
- Pentagon is separately pursuing up to $1 billion of accelerated mineral acquisitions for defence needs.
- An additional $500 million Pentagon credit programme is intended to de‑risk private critical‑mineral projects.
Our Take
The $12 billion Project Vault push on critical minerals overlaps directly with the SECURE Minerals Act coverage in our database, where the proposed $2.5 billion Strategic Resilience Reserve was framed as a first step; taken together, these moves signal Washington is shifting from permitting support to outright state-backed offtake and stockpiling for rare earths, cobalt, graphite and copper.
With USA Rare Earth already flagged in earlier coverage as a beneficiary of US strategic minerals policy, the reported $1.6 billion government purchase commitment in this piece suggests that advanced-stage rare earth projects in North America now have a clearer path to bankability via long-term sovereign demand rather than relying solely on automotive OEM contracts.
The combination of a $10 billion US Export-Import Bank facility and a separate $500 million Pentagon credit programme effectively creates a two-tier capital stack for US-based critical minerals projects, which in practice is likely to favour shovel-ready copper, nickel and rare earth assets in the United States and Canada over greenfield exploration in Australia or elsewhere.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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