MNI BRIEF: China Foiling Critical Minerals Startups- Freeland
MNI (WASHINGTON) - Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Thursday accused China of seeking to disrupt Canada's development of competitive miners of critical minerals, telling a U.S. audience that groups like the G7 must come together on a response.
China already has a "stranglehold" on supplies of some critical minerals and is deploying the same kind of playbook it used to weaken the global steel industry, Freeland said during a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. When a Canadian critical mining company begins scaling up, “we see the market flooded and that company cannot operate on market principles,” Freeland said. (See: MNI INTERVIEW: Canada Faces Trouble Under Harris Or Trump- EDC)
China has a policy of overproduction and making other nations reliant on it, and also competes based on lax labor and environmental stands, so countries like the U.S. and Canada shouldn't "play ball" this way, she said.