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Secretary Rubio Delivers Opening Remarks at the Critical Minerals Ministerial, Feb. 4, 2026

February 4, 2026 · U.S. Department of State · 0:07:43

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered the opening remarks at the Critical Minerals Ministerial at the Department of State on February 4, 2026, thanking Vice President Vance — who had addressed the gathering — for underscoring that the issue is “a priority for this administration at the highest order,” according to the State Department broadcast. “Critical minerals are vital to the devices that we use every single day. They power our infrastructure, our industry, and our national defense,” Rubio said. “Our goal is to have a global market that’s secure, a global supply that’s enduring and is available to everyone, every nation, at an affordable price.”

Rubio traced the domestic record he cited as the model: President Trump’s March executive order accelerating permitting reform and domestic mining, and “in October alone, the United States secured over $10 billion in critical mineral agreements across five countries,” plus December’s Pax Silica summit on silicon supply chains. His case study was Mountain Pass, California — discovered in 1949, mining rare earths by 1952, then allowed “to wither and to die” as the U.S. outsourced first mining, then manufacturing, then design: “we realized we had outsourced our economic security and our very future. We were at the mercy of whoever controlled supply chains for these minerals.” Recalling the Washington Energy Conference held in the same room some 50 years earlier, which led to the International Energy Agency, he said the ministerial aimed to advance bilateral critical minerals framework agreements protecting “every single stage of production — from mining to refining and processing to manufacturing.”

Why it matters

The opening remarks state the doctrine behind the administration’s critical minerals framework campaign — supply chains as national security, rebuilt with partners stage by stage — at the ministerial that anchors the Secretary’s 2026 minerals diplomacy on this site.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio Delivers Opening Remarks at the Critical Minerals Ministerial” (official upload, embedded above); remarks as delivered 2026-02-04; transcript via state.gov as linked in the upload description and reviewed in the site’s private research store.