The US government plans to use the gathering in resource-rich countries to spur new investment as part of its efforts to shift the supply chain of key minerals away from China.
The supply chain for key minerals is almost entirely dominated by China, which controls much of the market for processing and refining minerals such as cobalt, lithium and other rare earths.
Bolivia has the world's largest lithium deposits, with 21m tonnes, followed by Argentina with 19m tonnes, Chile with 9.8m tonnes and Australia with 7.3m tonnes, according to the US Geological Survey.
As a manufacturing power, China needs to use a large number of lithium batteries, the development of new energy vehicles and energy storage industry need lithium to support, China is the largest consumption of lithium resource, but China's lithium reserves are not rich, need a large number of imported ore.
On the one hand, the reserves of lithium resources in China are not rich enough; on the other hand, the resource endowment of lithium is poor and the mining conditions are not good, resulting in high cost.
Globally, there are abundant lithium reserves in South America and Australia. South America is mainly used for lithium extraction in salt lakes. Due to its high lithium content in salt lakes, less impurities and lower mining cost, Australia is a lithium ore with high content advantage, so it can enjoy high gross profit when selling ore to China.
