Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will use their meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York to put another piece in place in the emerging transatlantic architecture for critical minerals and technology supply chains.
The two ministers will sign an agreement on raw materials aimed at securing supplies, Tajani announced ahead of his trip to New York. The meeting will cover the broader international agenda, but the agreement gives the encounter a concrete economic-security dimension.
What Tajani said: “With Rubio, we will first sign the agreement on raw materials to make supplies more secure. It also includes the so-called Pax Silica, which was already signed by Ambassadors Varricchio and Fertitta in Brindisi,” Tajani said.
- He described it as “a strategic partnership on critical minerals such as rare earths, to create an alternative market where China no longer dictates prices,” adding that Italy has already concluded a similar agreement with Argentina.
Why it matters: The wording is significant. China is no longer simply the implicit concern behind supply-chain diversification. It is explicitly identified as the structural dependency that Italy and the United States want to reduce.
- That gives the agreement a significance extending beyond access to individual commodities. Critical minerals sit upstream of defence production, semiconductors, batteries, energy systems, data centres and artificial intelligence. Securing them has therefore become part of the broader contest over who controls the industrial foundations of technological power.
- China remains extraordinarily difficult to dislodge from those foundations. Despite growing U.S. investment, it still controls between 70% and 95% of refining for several critical minerals, according to recent IEA figures reported by Reuters. Its share of rare-earth refining declined from above 90% in 2023 to around 85% in 2025 — diversification, but hardly independence.
The backstory: The New York signing is the latest stage in a process that has accelerated throughout 2026.
- In February, Rubio convened the first Critical Minerals Summit in Washington, placing mineral security squarely inside the Western strategic agenda. Tajani was the only European foreign minister to address its opening session, positioning Italy early in discussions about how trusted partners could build more resilient supply chains.
- The logic was already moving beyond mining. Silicon, rare earths, energy, digital infrastructure, manufacturing and logistics increasingly form a single strategic continuum: the physical layer underneath the AI economy.
Enter Pax Silica: That broader concept took institutional form for Italy in July, when Rome formally signed the Pax Silica Declaration in Brindisi.
- The U.S.-led initiative links semiconductors, artificial intelligence, critical minerals and digital infrastructure within what Washington describes as a trusted technology ecosystem. Italy’s accession was presented by the Foreign Ministry as another component of the strategic relationship with the United States and as complementary to European industrial initiatives rather than an alternative to them.
- The sequence now matters: Washington’s Critical Minerals Summit established the political direction; Pax Silica broadened cooperation across the technology value chain; the Tajani-Rubio agreement moves toward bilateral implementation.
Zoom out: What is taking shape is less a conventional raw-materials policy than an attempt to reorganize strategic supply chains among trusted partners.
- The ambition is difficult because replacing Chinese scale cannot be achieved simply by opening new mines. It requires processing capacity, capital, predictable demand, infrastructure and long-term purchasing arrangements. The United States has increasingly deployed precisely these kinds of instruments, while Europe continues to face financing, permitting and implementation constraints in its own critical-minerals strategy.
- That is also where Italy sees an opening. Rome is not a mining superpower, but it has manufacturing capacity, industrial know-how, logistics infrastructure and a position inside both the EU single market and the transatlantic economy. Its potential role is therefore less about controlling resources underground than about occupying useful segments of the value chains built around them.
The political message: Tajani framed the agreement as “a concrete, mutually beneficial industrial and trade policy agreement.” But he also placed it within a broader definition of the relationship with Washington.
- “With the U.S., where we agree, the dialogue is continuous and structured. Then, when there are things on which we disagree, we say so clearly. But America remains our main ally,” he said.
- That distinction is important: Rome is presenting deeper industrial and technological integration with the United States not as automatic political alignment on every issue, but as a strategic choice in sectors where interdependence itself has become a security concern.
- Tajani connected that argument directly to the debate over autonomy. Italy, he recalled, opposed any prospect of U.S. annexation of Greenland. Yet he pushed back against the idea that greater independence can simply mean distancing Europe from Washington while resisting higher spending on defence and security.
- “If you want to be a credible interlocutor, you have to be autonomous,” he said.
The bottom line: The Tajani-Rubio signing is therefore best understood as another step in turning the Italy-U.S. relationship from political alignment into industrial architecture.
- Critical minerals provide the immediate instrument. Pax Silica expands the perimeter to AI and advanced technology. China supplies much of the strategic rationale.
- The harder part comes next: whether Italy and its partners can translate agreements about diversification into mines, processing, manufacturing, investment and actual alternative supply — at sufficient scale to turn resilience from a diplomatic objective into an industrial reality.
