This article will analyze the issue from three perspectives: first, interpreting the strategic implications of the U.S. "Project Vault"; second, reviewing ongoing cooperation between the U.S. and the DRC government in cobalt resource development; and third, exploring the major risks facing China’s cobalt market amid intensifying mineral competition and viable response strategies.
I. U.S. "Project Vault": Upgrading Strategic Reserves, Integrating Civilian Demand
On February 2, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the launch of a $12‑billion strategic critical mineral reserve program — "Project Vault". The initiative will leverage $10 billion in loans from the U.S. Export‑Import Bank, combined with $1.67 billion in private capital, to jointly procure and stockpile critical minerals for automakers, technology firms, and other key industrial sectors. While the U.S. has long maintained strategic mineral reserves for defense purposes, it has not systematically covered the needs of civilian industries. This policy marks the first introduction of a private‑sector reserve mechanism, aiming to build reliable inventories of nickel, cobalt, lithium, rare earths, and other resources essential to U.S. automotive, electronics, battery, and aerospace industries. To date, three major trading firms — Hartree Partners LP, Traxys North America LLC, and Mercuria Energy Group — have signed agreements to act as procurement executors, responsible for the actual raw material purchases.
Although the U.S. holds some domestic critical mineral resources, its processing and downstream refining capabilities cannot fully replace external supply chains. Particularly in new‑energy metals such as nickel, cobalt, and lithium, as well as rare earths, the U.S. remains highly dependent on supplies from countries including Australia, the DRC, and China. From a long‑term strategic perspective, the program seeks to enhance U.S. autonomy and discourse power in critical minerals, reduce supply‑chain reliance on China, and continue and accelerate its "de‑Sinification" industrial policy trajectory.
Notably, in addition to this initiative, the U.S. will host the inaugural Ministerial Conference on Critical Minerals in Washington, D.C., on February 4. Multiple African resource nations, including the DRC, Kenya, and Guinea, as well as allies such as Japan, Australia, and Canada, have confirmed their participation.
II. U.S. and DRC: From Resource Cooperation to Strategic Alignment
Over the past two decades, China has established a dominant position in mineral development in the DRC through the "resources‑for‑infrastructure" model, exemplified by the 2007 China‑DRC Mining Cooperation Agreement, and still controls approximately 80% of local mining output. However, since Trump’s return to the White House, the U.S. has deepened cooperation with the DRC in the mineral sector through dual diplomatic and economic engagement.
In June 2025, under U.S. mediation, the DRC and Rwanda signed a peace agreement containing implicit critical mineral provisions. The deal promotes the establishment of a transparent and standardized end‑to‑end "mine‑to‑processing" value chain and links the two countries as partners with the U.S. government and investors, effectively forming a "minerals‑for‑security" framework.
In December 2025, the U.S. and DRC further signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement, focusing on three major directions in mineral cooperation:
- The U.S. and DRC will establish a strategic partnership. The DRC shall designate an initial list of critical mineral assets and unlicensed exploration areas as part of the Strategic Asset Reserve (SAR) and provide this list to the established joint‑stock company within 30 days of the agreement’s entry into force.
- The DRC and its state‑owned enterprises plan to use their equity and contractual marketing rights related to critical mineral production to provide access for Americans and related parties for extraction and use in the U.S. market. To achieve this, the DRC and its state‑owned enterprises shall prioritize bids for SAR projects and Qualified Strategic Projects (QSPs), offering commercially comparable terms to Americans and related parties to ensure these minerals are used in the U.S. market.
- The two sides plan to cooperate to enhance the competitiveness of the Sakania‑Lobito Corridor, including increasing the volume of critical minerals exported by the DRC through this corridor under market conditions. To this end, the DRC and its state‑owned enterprises plan to export at least 50% of copper, 90% of zinc concentrate, and 30% of cobalt through the Sakania‑Lobito Corridor within five years.
In January 2026, the DRC announced the submission of a targeted list of mineral projects to the U.S., covering manganese, copper‑cobalt, gold, and lithium projects, opening these initiatives to U.S. investment. Included is the Mutoshi copper‑cobalt project under the DRC’s state‑owned mining giant Gécamines, with an annual designed capacity of 50,000 tonnes of copper and 16,000 tonnes of cobalt.
III. Compound Risks: Pressures on China’s Cobalt Supply Chain and Response Strategies
Prior to the DRC’s cobalt export ban in February 2025, cobalt intermediates from the country accounted for approximately 80% of China’s cobalt raw material supply. The ban has already left numerous domestic enterprises facing supply‑chain strains. Against the backdrop of the DRC’s cobalt mines not yet resuming large‑scale exports, the deepening U.S.‑DRC cooperation is likely to further raise geopolitical risks for Chinese imports of cobalt resources from the country, exacerbating structural shortages in China’s cobalt raw materials in 2026.
According to the DRC’s export quota allocation details released in October 2025, Chinese enterprises received only about 56% of the total basic quota, far below actual domestic demand, leaving part of the initiative in raw material supply subject to overseas control. As U.S.‑DRC mineral cooperation advances, Chinese enterprises may even face difficulties in obtaining strategic quotas in the future. Meanwhile, in basic quota allocations, most overseas miners apart from Glencore are negotiating supply agreements with U.S.‑affiliated traders such as Mercuria, introducing further uncertainty into the final destination of these resources.
In this context, Chinese enterprises urgently need to diversify resource sources to reduce concentration risks. The primary alternative path is to accelerate market penetration in Indonesia, securing resources through acquiring mining rights or establishing strategic partnerships with local miners. In recent years, Indonesia’s hydrometallurgical projects (MHP) have been rapidly expanding capacity, with multiple large‑scale projects scheduled to commence production and export to China in 2026 alone, expected to provide nearly 20,000 metal tonnes of supplementary cobalt supply. Additionally, enterprises can maintain production flexibility by increasing recycled cobalt output and promoting cobalt salt production through acid dissolution of electrolytic cobalt. However, constrained by the stock of social scrap and inventories of electrolytic cobalt, this supply can only serve as a phasic supplement and cannot fundamentally alleviate resource shortage pressures.
Xiao Wenhao SMM Cobalt Analyst +86 16621140365
