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By Martha Newton and Samir Goswami
Principal at Fifth Fundamental; Director of Forced Labor Programs at Global Rights Compliance
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Over the first year of his presidency, President Donald Trump has established a comprehensive critical minerals agenda, which is essential to American energy independence, technological leadership and economic security. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will aim to strengthen these efforts by convening the first-ever Critical Mineral Ministerial, gathering together U.S. allies in Washington to discuss how to secure critical mineral supply chains.
This high-level meeting presents an opportunity to strengthen a key link in advancing U.S. national security and American prosperity—addressing the problem of forced labor. Forced labor in supply chains controlled by China and other U.S. adversaries creates a danger of economic coercion that hurts U.S. interests—exactly the dynamics that President Trump is working to eliminate. America First foreign policy—supporting engagements only when they make America safer, stronger or more prosperous—offers a blueprint for confronting forced labor head on, and reclaiming U.S. leadership in critical minerals.
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Critical mineral supply chains are notoriously opaque, and in some cases deliberately so. The People’s Republic of China has systematically obscured supply chains linked to forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), making it difficult to trace materials from origin to end use. Last June, the international law foundation Global Rights Compliance released a U.S. State Department–funded study which traced four critical minerals from XUAR into products used in the West, including goods essential to U.S. national security. Looking ahead, China’s forthcoming 15th Five-Year Plan signals an even greater expansion of critical mineral extraction and processing in XUAR—which can only be accomplished through continued brutal repression of Uyghur communities forced to mine and process these materials.
This problem is urgent. Coerced production networks in critical mineral chains unleash a torrent of below-cost materials that devastate American manufacturers, wipe-out high-wage jobs, drive 20-30 percent wage suppression in affected industries and lock the U.S. into vulnerable dependencies—handing adversaries unchecked leverage over essential resources that power our energy grids, defense systems and technological edge.
To meet this challenge, the Trump administration should do more to stop the products of forced labor from entering our supply chains. The newly released State Department 2026-2030 Strategic Plan offers hope. By overlaying trade, shipping and production data, along with U.S. economic and forced labor risk indicators, U.S. authorities could identify vulnerabilities earlier and make informed decisions about shifting away from Chinese and other adversarial sourced critical minerals toward stable, allied countries.
Existing laws, such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), already bar goods made in the XUAR from entering U.S. markets—and existing federal procurement regulations are designed to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not spent on goods linked to forced labor. The challenge now is not a lack of law, but a lack of enforcement at scale. Forced-labor prohibitions only work if they are applied consistently, which requires linking existing legal authorities to modern, integrated data systems with predictive analytics so violations can be identified early and enforced efficiently and effectively.
A shared data platform joining economic and risk indicators would directly advance the goals of the ministerial by integrating key datasets from the United States and allied governments, including the minerals added in November 2025 to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Critical Minerals List, the Department of Labor’s List of Goods Produced by Forced Labor and credible analysis from organizations such as Global Rights Compliance. Fusing these sources would enable entity-level “adversary risk scores” that translate policy commitments into actionable intelligence, strengthening enforcement, guiding procurement and trade decisions and supporting the work of President Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council.
From a national security standpoint, bringing these data sets together would give the U.S. clearer, more practical insight into where critical minerals really come from, helping us move away from China’s dominance in processing critical materials. The same information could also help the federal government make smarter purchasing decisions and ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not supporting forced labor or supply chains that undermine America’s security.
As Secretary Rubio gathers key allies—including Australia, Japan and others—the U.S. should lead from the front. If our allies adopt similar enforcement mechanisms to our own, they could gain expedited access to billions in U.S. offtake contracts and preferential trade terms. This would multiply these nations’ collective leverage to stop the flow of products sourced from forced labor—and accelerate U.S.-led economic dominance in critical minerals.
To maximize this leverage, the U.S. should encourage allies to also explore other actions, including models like the Global Magnitsky Act’s targeted financial sanctions—freezing assets and cutting off revenue streams for entities connected to forced labor in critical mineral supply chains. This is the Trump administration’s priorities in action: foreign policy as economic statecraft, wielding the UFLPA that Secretary Rubio pioneered to curtail forced labor, slash import dependencies and restore American dominance. These policies could also generate revenues that fund domestic reshoring and manufacturing revival—turning blocked imports into U.S. high-wage new jobs.
In a world defined by adversarial choke points, the United States should use laws, regulation, intelligence and advanced data analytics to combat forced labor and secure critical mineral supply chains. Done right, this approach directly advances President Trump’s vision of abundant, affordable energy powering global markets, supporting a strong workforce and making America more secure.
Martha Newton is former deputy undersecretary for international affairs at the United States Department of Labor and principal at Fifth Fundamental.
Samir Goswami is the director of forced labor programs at Global Rights Compliance.
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.
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