Project Vault, America's Critical Minerals Stockpile, Goes Live Tomorrow

At the Concordia Annual Summit, the U.S. Export-Import Bank revealed that Project Vault — the nation's first economic security stockpile for critical minerals — becomes operational on Sept. 23, 2026, just seven months after President Trump announced it from the Oval Office. The panel featuring Ex-Im Bank, Glencore and the Center for Strategic and International Studies laid bare how exposed American manufacturing remains to supply chain shocks and what it will take to fix it.

• Project Vault goes operational Sept. 23, creating a market-driven critical minerals stockpile designed to protect civilian manufacturing from supply disruptions
• Chinese rare earth export controls halted manufacturing in Chicago and Japan within weeks last spring, exposing the urgency of the effort
• Glencore signs on as anchor partner, bringing visibility into lower-tier suppliers where the deepest vulnerabilities reside
• First new mine in 50 years opens on Minnesota's Iron Range as part of a broader reindustrialization push
• Processing capacity identified as the biggest bottleneck for building a domestic critical minerals supply chain

The basics: The United States has maintained a defense stockpile of strategic materials since 1939, but until now had no equivalent for the civilian economy. Project Vault, first announced by President Trump in February, is designed to give American manufacturers a buffer — what panelists called a "shock absorber" — against sudden supply disruptions of critical minerals used in everything from iPhones to AI data centers.