A US-backed mining investor warned that Washington must outspend Beijing on critical minerals projects to challenge China’s dominance of global supply chains.

Western governments are still moving too slowly in securing supplies of lithium, rare earths and other materials vital for defense industries, according to Brian Menell, a South African mining veteran who heads TechMet.

“We have to out-innovate the Chinese and out-fund the Chinese,” Menell said in an interview on the sidelines of the Future Resilience Forum in London.

Menell’s comments come after renewed tensions between Washington and Beijing rattled markets ahead of next week’s meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The US has been locked in a rare-earths tussle with China since Beijing fought back against Trump’s trade offensive earlier this year, imposing export curbs on the materials.

The chief executive of Techmet, which has received about $105-million in financing from the US International Development Finance, said Trump was ready to act.

“The Trump two administration is prepared to do new things and act quickly, without being as constrained by precedent and bureaucracy as before,” Menell said. “We’ll see bigger deals and far more active US government engagement in these supply chains than we have in the past.”

Trump on Monday signed a landmark pact with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to boost America’s access to rare earths and other critical minerals. The prospect of even tighter supply has injected momentum into an American push to build alternative production capacity, even as industry executives and analysts caution that replacing a vast network of mines and refining plants will not be swift.

Rare earths are a subset of critical minerals, a wider group of core materials which in the US includes dozens of metals. Even before the recent export controls, China had already put restrictions on supplies of vital inputs including gallium, germanium and antimony.

Menell said expanding critical-minerals capacity will require direct government participation to de-risk early-stage projects and accelerate development. The US and its allies must also rethink how they engage with developing nations to safeguard supply chains that bolster Western industrial competitiveness and national security.

“We have to build capacity fast to meet future demand, and do it in a way that’s not beholden to China,” he said. “That means transforming the industry — in scale, standards and independence.”

TechMet, which invests in projects producing battery metals and rare-earth materials, is bidding for the Dobra lithium deposit in Ukraine’s Kirovohrad region. The project — part of Trump’s a US-Ukraine natural resources initiative — requires a minimum investment of $179-million from the winning bidder.