Japan is working on critical minerals’ projects in India, Mr. Motegi also said, but called for improved infrastructure, more tax subsidies, and protection for intellectual property rights.
Mr. Motegi said that during Tuesday’s meeting he looks forward to “deepen concrete cooperation building on the Critical Minerals Initiative, while sharing a vision toward a fair, diversified critical minerals market”.
“Amid the increasingly challenging international situation we now face, diversifying sources of procurement and ensuring the stable supply of critical minerals have become ever more critical issues,” the Japanese Foreign Minister explained.
The focus on critical minerals signals concerns over China’s dominant position on the rare earth markets, where it holds massive reserves, processes about 90% of the minerals, and frequently restricts exports to various countries.
Japan and India had also launched a separate bilateral partnership on critical minerals during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tokyo in August 2025.
The Quad remains a “vital framework”, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said, responding to concerns that the four-nation grouping had lost its relevance, and indicated in an interview that ‘Cooperation over Critical Minerals’ needed for green energy and hi-tech would be at the top of the agenda for the Quadrilateral Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (FMM) on Tuesday (May 25, 2026). Japan is working on critical minerals’ projects in India, Mr. Motegi also said, but called for improved infrastructure, more tax subsidies, and protection for intellectual property rights.
The Quad meeting, which will be hosted by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, and will include Mr. Motegi, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, is expected to take stock of the conflict in Iran, the Hormuz Strait blockade, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit this month to China, as well as set the agenda for the Quad Summit that has not taken place since 2024 amidst India-U.S. tensions on a number of issues.
Although the Quad FMs met twice in 2025, setting a new agenda, the Quad grouping finds little or no mention in recent strategic documents issued by the American, Australian and Japanese governments. The U.S.’s National Security Strategy, released in November 2025, says the U.S. would “encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security”, including through the Quad, but did not detail its plans for the grouping any further. On May 2, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi announced Japan’s ‘Updated Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ policy during a visit to Hanoi, a document that mentions the Quad just once, in the context of the critical minerals initiative.
“The Quad remains a vital framework among countries that share fundamental values and strategic interests. It has delivered concrete results across a wide range of areas, including maritime security, economic security, and cybersecurity,” Mr. Motegi said, in written responses to questions from The Hindu ahead of the FMM, but side-stepped queries on why the mechanism finds little mention in the strategy documents.
He declined to respond to a specific question on whether the U.S.’s torpedoing of the Iranian ship IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean on March 4, 2026 would be raised by fellow Quad members, given their agenda of ensuring a peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. Mr. Motegi said the meeting would discuss “regional and global situations” and send “an unwavering message that the Quad will continue to robustly advance practical cooperation toward the realization of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP)”.
In April, Ms. Takaichi had also proposed a ‘Partnership On Wide Energy and Resources Resilience (POWERR Asia)’, attended virtually by Mr. Jaishankar, that will coordinate on oil, gas and renewables procurement, financing and storage mechanisms to deal with the energy crisis as a result of the Iran conflict.
“The countries most affected by disruptions in the supply of energy and resources passing through the Strait of Hormuz are those in Asia, and these impacts extend to all countries closely connected through supply chains,” Mr. Motegi told The Hindu.
Mr. Motegi said that during Tuesday’s meeting he looks forward to “deepen concrete cooperation building on the Critical Minerals Initiative, while sharing a vision toward a fair, diversified critical minerals market”.
“Amid the increasingly challenging international situation we now face, diversifying sources of procurement and ensuring the stable supply of critical minerals have become ever more critical issues,” the Japanese Foreign Minister explained. The focus on critical minerals signals concerns over China’s dominant position on the rare earth markets, where it holds massive reserves, processes about 90% of the minerals, and frequently restricts exports to various countries.
Japan and India had also launched a separate bilateral partnership on critical minerals during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tokyo in August 2025. Japan has worked on rare earth refining operations in India since 2010s, and that there is “strong interest” from Japanese companies in the semiconductor sector, Mr. Motegi said. However, he said it remains “crucial” the Indian government takes measures for the “protection of intellectual property rights and trade secrets, expansion of the scale and scope of subsidies, and improvement of infrastructure”, in order to take these business initiatives forward. Reaffirming Japanese FOIP plans for infrastructure projects in Bangladesh and northeast India, Mr. Motegi said Japan had confirmed with recently-elected Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman that it would continue work on the development of the Matarbari deep-sea port, and promote connectivity to northeast India, Bhutan, and Nepal.
