Mineral Magnetism: How Critical Minerals Shape Trade Deals?

Chahir Zaki
Université d’Orléans, France

Abstract:

The demand for critical minerals has been exponentially increasing in recent times. This was reflected by the proliferation of different deals and agreements. For instance, the Minerals Security Partnership (a coalition of 14 countries and the EU) aims to diversify and secure critical mineral supply chains. The presented paper bridges the gap between two strands of the literature. The first is related to the determinants of signing a regional trade agreement (RTA). The second pertains to the impact of critical minerals. Although the impact of critical minerals has been analyzed in the context of energy transition, political alignment, and supply chain resilience, less work has been done on how they shape trade deals. To do so, using trade data from the BACI and the Deep Trade Agreements database, this paper applies a gravity type model and explores the heterogeneity of trade agreements of critical minerals (their concentration, level of processing and use in the digital and energy transition). The main results show that trade in critical minerals increases the likelihood of signing an RTA and increases the probability of including mining provisions in trade deals. Yet, less development-related provisions are likely to be included. These results remain robust in different specifications.

Chahir Zaki is a chaired professor of economics at the University of Orléans and a research fellow at Laboratoire d’Economie d’Orléans where he is the chairholder of the Chair in Environmental and Mineral Economics. Chahir is also a research fellow at the Economic Research Forum and a professor of economics at Cairo University (on leave). He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Economics, an affiliate professor at the University Mohamed VI, an associate Researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS, Bonn) and a member of the scientific committee of Osservatorio sulle Economie Emergenti (OEET, Torino). His research interests include international trade, global value chains, environment, trade policy, and macroeconomic modeling.

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