August 11, 2026

Comment Letter in Response to Proposed California Corporate Greenhouse Gas Reporting and Climate-Related Financial Risk Disclosure Initial Regulation

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August 11, 2026

Clerks’ Office
California Air Resources Board
1001 I Street
Sacramento, California 95814

Re: Proposed California Corporate Greenhouse Gas Reporting and Climate-Related Financial Risk Disclosure Initial Regulation 

Honorable members of the California Air Resources Board,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the modifications the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has made to the Proposed California Corporate Greenhouse Gas Reporting and Climate-Related Financial Risk Disclosure Initial Regulation. The modifications are insufficient as CARB has not removed § 96071(b)(2) exempting entities regulated by the California Department of Insurance (CDI) and other entities in the business of insurance from the proposed regulation. The undersigned organizations strongly urge CARB to remove this exemption before finalizing the regulation.

The proposal, offered by CARB staff at the July 21 public workshop, to subject insurance companies to the requirements of SB 253 beginning in 2027 is an insufficient remedy to the exemption for insurance companies included in the Initial Regulation. The Initial Regulation is not clearly limited to 2026 and thus by finalizing this regulation, CARB would be exempting insurers from emissions reporting under SB 253 unless and until the exemption is reversed in a future regulation. Moreover, future regulation that may subject insurance companies to the requirements of SB 253 will be in conflict with the Initial Regulation. Rather than take this cumbersome and unlawful approach, CARB should remove the exemption for insurance companies outright in the Initial Regulation. 

Exempting insurance companies exceeds CARB’s authority as it is contrary to statute and legislative intent.

As we have argued previously, the exemption for insurance companies in the proposed Initial Regulation would exceed CARB’s authority as it is contrary to statute and legislative intent (See February 9, 2026 and April 13, 2026 Comment Letters attached hereto and incorporated herein by reference). The California legislature originally considered versions of both SB 253 and SB 261 that did not exempt insurance companies. However, an exemption was ultimately added to SB 261 in recognition that the climate financial risk disclosure required by SB 261 significantly overlapped with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) Climate Risk Disclosure Survey administered by CDI. By contrast, SB 253 was signed into law without an exemption for insurance companies. At CARB’s February 26 hearing, SB 253 sponsor Senator Scott Wiener testified that the insurance industry was intentionally included in SB 253. CARB lacks the authority to carve out an exemption that does not exist in the statute and that the bill sponsor confirmed is contrary to legislative intent.

CARB has justified the exemption as a measure to avoid “duplicative effort”  for reporting entities, claiming that requiring insurers to report their greenhouse gas emissions under this rule would be duplicative with the NAIC’s Climate Risk Disclosure Survey. But the NAIC report is not duplicative with the reporting requirements of SB 253. While SB 253 mandates that all covered entities disclose their Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, the NAIC survey simply encourages insurers to “disclose Scope 1, Scope 2, and if appropriate, Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions.” There is no statute or regulation requiring insurers to report greenhouse gas emissions to CDI, nor does CDI have any authority to enforce fines or penalties against insurers who decline to disclose emissions. In March, Public Citizen published an analysis confirming that insurer reports to CDI do not satisfy the requirements of SB 253, finding 75 percent of the largest property & casualty insurers in California disclose their Scope 1 and 2 emissions but only 10 percent of the largest insurers make meaningful emissions disclosures to CDI inclusive of Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. 

Furthermore, even if the emissions disclosures insurers made to CDI were comprehensive, these disclosures would not justify exempting insurers from submitting emissions disclosures to CARB. SB 253 does not authorize CARB to exempt insurers or any other sector from disclosing to CARB. Instead, the statute permits a reporting entity already reporting emissions to another national or international entity to submit those emissions disclosures to CARB as well, so long as those disclosures meet the requirements of SB 253. 

The insurance exemption included in the Initial Regulation is not limited to 2026 and thus would be in conflict with future regulations requiring emissions disclosure from insurance companies. 

CARB staff have since acknowledged the gap between insurer emissions reporting to CDI and the requirements of SB 253. CARB materials from the July 21 SB 253 public workshop include the following: “Staff found that CDI reporting may not satisfy the requirements of SB 253 in future years (starting with 2027), as it does not include Scope 3 or assurance requirements.” In response to this gap, CARB staff proposed that “Beginning in 2027, …insurance entities may submit the same report to satisfy both CDI and SB 253 requirements, provided it meets reporting requirements under CARB’s regulation implementing SB 253. If a CDI report does not address all CARB requirements, reporting entities must supplement their report with the remaining required information.”

The problem with the solution CARB staff propose is that the Initial Regulation is not clearly limited to 2026 and thus by finalizing this regulation, CARB would be exempting insurers from emissions reporting under SB 253 unless and until the exemption is reversed in a future regulation. This is a legally dubious and unnecessarily cumbersome approach, given the Initial Regulation has yet to be finalized. Furthermore, workshop materials are not a guarantee that future regulation will be undertaken to remove the insurance exemption or do so effectively. The proposed solution also fails to address the core issues at hand—that the insurance exemption in the Initial Regulation is unlawful as it exceeds CARB’s authority. The only plausible way to implement CARB staff’s proposal would be to expressly limit the exemption by modifying the Initial Regulation to 1) provide that it applies only to insurers who make SB253-compliant Scope 1 and 2 emissions disclosures to CDI in 2026 and 2) by clarifying that the exemption is only in effect for 2026 reporting, and will not be in effect for all future years. Without this change, which is not in the current proposed language, the Initial Regulation plainly exempts insurers from the fee structure and reporting program into the future, and subsequent regulations that do cover insurers would be in perpetual conflict. 

We urge CARB to remove the exemption for entities regulated by CDI and other entities in the business of insurance from the regulation and to finalize the regulation thereafter. 

Sincerely,

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund
Consumer Watchdog
Dave Jones, CA Insurance Commissioner, Emeritus
Public Citizen
Sierra Club California

cc: Kenneth J. Pogue, Director
California Office of Administrative Law
300 Capitol Mall, Suite 1250
Sacramento, CA 95814-4339

August 10, 2026

Public Citizen Comments re Section 301 Investigation on Germany’s Drug Pricing Policies

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Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization with more than one million members and supporters. The Access to Medicines program advocates for access to prescription drugs in the United States and internationally.

Section 302(b)(1)(A) of the Trade Act authorizes the U.S. Trade Representative to initiate an investigation to determine whether an act, policy, or practice of a foreign country is actionable under Section 301 of the Trade Act. Actionable conduct under Section 301 includes acts, policies, and practices of a foreign country that are unjustifiable, unreasonable or discriminatory, and burden or restrict U.S. commerce. An act, policy, or practice is unreasonable if, while not necessarily in violation of, or inconsistent with, the international legal rights of the United States, it is otherwise unfair and inequitable.^[1]

On June 18, 2026, the U.S. Trade Representative initiated a “Section 301” investigation focusing on “the extent to which Germany engages in acts, policies, and practices that have the effect of suppressing the prices of pharmaceuticals in its market below fair market value, thereby forcing American patients to underwrite a disproportionate amount of global pharmaceutical R&D.”^[2]

Our comment will focus on three points:

1. Germany’s drug price negotiation framework informed the United States’ efforts to lower drug costs; USTR should not attack country practices that the U.S. uses or would consider using to lower drug costs;
2. Germany’s pharmaceutical pricing policies are not unjustifiable, unreasonable or discriminatory; and
3. Germany’s prices are not “suppressed” and do not burden or restrict U.S. commerce.

Based on these points, Public Citizen urges USTR to drop its investigation.

1. Germany’s drug price negotiation framework informed the United States’ efforts to lower drug costs; USTR should not attack country practices that the U.S. uses or would consider using to lower drug costs.

The United States pays the highest drug prices in the world for prescription drugs because the patent-based pharmaceutical industry operates largely without government negotiations as a check on price. But now that is changing, precisely because the U.S. is implementing policies more similar to those used in other countries to address high drug prices. The U.S. government should not attack legitimate policies that countries the world over use to make medicines more accessible and affordable.

Until recently, and in contrast to many other countries, the largest drug purchaser in the United States was barred from negotiating drug prices. The Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program established in 2022 is projected to save taxpayers billions of dollars.^[3]Negotiated prices from the first and second rounds of negotiations are estimated to save Medicare $6 billion and  $8.5 billion, and patients $1.5 billion and $685 million, respectively, in the first year prices take effect.^[4] The program is also hugely popular — 88% of Americans say it’s important for the government to negotiate drug prices and two-thirds of Americans want to see the program expanded.^[5] Several components of Germany’s negotiation framework were informative for our own system.

Many new drugs add little clinical value but come at great expense (so-called ‘me-too’ drugs, that piggy back on related innovations). An analysis of 216 drugs entering the German healthcare system between 2011 and 2017 found that over half showed no proof of added benefit over existing therapies.^[6] Another found that fewer than half of approved first indications for new drugs in the U.S. and Europe between 2011 and 2020 add substantial therapeutic value over existing treatments.^[7]

To help ensure prices reward genuine innovation, price negotiation frameworks in the U.S. and Germany assess clinical value compared to existing treatments. In Germany, a health technology assessment body evaluates added clinical value over a therapeutic alternative based on data submitted by the drug’s manufacturer.^[8] If the assessment shows no evidence of added benefit, statutory health insurers will only cover a certain amount of the cost, based on a price comparable to existing drugs, where applicable.^[9] If the drug is determined to offer minor, considerable, or major added benefit, the manufacturer and statutory health insurers’ body negotiate a higher reimbursement price.^[10] When making price offers in the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is required to consider evidence of therapeutic value, including the extent to which selected drugs represent a therapeutic advance as compared to existing therapeutic alternatives and the costs of those alternatives, as well as the comparative effectiveness of selected drugs and therapeutic alternatives, among other factors.^[11] In contrast to Germany’s process independent from negotiations that relies on a standardized value assessment and categorization system, CMS considers factors itself without clear guidance on how to weigh the degree of benefit over alternatives. However, approaches used in Germany and other countries continue to inform ongoing policy debates in the United States regarding how more systematic clinical evidence appraisal could inform pricing decisions.^[12]

Another aspect of Germany’s price negotiation framework, called binding arbitration, was among proposals put forward for Medicare’s negotiation framework.^[13] In Germany, if a drug manufacturer and the statutory health insurance body cannot agree, an arbitration board determines the final price.^[14] The board includes representatives from the statutory health insurers’ body and the pharmaceutical industry, among others.^[15] Legislators in the United States ultimately opted for a less conservative approach. Instead of deferring final price determinations to a third party, CMS retains the power to make final price offers it deems appropriate, including in circumstances where negotiations fail because pharmaceutical companies are not negotiating in good faith. As leverage to encourage the successful resolution of price negotiations, the Medicare negotiation program penalizes manufacturers that fail to reach a final price by subjecting them to a tax equal to a percentage of the drug’s sales, or allowing them to avoid the tax by withdrawing all of their drugs from Medicare and Medicaid.^[16] The strategies in both Germany and the U.S. have had success. In the five years after Germany instituted its negotiation system, drugs with no added therapeutic benefit were more likely to be withdrawn from the market than those with added benefit (25% vs 2%).^[17] In the United States, courts have upheld the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program in each of myriad lawsuits raised by the pharmaceutical industry, including those targeting the financial penalty for refusing to complete negotiations with CMS.^[18]

2. Germany’s pharmaceutical pricing policies are not unjustifiable, unreasonable or discriminatory.

Governments have the right and the responsibility to manage healthcare costs to protect the public and steward taxpayer resources. Governments also recognize that expansive patent monopolies enable high drug prices, which contribute to rising healthcare costs. National policies targeting patented products are often readily explained by the reasonable need to manage healthcare costs, informed by the local context.

Germany’s 2026 Statutory Health Insurance Contribution Rate Stabilization Act (GKV-BStabG),^[19] referenced in the Section 301 investigation notice, includes several measures intended to respond to the budget shortfall (EUR15 billion by 2027, rising to EUR40 billion by 2030) facing public insurers’ funds which would lead to higher costs for the 90% of Germans that rely on statutory health insurance.^[20]

Among other suggestions, Germany’s Health Finance Commission recommended an adjustment to the statutory rebate imposed on patented pharmaceutical products in order to “sustainably stabilize expenditures for patented pharmaceuticals.”^[21] The Commission identified pharmaceutical spending among the areas where costs have increased since 2024. Spending on patented pharmaceuticals, which averaged an eight percent increase annually over five years, drove costs for the category.^[22] The report also noted that spending was driven by higher prices of new patented drugs, rather than prescription volumes.^[23]

The proposed “dynamic,” or “variable,” which was referenced in the Section 301 investigation notice, was not included in the final law. Instead of the proposed expenditure-linked rebate, which would have adjusted rebates based on spending growth for patented drugs and the financial capacity of the statutory health insurance system, the law includes a fixed rebate set at 8.5% of a company’s sales price.^[24] This is in addition to the existing rebate of 7%.

These changes are not unreasonable, but national efforts to respond to a key driver of rising costs and impending funding shortfalls in the health system. Notably, in response to pharmaceutical company concerns, the German government changed from the proposed variable rebate to a static rebate to be less burdensome to the industry.^[25]

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has previously ruled that an increase in the mandatory rebate is constitutional. The court rejected pharmaceutical company complaints, noting that the rebate “serves the legitimate purpose of ensuring the financial stability of the statutory health insurance system,” the financing of which “constitutes an exceptionally significant interest of the common good.”^[26]

Thus, the rebate policy is justified by a rational public policy goal. It is also not discriminatory: it is equally applicable to foreign and domestic entities.

The Section 301 investigation notice also states that “Germany conditions the confidentiality of manufacturers’ pharmaceutical pricing on certain criteria, including acceptance of a 9 percent price discount and payment of additional administrative costs” as one of the claimed “means and tools that Germany uses to implement its unfair pricing policies and practices.”^[27]

This is misleading. Germany’s new law offers drugmakers a new advantage: confidentiality.^[28] Under the usual system, drugmakers are obligated to report prices, as they should be.^[29]

Pharmaceutical corporations defend price secrecy to avoid scrutiny of their pricing practices.^[30] This impedes the public’s interest in fair prices by preventing accountability, cross-market comparison, and potentially fostering high, unreasonable prices.^[31]Countries across the globe, including the United States, recognize that health price transparency can support affordability and healthy markets, and are implementing transparency rules to that end.^[32][33]

Far from being unfair to drugmakers, Germany’s law is creating more flexibility for them by letting them opt out of price reporting requirements. Public Citizen would prefer Germany apply a much tougher standard. If anything, Germany is overly generous in allowing drugmakers to elect to conceal their prices, even if they are asked to choose between rebates and secrecy.

3. Germany’s prices are not “suppressed” and do not burden or restrict U.S. commerce.

The statute defines an “unreasonable” act, policy, or practice as one that “while not necessarily in violation of, or inconsistent with, the international legal rights of the United States, is otherwise unfair and inequitable.”^[34] Such policies include those that deny “fair and equitable […] nondiscriminatory market access opportunities for United States persons that rely upon intellectual property protection,” including “restrictions on market access related to the use, exploitation, or enjoyment of commercial benefits derived from exercising intellectual property rights in protected works or fixations or products embodying protected works.”^[35]

Insulated by patents and other exclusivities, pharmaceutical companies charge prices beyond what would be seen in a competitive market. This market power is reflected in rising launch prices for new drugs in both Germany and the United States. In Germany, launch prices increased by an average of six percent per year between 2011 and 2022.^[36] Between 2008 and 2021, U.S. launch prices increased by 20 percent per year, or 11 percent after accounting for rebates.^[37] Drugmakers also regularly hike prices after market launch. Between 2022 and 2023, among drugs with price increases, changes in list prices averaged out to an additional $590 per product, driven by increases in already expensive medicines.^[38] Among drugs already on the market between 2007 and 2018, net prices increased every year by an average of 4.5 percentage points.^[39] U.S. prices are not more fair because they take place in a supposedly “free market” — nor are they influenced by prices in other countries, as the Department of Commerce found in its 2004 drug pricing investigation.^[40] Rather, shielded by monopoly protections, companies set prices based on what the market will bear.^[41]

Pharmaceutical companies do not have a right to these pricing excesses. Patents grant the right to exclude competitors, a consequence of which is significant market power to set high prices; patents do not confer the right to a particular price or pricing authority. U.S. courts have affirmed this, noting that while patent rights “permit greater profits during a product’s exclusivity period,” they do not “create any affirmative right to make, use, or sell anything.”^[42] Where “federal patent laws do not confer a right to sell at all, they do not confer a right to sell at a particular price.”^[43] Based on this, courts have rejected claims that the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program infringes property rights by limiting companies’ ability to sell products at “market rates,” concluding, “[t]here is no protected property interest in selling goods to Medicare beneficiaries […] at a price higher than what the government is willing to pay when it reimburses those costs.”^[44]

In the absence of typical competitive constraints, and in response to high prices that do not reflect “fair value” but the market power of the industry, Germany’s pricing policies help ensure they do not overpay.

This does not mean that German prices do not support research and development (R&D). As previously mentioned, Germany’s drug price negotiation framework is designed to reward innovation.

Indeed, patented drug prices are not reflective of R&D costs. Research finds no association between R&D costs and prices.^[45] Top drug companies receive 163% of their global R&D costs from just the excess revenue generated in the United States,^[46]underscoring that these companies earn well beyond their R&D spending and don’t need to raise prices to maintain R&D investments. Exorbitant U.S. prices are not necessitated by R&D costs and there is no evidence to support the claim that lower prices in other countries burden the United States with higher costs.

This investigation should not conflate revenue with R&D. The vast majority of company revenue is not spent on R&D. Large pharmaceutical manufacturers often spend more enriching shareholders than they do developing new drugs. Over the past four years (2022 to 2025), the 15 publicly traded companies whose drugs were selected for the first and second rounds of Medicare drug price negotiations collectively spent $4.4 billion more on stock buybacks and dividends than on research and development.^[47] Moreover, pharmaceutical companies regularly overstate claims that pricing regulations will harm innovation. For example, despite research showing that high-spend drugs approved for one or more orphan (affecting fewer than 200,000 U.S. patients) indications recover R&D costs at rates comparable to or faster than other high-spend drugs, pharmaceutical industry stakeholders continue to lobby for and win lucrative carve-outs for these drugs from price negotiations.^[48][49]

Allowing high prices and revenues alone to guide R&D discussions can actually undermine innovation as the industry shifts investments to high margin products. For example, one study found that clinical trials for cancer medicines made up 46.6% of all trials assessed, indicating seemingly disproportionate levels of research compared to other disease areas.^[50] Pharmaceutical corporations also sometimes neglect investments in products that would serve patients’ needs but not profit motives, such as research into new antibiotics (the pipeline of new antibiotics from large research-based pharmaceutical companies has shrunk by 35% since 2021)^[51] and neglected diseases (private industry contributed just 15% of the global funding for neglected diseases in 2023).^[52]

This dynamic also fails to take into account the massive public-sector contributions to innovation. In the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) plays a critical role in basic research and drug development. NIH research contributed to virtually every new drug approved from 2010-2019.^[53] While omitting public-sector contributions to drug development from their pricing decisions, the pharmaceutical industry is also not transparent with its R&D costs, and industry-reported R&D costs per new drug are twice as much or more than figures from independent researchers.^[54]

In the best case, monopolies and extreme pricing behaviors they enable are an inefficient way to pay for research. Instead of focusing innovation support through these indirect means, policymakers should consider other mechanisms—such as grants and prizes—to incentivize private sector investment and help deliver products at affordable prices.^[55] In the worst case, such as continuing a monopoly-based system but limiting pricing policies that would help moderate it, this approach can harm patients.

As people in the United States know well, higher prices raise costs and make needed medicines harder to access. Four-in-ten Americans struggle to afford their medicines.^[56] The U.S. pharmaceutical pricing agreement with the U.K. underscores the risks posed to patients, with the deal expected to redirect billions in health spending toward patented drugs over other health services, leading to an estimated 229,000 excess deaths over ten years, according to a recent study.^[57]

In sum, there is no evidence that the U.S. bears a higher cost burden due to lower drug prices in other countries. U.S. prices are not reflective of fair value or justified by R&D costs. Drug prices are lower in other countries compared to the United States because those countries have systems in place to moderate the monopoly pricing excesses of prescription drug corporations. The United States is now implementing domestic policies, including the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, to address these pricing excesses, which is reasonable considering the need to ensure medicines are affordable for patients and taxpayers. We urge USTR to take no action and to drop its investigation.

^[1]https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/24/2026-12671/initiation-of-section-301-investigation-hearing-and-request-for-public-comments-germanys-persistent

^[2]https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/24/2026-12671/initiation-of-section-301-investigation-hearing-and-request-for-public-comments-germanys-persistent

^[3]  https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-07/62549-Medicare-Part-D.pdf (showing the Congressional Budget Office’s recent adjustments to projected savings regarding drug provisions in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act).

^[4] https://www.cms.gov/files/document/fact-sheet-negotiated-prices-initial-price-applicability-year-2026.pdf; https://www.cms.gov/files/document/fact-sheet-negotiated-prices-ipay-2027.pdf

^[5] https://www.arnoldventures.org/resources/national-targeted-cd-registered-voter-surveys

^[6] https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4340

^[7] https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj-2022-074166

^[8]https://www.iqwig.de/en/presse/in-the-focus/new-drugs-approval-benefit-assessment-coverage/1-drug-approval-and-early-benefit-assessment-in-germany/

^[9]https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/documents/___media_files_publications_issue_brief_2013_oct_1711_schlette_early_benefit_assessment_rx_germany_intl_brief.pdf; https://www.g-ba.de/english/benefitassessment/

^[10]https://www.iqwig.de/en/presse/in-the-focus/new-drugs-approval-benefit-assessment-coverage/1-drug-approval-and-early-benefit-assessment-in-germany/; https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/documents/___media_files_publications_issue_brief_2013_oct_1711_schlette_early_benefit_assessment_rx_germany_intl_brief.pdf; https://www.g-ba.de/english/benefitassessment/

^[11] https://www.kff.org/medicare/key-facts-about-medicare-drug-price-negotiation/; 42 U.S. Code § 1320f-3(e)(1)–(2) (stating that, alongside evidence about therapeutic alternatives [including therapeutic advancement compared to existing alternatives and the cost of those alternatives, prescribing information for a selected drug and its therapeutic alternatives, comparative effectiveness, and the extent to which a drug and its therapeutic alternatives address unmet medical needs not addressed adequately by available therapy], CMS is required to consider manufacturer-specific data, including research and development costs; production and distribution costs; data on patent applications, regulatory exclusivities, and FDA applications and approvals; and market data, revenue, and sales volume data).

^[12]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1098301526001038; https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2026/apr/international-lessons-pricing-and-financing-high-cost-medicines; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10906446/

^[13]https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Issue-Brief-Whats-the-Latest-on-Medicare-Drug-Price-Negotiations.pdf; https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/medpac-debates-reference-pricing-arbitration-to-bring-down-prices-part-b (noting that the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission also suggested binding arbitration related to negotiation of Medicare Part B drugs).

^[14] https://www.g-ba.de/english/benefitassessment/

^[15] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2019/how-drug-prices-are-negotiated-germany

^[16] https://www.kff.org/medicare/key-facts-about-medicare-drug-price-negotiation/; https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/ira-litigation-pharma-s-failed-challenges-medicare-drug-pricing

^[17] https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05142

^[18]https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/ira-litigation-pharma-s-failed-challenges-medicare-drug-pricing

^[19] https://www.recht.bund.de/bgbl/1/2026/228/VO.html

^[20] https://www.dw.com/en/how-to-fix-germanys-costly-health-care-system/a-76597471

^[21]https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateien/3_Downloads/F/FinanzKommission_Gesundheit/FinanzKommissionGesundheit_Erster_Bericht_20260330.pdf, at 276.

^[22]https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateien/3_Downloads/F/FinanzKommission_Gesundheit/FinanzKommissionGesundheit_Erster_Bericht_20260330.pdf, at 276.

^[23]https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateien/3_Downloads/F/FinanzKommission_Gesundheit/FinanzKommissionGesundheit_Erster_Bericht_20260330.pdf, at 269-71.

^[24]https://www.insideeulifesciences.com/2026/07/29/what-does-the-gkv-bstabg-reform-change-for-pharma-pricing-reimbursement-in-germany/

^[25]https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/bundestag-beschliesst-gkv-beitragssatzstabilisierunggesetz-pm-10-07-2026 (“The originally planned dynamic manufacturer’s discount will be replaced by a legally mandated increase in the static manufacturer’s discount to 15.5 percent. This is intended to address the legitimate interest of companies in planning certainty and at the same time ensure that the pharmaceutical industry makes a direct contribution to containing expenditures.”).

^[26]https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2025/bvg25-061.html?nn=68112

^[27]https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/24/2026-12671/initiation-of-section-301-investigation-hearing-and-request-for-public-comments-germanys-persistent

^[28] Sozialgesetzbuch (SGB) V [Social Code Book V] §130b(1c) (providing pharmaceutical companies the option to keep reimbursement prices for new drugs confidential if they give evidence that they are conducting research in Germany. In exchange for confidentiality, the company agrees to a nine percent discount on the reimbursement price).

^[29] Sozialgesetzbuch (SGB) V [Social Code Book V] §131(4) (showing the requirements for price data transmission).

^[30] https://yjolt.org/sites/default/files/22_yale_j.l._tech._61_naked_price.pdf

^[31]https://www.citizen.org/article/open-letter-to-medical-procurers-say-no-to-secrecy-in-medical-product-agreements/

^[32]https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/essential-medicines/intellectual-property/gspa/a72_r8-en.pdf?sfvrsn=8ecefe84_3&download=true

^[33]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/making-america-healthy-again-by-empowering-patients-with-clear-accurate-and-actionable-healthcare-pricing-information/

^[34] 19 U.S. Code § 2411(d)(3)(A)

^[35] 19 U.S. Code § 2411(d)(3)(B), (F)(ii)

^[36] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2827325

^[37] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2792986

^[38]https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/e24f630a33f0a0585337c65745904487/aspe-drug-price-tracking-brief.pdf

^[39] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762310

^[40] https://web.archive.org/web/20190414170009/https:/2016.trade.gov/td/health/DrugPricingStudy.pdf

^[41] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2545691

^[42] https://litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/AstraZeneca_2025.05.08_OPINION.pdf

^[43] Id.

^[44]https://litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/AstraZeneca_2025.05.08_OPINION.pdf

^[45] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2796669; https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57126

^[46]https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/r-d-costs-pharmaceutical-companies-do-not-explain-elevated-us-drug-prices

^[47] https://www.citizen.org/article/false-choice-between-affordability-and-innovation/

^[48] https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2026.00209

^[49] https://www.citizen.org/article/hundreds-of-lobbyists-hired-to-undermine-drug-price-negotiations/

^[50] https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/7a5517d6-1077-4ecd-bf32-d6d664add439/content

^[51]https://accesstomedicinefoundation.org/in-the-media/antibiotic-innovation-shrinks-as-drug-resistant-infections-rise-globally-says-new-report

^[52] https://cdn.impactglobalhealth.org/media/G-FINDER%202024_Full%20report.pdf

^[53] https://doi.org/10.36687/inetwp133

^[54] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7054832/; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11704977/

^[55] https://www.keionline.org/book/prizes-to-stimulate-innovation

^[56] https://www.kff.org/health-costs/public-opinion-on-prescription-drugs-and-their-prices/

^[57] https://www.bmj.com/content/394/bmj-2026-340588

August 6, 2026

Public Citizen Endorses Resolution Calling for a Democratic, Worker-Centered Vision for Trade Policy

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On May 14, 2026, Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) introduced House Resolution 1286 (H.Res.1268) calling for a trade policy that supports workers, consumers, independent farmers, small businesses, and the environment.

Decades of “free trade” deals, written by and for the richest of the rich, killed good jobs and gutted working-class communities. President Trump claimed he would fix these problems, but instead his misguided strategy has thrust the United States into trade wars with our closest allies, created economic uncertainty with ever-changing tariffs, and exacerbated the ongoing affordability crisis.

Public Citizen is proud to endorse the Fair Trade for Working Families resolution alongside the United Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, AFL-CIO, IAM Union, Citizens Trade Campaign, Rethink Trade, Public Citizen, Sierra Club, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, the National Family Farm Coalition, BlueGreen Alliance, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

Every member of Congress who opposes Trump’s authoritarian power grab should cosponsor Rep. DeLauro’s Fair Trade for Working Families resolution to show American workers that they have a real plan for trade that uplifts workers, protects the environment and fights corporate power.

The Trump Administration’s Many Tools for Seizing Critical Minerals Abroad

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Introduction

Minerals are deemed “critical” by the U.S. government if they are considered both essential to the nation’s economy or national security and vulnerable to supply chain disruption. Critical minerals are needed for the batteries and magnets that electrify cars and industry, for data centers that power artificial intelligence, and for the advanced weapons and targeting systems the military relies on. Because China dominates much of the global supply chain, gaining access to alternative supply routes and building domestic production capacity have become national priorities.

Under the Biden administration, discussions surrounding critical minerals were primarily focused on advancing climate goals, clean energy technologies, and the global transition to renewable energy. The climate-hostile Trump administration has intensified the push to secure critical mineral supply chains, but rather than the green transition as its rationale, Trump’s drive for critical minerals is in the name of national security and military dominance.

The current administration has hardwired access to critical minerals into a new generation of (mostly) bilateral trade and investment agreements. Unfortunately, many have been “negotiated” in secrecy under conditions of duress, tariff threats, and legal ambiguity. Though a number of these have been named “Agreements on Reciprocal Trade” (ART), these instruments are in fact defined by their lack of reciprocity and a near-total asymmetry with the other country shouldering all the obligations.

This report examines the various pieces that make up the Trump administration’s global critical minerals strategy to date and how it entrenches patterns of exploitation and extractivism that lock resource‑rich countries into raw‑material supplier roles under a banner of “supply chain resilience.”

Trump 2.0 and the Global Scramble for Minerals

Both the 2025 and 2026 President’s Trade Policy Agendas (TPAs) treat critical minerals as one of six core areas of the America First Trade Policy. The 2026 TPA describes the strategy for “Secure Supply Chains for Critical Minerals and Sectors” as “pursu[ing] resilience of its critical supply chains by reshoring industry and diversifying trade across the entire value chain of … critical mineral production.” The agenda pledged the government to take “strong action through a whole-of-government approach to secure critical supply chains.”

Aluminum mining. (Matthew Williams-Ellis)

This rush to conclude minerals agreements raises concern, as widespread labor, environmental, and human rights abuses are widely documented throughout minerals mining, recovery, and processing supply chains. Trade and investment deals that do not require transparency and accountability by mining and processing firms, lack strong and enforceable protections, and fail to respect the sovereignty and development goals of partner countries will likely exacerbate harms to vulnerable communities in resource-rich areas.

Unfortunately, deals like the U.S.-Indonesia ART, U.S.-Malaysia ART, and U.S.-Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) tie minimal tariff relief or other nonbinding investment commitments to expansive commitments on how partners can regulate, export, and allocate their mineral wealth. These arrangements undermine partners’ sovereignty and development goals. They hobble domestic industrial strategies (similar to ones employed by the U.S. to protect developing industries and increase value-added), constrain their policy space and governments’ ability to manage their own resources, and grant foreign actors (the U.S. or U.S. investors) power over domestic resource governance.

These secretive deals were concluded without meaningful congressional input or public scrutiny. For example, the administration ignored congressional demands for transparency during the negotiation of the DRC SPA, announcing a final deal without any democratic oversight. The Indonesia deal, like other ARTs, was also negotiated in secret and without input from either country’s civil society. In general, these trade agreements have been formulated and implemented wholly by the executive branch without the normal (already inadequate) congressional trade agreement procedures and without opportunities for Congress to review or approve the text.

Beyond these bilateral agreements, the Trump administration’s emerging critical minerals strategy uses Executive Order-created processes, such as establishing the National Energy Dominance Council, to coordinate action across federal agencies. The result is a layered system in which different agencies play specialized roles: The Department of State and U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) build the international architecture; the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) supply capital; the Department of Defense (DOD) shapes stockpiling and industrial‑base priorities; the Department of Energy backs technology and commercialization; and the Departments of Interior and Commerce surface domestic projects and (de)regulatory pathways. (See Appendix 1 for Executive Orders related to critical minerals.)

The Web of Critical Minerals Instruments

There is no central source of information where the Trump administration makes clear how its various minerals-related instruments are intended to interact or what precisely the end goal is. Based on information available to date, the various agreements generally fall into one of five categories, described below. (See Appendix 2 for the current list of known and agreed-upon critical minerals instruments since 2025.)

Trump announcing reciprocal tariffs. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

1. Agreements on Reciprocal Trade 

ARTs are presented in the President’s 2026 Trade Policy Agenda as a major pillar of the administration’s America First trade strategy, with USTR negotiating binding, enforceable bilateral deals that require partners to cut tariffs and non-tariff barriers while maintaining U.S. leverage. Countries negotiated ARTs in order to reduce the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs President Trump invoked using authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

While ARTs, by themselves, are not written as critical‑minerals agreements, they create the vertical, country‑by‑country scaffolding into which the other categories of minerals-specific deals plug. The ART for Guatemala contains no mention of critical minerals. In other ARTs, critical minerals are a significant focus, and binding commitments seek to ensure predictable upstream access for U.S. companies while constraining the trading partner’s sovereign decision-making over its mineral resources. (See Appendix 3 for the relevant provisions in these agreements.)

For example, the ART with Ecuador has several minerals-related provisions. It provides that “Ecuador shall work with the United States to facilitate investment in critical mineral projects,” and requires Ecuador to “allow and facilitate” U.S. investment to explore, mine, refine, process, and export critical minerals. Ecuador must also “develop and implement a system to track precious metals from extraction through transport, processing, and export,” beginning with copper, “strengthen the institutions” enforcing mining laws in cooperation with the United States to monitor production and marketing “in real time,” and “issue open public tenders for… critical mineral extraction and processing.” Taken together, these obligations align Ecuador’s mining and critical minerals sector with U.S. investment and security interests and give the U.S. more control over how those minerals are tracked and monitored across the supply chain, from mine to export.

Implementation of the ARTs is currently uneven. Some agreements are signed but not yet in force; others are being partially implemented; and still others are facing political or legal pushback, especially in response to the Supreme Court decision invalidating the IEEPA‑based tariffs that underpinned the ART system. Since that ruling, only Ecuador and Jordan have become new ART signatories, while Malaysia announced its ART was now “null and void.” Vietnam and Thailand have yet to ratify their framework deals negotiated earlier.

Frameworks for an ART

USTR has announced several bilateral agreements that it describes as “Frameworks for an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade.” In cases where it will take longer to negotiate the binding terms of an ART, the administration has touted these framework agreements as an “early harvest” and show of progress toward a potential future ART. The 2026 Trade Policy Agenda notes that USTR signed ARTs with multiple partners and announced framework deals with others, and the “USTR is actively negotiating to upgrade each framework deal into an ART or equivalent.”

Generally, the U.S. and the relevant partner country will release a joint statement announcing the framework agreements and describing its general goals, though often no formal text is made public. While the frameworks and related joint statements are themselves non-binding, they can provide a glimpse into what provisions may be included in a final ART or other binding agreement. Even when a framework’s joint statement does not explicitly mention minerals, the final ART very well may. Indeed, some ARTs, for example those with Ecuador and El Salvador, do have terms on minerals, even though their framework statement did not.

2. USTR’s Proposed Plurilateral Agreement on Trade in Critical Minerals

The 2026 Trade Policy Agenda states the “President directed, pursuant to Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, USTR and Commerce to…negotiate a plurilateral agreement — the Agreement on Trade in Critical Minerals (ATCM) — with like-minded partners to establish common border-adjusted price mechanisms for specific minerals and downstream products.” The goal of such a mechanism would ostensibly be to “re-shore critical minerals mining and processing by establishing a preferential trade zone free from non-market distortions, and will create a reliable supply for critical minerals that we cannot extract domestically.” Following that directive, in February 2026, USTR announced it would pursue such negotiations and opened a comment period for input.

The ATCM is thus framed as the eventual binding framework for coordinating price mechanisms, supply‑chain rules, and security‑driven standards in critical minerals, sitting horizontally across the bilateral ARTs that the United States is signing with individual partners.

In addition to the ARTs, the administration has been building a web of instruments expected to serve as the practical scaffolding for the eventual ATCM. On February 4, the State Department convened the 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial, with Vice President JD Vance, USTR Jamieson Greer, and three other cabinet secretaries. Fifty-four countries plus the European Union attended. The administration highlighted many major actions focused on securing the critical minerals supply chain.

Action Plans

At the conclusion of the State Department’s minerals ministerial, USTR announced the intent to “develop Action Plans for critical minerals supply chain resilience [that] will develop coordinated trade policies and mechanisms, such as border-adjusted price floors, that can mitigate critical mineral supply chain vulnerabilities.” USTR continued, “Through the development of these Action Plans, we will lay the groundwork for a binding plurilateral agreement on trade in critical minerals with like-minded partners,” — the future ATCM. Action plans convert political and framework language into concrete joint workstreams — identifying priority minerals and project pipelines, testing tools like border‑adjusted price floors, and coordinating stockpiling and export‑control approaches — while still functioning as policy roadmaps rather than treaties.

In the two-page U.S.-Mexico Critical Minerals Action Plan, for example, the two governments “seek to develop a new paradigm for preferential trade in critical minerals supported by price floors and other measures,” launching a 60‑day program to explore coordinated trade policies (including border‑adjusted price floors), “explore how such measures may be embodied in a plurilateral agreement,” and identify specific mining, processing, and manufacturing projects for priority financing and policy support. It is, in short, an agreement to continue discussions toward an eventual plurilateral agreement. At present, Mexico, Japan, and the European Union have agreed to such action plans.

3. “Minerals for Security” Agreements

There are two significant agreements that require their own category designation, which we are calling “minerals-for-security” agreements. Under such a model, the U.S. offers military or security support to a country in conflict in exchange for access to its mineral resources. Following the shocking Trump-Zelensky White House blowup, in April 2025 the State Department announced the U.S.-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund as a condition for continuing to support Ukraine’s defense effort. Under the deal, the U.S. and Ukraine jointly support a fund for new mining projects, with U.S. military assistance counting as its contributions to the fund.

Congolese soldiers in North Kivu. (Sasha Lezhnev, Enough Project)

This agreement reportedly became an inspiration for the U.S.-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement. The SPA is one of three agreements making up the Washington Accords, a series of Trump-negotiated deals ostensibly meant to end violence in the DRC perpetrated by Rwandan-backed militant groups. In practice, the deal gives sweeping financial and regulatory incentives to U.S. mining companies and grants the U.S. government unprecedented control over Congolese mineral resources. These are binding agreements devoid of meaningful labor, human rights, or environmental safeguards.

A similarly cynical “minerals-for-medicine” approach appears in Zambia, where the administration reportedly tried to tie health assistance and HIV funding to critical‑minerals access. A leaked draft State Department memo, reported by The New York Times, describes conditioning continued HIV aid on Zambia’s agreement to “enhance U.S. access to its vital mineral resources,” and warns that Washington must be prepared to “publicly withdraw support from Zambia on a large scale” if it refuses. Zambia’s government confirmed that the United States sought to make a critical minerals agreement — which included provisions for “preferential treatment for U.S. companies” in Zambia’s mining sector — conditional on signing a controversial health MOU. This exploitative “minerals-for-medicine” strategy is part of the same coercive playbook seen in the minerals-for-security arrangements, in which life‑saving aid and security guarantees are leveraged to secure privileged control over critical minerals supply chains.

4. Nonbinding Minerals-Specific Frameworks

Some agreements focused specifically on minerals are described as frameworks, perhaps to imply that an additional, more binding agreement could be in the future. For example, the U.S.-Japan Framework states that it is not legally binding, yet still lays out detailed pillars on securing supply, investment in mining and processing, standards‑based trading systems, and stockpiling. The U.S.-Japan Framework also includes concrete actions such as jointly identifying projects to fill supply‑chain gaps, mobilizing public and private finance, launching a ministerial‑level investment dialogue, creating a rapid‑response group for supply disruptions, and exploring coordinated stockpiling.

The Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework, announced by the United States, Japan, Australia, and India, is currently the only framework agreement with multiple countries. The Quad initiative, negotiated by the State Department, is a non‑binding effort that aims to mobilize up to $20 billion in public and private capital for mining, processing, and recycling projects. It is organized around three pillars: mobilizing investment via export credit agencies and development finance institutions, harmonizing permitting and regulatory frameworks, and advancing recycling and recovery.

5. Critical‑Minerals Memoranda of Understanding 

Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) are a broad category of generally non‑binding political instruments through which the administration can seek to influence the actions of foreign governments related to critical minerals supply chains while avoiding enforceable rights under domestic or international law, or obligations on labor, environmental protection, or community consent. Administration officials frequently discuss critical-minerals frameworks and MOUs in the same breath or use the terms interchangeably. The clearest distinction, based on the few available texts, seems to be that frameworks tend to use terminology commonly used in trade agreements, while MOUs tend to describe intent to cooperate.

MOUs have been negotiated by various branches of government for a variety of purposes: to function as platforms; to open channels with allied governments and corporations; and to steer investment and public financing into cross‑border mining and processing projects in the name of supply‑chain resilience. In practice, they encourage participants to strengthen and diversify critical minerals supply chains; promote trade and investment in exploration, extraction, processing, refining, recycling, and recovery; while explicitly allowing either side to withdraw by written notice.

Available texts have revealed disparate approaches, for example the 2025 U.S.-Thailand MOU explicitly describes an expectation of the signatory countries having “first opportunity to invest,” which does not appear in the United Kingdom or Malaysia MOUs.

Trump’s Critical Minerals-Related Instruments

As mentioned, there is no publicly available central repository of minerals agreements. The most complete information made available is from a February 2026 State Department fact sheet that stated:

Today, the United States signed eleven new bilateral critical minerals frameworks or MOUs with countries, including Argentina, the Cook Islands, Ecuador, Guinea, Morocco, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan. The United States signed ten other critical mineral frameworks or MOUs in the past five months and reached completion of negotiations on such agreements with seventeen other countries.

This disclosure fails to name the ten countries with which the U.S. supposedly already had signed agreements, or the 17 countries with which negotiations were allegedly completed. It suggests that in total, 38 MOUs or frameworks have been agreed or would be shortly. A Freedom of Information Act request for the list of countries and text of those agreements is pending.

Public Citizen’s review of publicly available announcements and documents revealed the existence of 15 MOUs and 12 framework agreements to date. Less than half of the MOUs announced have been made fully public, only two of which were released by the U.S. government. The rest are public thanks to the partner country. The Quad framework is the only framework agreement text released by the U.S.

The following map illustrates the known minerals-related instruments negotiated under Trump’s second term. The same information is available in a table format in Appendix 2.

Map: Known Minerals Instruments Since 2025

An interactive version of this map is available here.

	Attended the Minerals Ministerial, but has no known agreement
	Has a non-binding MOU, Action Plan, or Framework
	Has a binding ART, framework for an ART, or Minerals for Security deal
	Has a binding agreement and at least one non-binding agreement

 

Power And Vulnerability Explain Differences Among Countries’ Deals 

The instruments reviewed here form a clear spectrum, from non-binding MOUs with symmetric language and clean exit rights (such as the UK) to binding treaties that subordinate a partner country’s domestic law to U.S. negotiating priorities (Ukraine) and require sovereign governments to rewrite their constitutions on U.S. timelines (DRC). The position each country occupies on that spectrum can be explained by its vulnerability: export dependency and how badly it needs relief from U.S. tariffs, security guarantees, or military support that the agreement places at risk.

The following examples from recent minerals agreements demonstrate this dynamic.

Indonesia holds more than 40 percent of global nickel reserves and produces well over half of the world’s mined nickel, a metal that is crucial for batteries and wind and solar power. Faced with a threatened 32 percent “reciprocal” tariff, Indonesia accepted an ART that effectively dismantles its nickel‑sector industrial policy for the U.S. market. The ART requires Indonesia to “allow and facilitate U.S. investment in its territory to explore, mine, extract, refine, process, transport, distribute, and export critical minerals” on terms no less favorable than for its own firms and to “provide greater certainty for companies involved in critical mineral extraction… to increase production capacity and supporting operational growth.”

Under the agreement, Indonesia makes a binding commitment to “remove restrictions on exports to the United States of industrial commodities, including critical minerals,” which Public Citizen and Indonesian groups interpret as forbidding export bans, quotas, and domestic‑processing requirements on exports to the United States, directly undercutting Indonesia’s 2020 key industrial policy reforms. The ART also obliges Indonesia to facilitate imports of U.S. coal and purchase $15 billion in U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) and other fossil fuels, in exchange for a reduction of Trump’s reciprocal tariff — which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unlawful the very next day.

In a context where nickel operations have already produced hazardous labor conditions, land conflicts, and water contamination in mining regions, locking in bans on export restrictions and processing requirements replicates a colonial extractivist model in which resource‑rich countries surrender economic sovereignty. Such deals lock resource-rich countries into raw‑commodity exporter status while richer countries capture the value‑added segments of the supply chain. The ART also lacks any enforceable protections for labor rights, the environment, or Indigenous communities, opening the door for even further unchecked exploitation, degradation, and human rights abuses.

Malaysia has vast reserves of non‑radioactive rare earth elements, bauxite, tin, and other minerals used in military equipment, wind turbines, and electric vehicle motors. Malaysia has ambitions for an industrial strategy to shift from upstream extraction to downstream value addition, towards manufacturing and technological self-sufficiency, for higher-skilled jobs, supply chain integration, and sovereignty over its resources. This strategy explicitly seeks to replicate elements of Indonesia’s nickel playbook, where export bans, quotas, and domestic‑processing requirements were used to force investment into local refining and downstream capacity.

However, under Trump’s bilateral bullying through punishing tariffs, geopolitical pressure, and executive overreach, Malaysia was effectively coerced into an ART that impedes these goals by requiring a binding commitment to refrain from enacting bans or imposing quotas on exports of critical minerals or rare earth elements to the United States. The ART instead obliges Malaysia to “promote and facilitate” U.S. investment in critical minerals assets, provide licensing certainty, and ensure predictable upstream access for U.S. firms, while constraining Malaysia’s leverage over its own resources. A parallel Critical Minerals MoU, though formally non‑binding, commits Malaysia to prioritize U.S. investment, streamline permitting, cooperate on mineral‑asset sales, and coordinate on pricing frameworks, including possible price floors — creating an institutional channel for U.S. agencies to shape Malaysia’s regulatory and investment decisions in the sector without the transparency or scrutiny that would accompany a formal trade agreement.

Ukraine, negotiating a critical minerals deal while under active military invasion, agreed to establish a jointly managed United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund (a new vehicle to channel reconstruction and resource revenues), financed by contributing 50 percent of royalties, license fees, and similar payments from new or unexploited mineral, oil, and gas licenses and production‑sharing agreements, under an agreement of indefinite duration. Once ratified by the Ukrainian parliament, the Fund agreement’s provisions take precedence over any conflicting Ukrainian laws, meaning Kyiv cannot invoke future domestic legislation to override its obligations. The agreement ultimately grants the U.S.-Ukraine Partnership preferential strategic asset investment and offtake rights over future production from covered Ukrainian resource projects, including highly sought‑after battery and defense minerals such as lithium, titanium, and graphite. The agreement effectively functions as a “minerals for security” deal signed between the U.S. and Ukraine in the midst of war and deep fiscal dependence, and risks subordinating Ukraine’s future mineral revenues and governance to the priorities of its security patron.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) holds the world’s largest reserves of critical minerals such as cobalt, copper, and lithium. Indeed, the DRC holds around 70 percent and 60 percent of the world’s cobalt and lithium reserves, respectively, as well as significant deposits of nickel and uranium. Under pressure from a U.S. security relationship and an active, armed rebel incursion, the DRC committed to a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) and to amending its constitution to adopt a legal framework preferred by U.S. investors.The SPA grants U.S. companies a binding “right of first offer” to a secretive Strategic Asset Reserve of critical‑mineral and gold deposits, creates preferential fiscal, tax, and regulatory treatment on “qualifying projects,” amends its mining code, tax laws, and, if needed, its Constitution within a year to fit the deal. It also creates a Joint Steering Committee in which U.S. officials co‑manage decisions on those assets in the Strategic Asset Reserve. Most of the DRC’s obligations are binding, while U.S. commitments are expressions of intent to provide technical help and mobilize finance. This agreement fundamentally reshapes who controls access to the DRC’s vast mineral resources and on whose terms, requiring the Congolese government to essentially forfeit its sovereignty and governance over its mineral deposits and give U.S. companies the preference to mining sites, even over Congolese investors.

By contrast, the United Kingdom — negotiating as a peer with a position of economic and political parity (G7, NATO ally, high-income democracy, nuclear-armed, etc.) — has signed only a two-page critical-minerals memorandum with no legally binding obligations and with exit rights for either party. It is substantively different from the critical-minerals MOUs signed by developing countries. Whereas a number of those MOUs spell out investor wishlist items like the early sharing of information regarding potential tenders and projects, the UK MOU reads more like a two‑way industrial partnership, aimed at “cooperative efforts” to “jointly identify” and “work together.” It lacks references to tenders or explicit “first opportunity to invest” expectation language.

Seen simply, countries with more vulnerability signed away more sovereignty. Countries with less vulnerability, or that simply refused the binding template, signed away less.

Fora for Dialogue on Critical Minerals

In addition to negotiating agreements with varying levels of enforceability, the administration has also established fora for dialogue on critical minerals, two of which are particularly notable.

First is the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), the successor to the Biden-era Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), aimed at building a preferential trade coalition for critical minerals and raw materials with coordinated price floors. A comprehensive list of current FORGE members is not available, but known members include the 17 legacy members from the MSP: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. Because FORGE was announced at the State Department’s Minerals Ministerial, attendees to that event are likely candidates for current or future FORGE membership.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial. (U.S. State Department)

The second notable forum is Pax Silica, a broad initiative to strengthen global supply chains, covering tangible inputs such as critical mineral extraction and processing, advanced manufacturing, and technologies like frontier AI models and applications. While the minerals agreements and FORGE drive the upstream supply, Pax Silica adds an additional layer of U.S.-led coordination and governance related to the entire AI-supply chain. Starting from seven founding signatories, the Pax Silica coalition now numbers roughly two dozen signatories that the U.S. is working with to secure critical minerals, semiconductors, energy inputs, and other components of the AI ecosystem’s supply chain. Pax Silica signatories can plug into dedicated instruments like the $250 million Pax Silica Fund for critical minerals and infrastructure projects, as well as logistics-focused AI assistance pilot programs that move AI-related goods through key corridors.

Pax Silica signatories include Argentina, Australia, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Taxpayer Financing of Critical Minerals Investments

Beyond the international trade instruments, the administration has mobilized a whole-of-government toolkit spanning export credit, development finance, stockpiling, defense-industrial planning, technology funding, and domestic permitting to secure supply through multiple, mutually reinforcing tools. Trump’s Executive Order 14241 specifically instructed agencies such as EXIM and DFC to adapt existing financing authorities to support mineral supply chains.

U.S. International Development Finance Corporation: The DFC traditionally served as America’s development bank, focusing its financing on the private sector in developing countries. Under Trump 2.0, the DFC is now one of the main government tools for shaping global critical minerals supply chains. In the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed by Congress, the DFC scope and scale were dramatically increased. The DFC’s contingent liability cap, the amount of money DFC can disburse in loans, was raised from $60 billion to $205 billion. A $5 billion equity revolving fund was created at the Treasury, enabling the DFC to increasingly use equity stakes and other tools, such as royalties, streams, and offtakes, to allow more active governance and influence over board decisions and project standards. DFC is also newly authorized to invest in higher-income countries and to take on greater risk (i.e., take larger equity stakes in projects and have greater flexibility to make larger investments). The DFC is now also able to provide direct loans and guarantees to domestic energy and critical minerals projects via Defense Production Act authorities.

Since 2025, confirmed DFC backing for critical minerals projects worldwide includes Angola, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine, and Zambia. The State Department highlighted three specific mining projects as “foundational to the successful implementation” of the U.S.-DRC agreement. The DFC is involved in all three.

Export‑Import Bank of the United States: The Export‑Import Bank (EXIM) is now also key to U.S. minerals strategy. Moving away from its traditional role as an export credit agency assisting U.S. exporters by financing foreign purchases of U.S. goods, it launched Project Vault in February 2026. Project Vault is backed by a $10 billion EXIM direct loan and nearly $2 billion in private capital to establish the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve, a public-private partnership that aims to store raw material inventories for civilian manufacturers to protect against supply chain disruptions and support domestic production and processing. Earlier EXIM programs supporting critical minerals include a targeted financing program for U.S. buyers, known as the Supply Chain Resiliency Initiative, and Make More in America, which helps finance U.S. domestic mining, production, and processing facilities.

Department of Defense: In the sweeping 2025 budget reconciliation bill, Congress gave the Department of Defense new avenues to increase purchases, support supply chains, and channel financing into critical minerals industries. These include $5 billion for the Industrial Base Fund to support critical‑minerals supply chains, $2 billion for the National Defense Stockpile Transaction Fund to expand the National Defense Stockpile through purchases of critical minerals, $1 billion in additional Defense Production Act funding that can be used for critical‑minerals projects, and $500 million for the Office of Strategic Capital to provide loans and other support to critical‑minerals‑related companies.

Department of Energy: The Department of Energy recently created or reorganized offices around critical minerals and energy innovation and signaled nearly $1 billion in prospective funding opportunities across extraction, refining, recycling, and materials processing.

Trump’s push for critical minerals doesn’t just rewrite trade rules; it also directs EXIM, DFC, the Defense Department, and DOE to use their financing tools to pump billions of dollars in taxpayer‑backed support into mining and processing projects without sufficient oversight or guardrails to protect vulnerable communities and the environment. Recent White House and agency guidance has also pulled the Commerce Department into the mix as a central player in minerals financing and deal‑making, including through large loans and equity stakes. Taken together, these project‑finance vehicles are highly susceptible to bankrolling opaque, high‑risk, politically connected ventures under the banner of national security.

Possible Conflicts of Interest 

In seeking to encourage mining, the Trump administration is prioritizing speed over corporate accountability and ethical safeguards, departing from due diligence practices and exposing U.S. taxpayers to risky projects that may result in problematic mining processes and/or wind up failing completely.

Trump with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. (The White House)

Recent reporting about the timeline of private investments and government to government dealmaking related to tungsten mining in Kazakhstan raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest. President Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. increased their investments in a firm that later merged with a mining company Cove Kaz shortly before the company secured significant tungsten mining rights from the Kazakh government, reportedly with the direct help of President Trump, Secretary of State Rubio, and Commerce Secretary Lutnick. The administration then announced that Commerce Secretary Lutnick signed an undisclosed MOU on critical minerals with the Kazakh government, and the DFC and EXIM bank offered up to $1.6 billion to help develop tungsten mining in regions of Kazakhstan that are now 70% controlled by that company.

Another example on the domestic front shows how taxpayer money is being used to buy into private mining firms which could benefit individuals close to the administration. The Trump administration provided a $1.6 billion package for USA Rare Earth, combining a $1.3 billion  federal loan with $277 million  in additional funding for a Texas rare‑earths mine. In that deal, the private financing was led by Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm formerly run by current Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and now controlled by his sons, raising glaring conflict‑of‑interest and cronyism concerns.

Similarly, Vulcan Elements, a small rare‑earth startup, received a record‑setting $620 million  Defense Department Office of Strategic Capital loan — roughly twice the company’s valuation — after receiving backing from 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. Vulcan Elements also secured additional Pentagon contracts and a $50 million  equity investment from the Commerce Department, amid allegations that White House pressure rushed the deal through and improperly enriched the president’s son.

Considerations for Policymakers

Across these critical minerals trade and investment agreements and project finance dealmaking, the same pattern repeats: rushed, chaotic, and opaque negotiations with little or no participation by workers, the public, or communities most directly affected, and minimal congressional involvement before commitments are made. That procedural deficit has real consequences. Even nominally nonbinding MoUs and framework agreements can become gateways to real project pipelines, letters of intent, financing commitments, and equity stakes with long-term strategic and fiscal consequences.

This raises broader questions for policymakers about how the United States should balance the goal of secure, reliable supply chains for critical minerals with the needs and rights of resource-rich communities. How far should trade instruments reach into partners’ mining, export, and investment policies? And will Congress exercise its constitutional authority over trade policy, appropriations, and oversight in what is now a deeply complex global minerals program built on (mostly) bilateral trade agreements that bypass the treaty‑ratification process and on billions of taxpayer dollars for financing, domestic permitting, stockpiling, and industrial programs?

Policymakers should reject critical minerals deals that emphasize U.S. control rather than mutual development; that prioritize increased militarism and investor profits at the expense of a just clean energy transition; that exclude meaningful participation of affected communities; and that lack strong, binding, and enforceable human rights, labor standards, and environmental safeguards.

Going forward, any trade, investment, or fiscal initiatives related to critical minerals supply chains must be developed through transparent, participatory processes that allow for informed input from all interested stakeholders, especially frontline communities. Any such deals must also undergo congressional review and approval, as is required by the Constitution. Without oversight or guardrails, U.S. taxpayer money could be financing harmful investments or used to benefit administration insiders and their political allies.

The stakes of any U.S. deal to secure access to critical minerals are particularly high for already-vulnerable communities, as displacement of Indigenous Peoples, forced labor, environmental destruction, and other widespread labor and human rights abuses are widely documented throughout minerals mining, recovery, and processing supply chains. Critical minerals agreements must not perpetuate an extractivist model that drives these ongoing harms or that adds other significant long-term risks, such as increased debt liabilities, on partner countries.

Recommendations

Policymakers should insist that any deal related to trade in critical minerals contains measures that help the United States and its trade partners meet important climate, job, sustainable development, and human rights goals.

Key initial steps towards these ends include ensuring any agreements contain:

• Robust provisions to advance minerals circularity, ensuring that transition minerals are traced, reused, refurbished, and recycled whenever possible rather than burned or landfilled at the products’ end of life;
• Strong and binding labor standards, environmental safeguards, Indigenous rights guarantees, and human rights protections backed by swift and rigorous enforcement mechanisms, building on those recommended in the Principles to Ensure Energy Transition Minerals Advance Justice, Equity and Human Rights, and by the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurances (IRMA), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and similar frameworks;
• Policy investments, technical support, and other measures that aid in the expansion of value-chain job creation in the United States and other regions where minerals are extracted or recovered.

Congress must act on both the process and the substance. It should demand hearings, documents, and Government Accountability Office and Inspector General reviews of the whole international architecture — not only for the signed ARTs and the Ukraine and DRC deals, but also for the MOUs and framework agreements being used to justify massive EXIM and DFC commitments. And it should use appropriations, authorizing legislation, and congressional review requirements to establish minimum guardrails going forward. If Congress does not act now, it will be left to supervise the consequences of far-reaching critical minerals deals that it never meaningfully reviewed, shaped, or approved.

Appendix 1: Executive Orders Related to Critical Minerals Since 2025

Executive orders (EOs) are the core legal instrument of Trump’s critical minerals agenda, providing the (purported) legal authority, coercive threat mechanisms, and deal-making architecture that underpin the bilateral agreements and MOUs described in this report.

EO 14241 (“Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production,” March 20, 2025) is the foundational order. It invoked emergency power to declare “our national and economic security are now acutely threatened by our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production,” directing all federal agencies to facilitate domestic mineral production “to the maximum possible extent” and authorizes DFC and DOD to use Defense Production Act authority for domestic mineral investment.

The trade‑enforcement and deal‑making architecture is then built around a sequence of orders. EO 14257 (“Regulating Imports with a Reciprocal Tariff…,” April 2, 2025) establishes the reciprocal tariff system used for so-called “Liberation Day” tariff orders, claiming International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) emergency authority to threaten sharply higher tariffs to trading partners while promising tariff reductions and even retroactive duty refunds to partners that sign agreements and align with U.S. economic and security priorities.1 Although not a minerals‑specific order, it codifies the “carrots and sticks” that support the bilateral frameworks. That IEEPA‑based tariff authority was later invalidated by the Supreme Court on February 20, 2026, forcing the termination of all IEEPA‑based tariff action and leading the Administration to seek alternative legal hooks for its tariff strategy. Some countries that signed ARTs under threat of now-invalidated IEEPA tariffs are second-guessing the validity of those deals.

Latter executive orders — EO 14272 (“Ensuring National Security and Economic Resilience Through Section 232 Actions on Processed Critical Minerals…,” April 15, 2025), EO 14346 (“Modifying the Scope of Reciprocal Tariffs…,” September 5, 2025) and its annex “’Potential Tariff Adjustments for Aligned Partners’ (PTAAP)” which conditions tariff reductions on trading partners concluding trade and security agreements, and Proclamation 11001 (“Adjusting Imports of Processed Critical Minerals…,” January 14, 2026) — shift the legal basis of tariffs onto Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.2 These EOs direct Commerce to investigate processed critical minerals imports under Section 232, to condition relief on signing trade and security agreements, and to authorize negotiations that can include price floors and other trade‑restricting measures. Because Section 232 tariff authority was not challenged or invalidated by the Supreme Court’s IEEPA ruling, the EOs and the Proclamation survive as the legal backbone of the bilateral agreements’ architecture.

All Executive Orders Related to Critical Minerals Since 2025

1. January 20, 2025 — EO 14154, Unleashing American Energy
   Sec. 3. “Immediate Review of All Agency Actions that Potentially Burden the Development of Domestic Energy Resources. (a) The heads of all agencies shall review all existing regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, settlements, consent orders, and any other agency actions (collectively, agency actions) to identify those agency actions that impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources — with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.“
2. January 20, 2025 — EO 14156, Declaring a National Energy Emergency
   Sec. 3. Expediting the Delivery of Energy Infrastructure. (a) To facilitate the Nation’s energy supply, agencies shall identify and use all relevant lawful emergency and other authorities available to them to expedite the completion of all authorized and appropriated infrastructure, energy [including critical minerals], environmental, and natural resources projects that are within the identified authority of each of the Secretaries to perform or to advance.
3. February 14, 2025 — EO 14213 Establishing the National Energy Dominance Council
   • Sec. 4 “The Council shall… advise the President on improving the processes for permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, and export of all forms of American energy, including critical minerals;
4. February 25, 2025 — EO 14220, Addressing the Threat to National Security from Imports of Copper
   Sec. 3. Required Actions. (a) The Secretary of Commerce shall consult with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Energy, and the heads of other relevant executive departments and agencies as determined by the Secretary of Commerce to evaluate the national security risks associated with copper import dependency.
5. March 20, 2025 — EO 14241, Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production
   Sec. 3. Priority Projects. (a) Within 10 days of the date of this order, the head of each executive department and agency (agency) involved in the permitting of mineral production in the United States shall provide to the Chair of the NEDC a list of all mineral production projects for which a plan of operations, a permit application, or other application for approval has been submitted to such agency. Within 10 days of the submission of such lists, the head of each such agency shall, in coordination with the Chair of the NEDC, identify priority projects that can be immediately approved or for which permits can be immediately issued, and take all necessary or appropriate actions within the agency’s authority to expedite and issue the relevant permits or approvals.
6. April 8, 2025 — EO 14261—Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry and Amending Executive Order 14241
   • Sec. 3. Strengthening Our National Energy Security. The Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC) shall designate coal as a “mineral” as defined in section 2 of Executive Order 14241 of March 20, 2025 (Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production), thereby entitling coal to all the benefits of a “mineral.”
7. April 15, 2025 — EO 14272, Ensuring National Security and Economic Resilience Through Section 232 Actions on Processed Critical Minerals and Derivative Products
   Sec. 3. Section 232 Investigation. (a) The Secretary of Commerce shall initiate an investigation under section 232 to determine the effects on national security of imports of processed critical minerals and their derivative products.
8.  April 24, 2025 — EO 14285, Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources
   Sec. 3. Strategic Seabed Critical Mineral Access. Within 60 days of the date of this order: (a) The Secretary of Commerce shall… acting through the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, expedite the process for reviewing and issuing seabed mineral exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond national jurisdiction under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act
9. September 5, 2025 — EO 14346 – Modifying The Scope Of Reciprocal Tariffs And Establishing Procedures For Implementing Trade And Security Agreements. This EO provides the Core Legal Architecture behind Framework vs. Final Agreements.

Section 3 — Framework Agreements (MOUs)

• “Upon the conclusion of any framework agreement…the Secretary of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative shall determine whether the United States must take any action to implement such framework agreement.”
• “The Secretary of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative shall act in a manner consistent with the national interests of the United States, the purpose of this order, the need to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 14257, and the need to reduce or eliminate the threats to national security I have found pursuant to section 232.”

Section 4 — Final Agreements (ARTs)

• “Upon the conclusion of any final agreement…the Secretary of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative shall take the necessary and appropriate actions to implement the final agreement in accordance with this order.”

Section 6 — Delegation of Authority (the enforcement engine)

• “The Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the United States Trade Representative are directed and authorized to take all necessary actions to implement and effectuate this order…including through temporary suspension or amendment of regulations or through notices in the Federal Register and by adopting rules, regulations, or guidance — and to employ all powers granted to the President, including those granted by IEEPA and section 232, as may be necessary to implement and effectuate this order.”

1. January 14, 2026 — Presidential Proclamation, Adjusting Imports of Processed Critical Minerals and Their Derivative Products into the United States
I therefore direct the Secretary and the United States Trade Representative (Trade Representative) to jointly pursue negotiation of agreements or continue any current negotiations of agreements, such as agreements contemplated in section 232(c)(3)(A)(i) (19 U.S.C. 1862(c)(3)(A)(i)), to address the threatened impairment of the national security with respect to PCMDPs.

2. February 18, 2026 — EO 14387 Promoting the National Defense by Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorus and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides

Section 1.  Policy and Findings.  Elemental phosphorus is pervasive in defense supply chains and is therefore crucial to military readiness and national defense.  It is a key input in smoke, illumination, and incendiary devices and is a critical component for manufacturing the semiconductors that are central to numerous defense technologies, such as radar, solar cells, sensors, and optoelectronics.  It is also increasingly important in modern lithium-ion battery chemistries used in a multitude of weapon-system supply chains.  For these and other reasons, on November 7, 2025, the Department of the Interior, acting pursuant to the Energy Act of 2020, designated phosphate as a critical mineral.

3. July 20, 2026 — EO 14415 Securing America’s Defense Supply Chains and Ensuring Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials

Section 1.  Policy.  The United States military is the most effective and powerful fighting force on the planet.  It fields the most advanced weapons systems and technologies in the world, utilizing cutting edge equipment to dominate the modern battlefield.  To continue this dominance in an era of renewed great power competition, the United States must secure its supply chains against physical, cyber, and economic subversion.  It is the policy of the United States that not only the finished equipment deployed by our military, but also the critical materials and components necessary to manufacture, maintain, sustain, and repair that equipment, are sourced domestically or from allied nations.

Despite the longstanding prohibition on the use of sensitive materials sourced from geopolitical adversaries, defense contractors have historically under-prioritized domestic production and resilience.  My Administration will act to ensure that the statutory requirements of 10 U.S.C. 4872 are strictly observed and result in resilient domestic and allied supply chains.

Sec. 6.  Project Vault and U.S. Funded Sources.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve (also known as “Project Vault”) for which the Export-Import Bank of the United States is a lender or the acquisition by a contractor or subcontractor of critical minerals or components produced by a foreign project or other transaction financed, guaranteed, or insured by the Export-Import Bank of the United States or the United States International Development Finance Corporation.

(c)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect the acquisition by a contractor or subcontractor of critical minerals or components produced by a company or project receiving grants, financing, loans, equity investment, or other such support from the Department of State, the Department of War, the Department of Commerce, or the Department of Energy.

Appendix 2: Compilation of Known Minerals Instruments Since 2025

The table below provides a comparison of the various minerals deals negotiated in the second Trump administration. The righthand column signifies whether a country delegation attended the 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial, which is included as an indication of the administration’s potential interest in minerals dealmaking with that country.

• Yes indicates that the U.S. government has released the text of this agreement.
• Yes* with an asterisk indicates that the text has been made public, but not by the U.S. government.
• Announced indicates that the U.S. has acknowledged the existence of such a deal, but text is not available.
• Announced* with an asterisk indicates that the agreement was announced by the other country or in the press, but not by the United States, and text is not available.

An interactive map with this information is available here. Below the table is a list with more detail on each instrument and links to sources if available.

Country	ART	Framework for ART	Action Plan	Minerals for Security	Framework	MOU	Attended Ministerial
Angola							Yes
Argentina	Yes					Announced	Yes
Armenia					Yes*		Yes
Australia					Yes		Yes
Azerbaijan					Announced*
Bahrain					Announced*		Yes
Bangladesh	Yes
Belgium							Yes
Bolivia						Announced	Yes
Brazil							Yes
Canada							Yes
Cambodia	Yes
Chile						Announced*
Cook Islands					Yes*		Yes
Czech Republic							Yes
DRC				Yes			Yes
Dominican Republic							Yes
Ecuador	Yes					Announced	Yes
El Salvador	Yes
Estonia							Yes
European Union		Announced	Yes			Yes*	Yes
Finland							Yes
France							Yes
Germany							Yes
Greece							Yes
Guinea						Announced	Yes
India		Announced			Announced*		Yes
Indonesia	Yes
Israel							Yes
Italy							Yes
Japan			Yes		Yes		Yes
Jordan	Yes						Yes
Kazakhstan						Announced	Yes
Kenya							Yes
Lithuania							Yes
Malaysia	Yes					Yes	Yes
Mexico			Yes				Yes
Mongolia							Yes
Morocco						Announced	Yes
Netherlands							Yes
New Zealand							Yes
North Macedonia		Announced
Norway							Yes
Oman							Yes
Pakistan					Yes*		Yes
Paraguay						Announced	Yes
Peru						Announced	Yes
Philippines						Announced	Yes
Poland					Announced		Yes
Qatar							Yes
Romania							Yes
Saudi Arabia					Announced		Yes
Sierra Leone							Yes
Singapore							Yes
Sweden							Yes
Switzerland- Liechtenstein		Announced
Taiwan	Yes
Thailand		Announced				Yes	Yes
UAE					Announced		Yes
United Kingdom						Yes*	Yes
Ukraine				Yes			Yes
Uzbekistan						Announced	Yes
Vietnam		Announced
Zambia							Yes
Quad					Yes

Note: The Guatemala ART is not included above because it does not have minerals terms. Because frameworks toward an ART are works in progress that do not have text available, we include them above even if their accompanying, high-level joint statement does not explicitly mention critical minerals. 

See below for more information on each instrument and links to sources if available. The compilation includes some instruments that are not included in the table because they are drafts or otherwise not sufficiently verifiable.

Agreements on Reciprocal Trade (ARTs)

1. Argentina: Agreement between the United States of America and Argentina on Reciprocal Trade and Investment, February 5, 2026; Joint Statement on Framework for a United States-Argentina Agreement on Reciprocal Trade and Investment, November 13, 2025
2. Bangladesh: Agreement between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of Bangladesh on Reciprocal Trade, February 9, 2026
3. Cambodia: Agreement between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Cambodia on Reciprocal Trade, October 26, 2025
4. Ecuador: Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Ecuador on Reciprocal Trade, March 13, 2026; Joint Statement on Framework for United States-Ecuador Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, November 13, 2025
5. El Salvador: Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of El Salvador on Reciprocal Trade, January 29, 2026; Joint Statement on Framework for United States-El Salvador Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, November 13, 2025
6. European Union framework only: Joint Statement on a United States-European Union Framework on an Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade, August 21, 2025
7. Guatemala: Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Guatemala on Reciprocal Trade, January 30, 2026, critical minerals not in text; Joint Statement on Framework for United States-Guatemala Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, November 13, 2025
8. India framework only: Joint Statement on framework for an Interim Agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade, February 6, 2026
9. Indonesia: Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Indonesia on Reciprocal Trade, February 19, 2026; Joint Statement on Framework For United States-Indonesia Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, July 22, 2025
10. Jordan: Agreement between the United States of America and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on Reciprocal Trade, July 21, 2026
11. Malaysia: Agreement between the United States of America and Malaysia on Reciprocal Trade, October 26, 2025
12. North Macedonia framework only: Joint Statement on a Framework for United States-North Macedonia Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade, February 12, 2026
13. Switzerland framework only: Joint Statement on a Framework for a United States – Switzerland – Liechtenstein Agreement on Fair, Balanced, and Reciprocal Trade, November 14, 2025
14. Taiwan: Agreement between the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States on Reciprocal Trade between the United States of America and Taiwan, February 12, 2026
15. Thailand framework only: Joint Statement on A Framework For A United States-Thailand Agreement On Reciprocal Trade, on October 26, 2025
16. Vietnam framework only: Joint Statement on United States-Vietnam Framework for an Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade, October 26, 2025

Critical‑Minerals Action Plans

1. European Union: United States-European Union Action Plan for Critical Minerals Supply Chain Resilience, April 24, 2026
2. Japan: U.S.-Japan Action Plan for Critical Minerals Supply Chain Resilience, March 19, 2026
3. Mexico: United States-Mexico Critical Minerals Action Plan, February 4, 2026

“Minerals for Security” Agreements

1. Democratic Republic of the Congo: Strategic Partnership Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, December 4, 2025
2. Ukraine: Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Ukraine on the Establishment of a United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund, April 30, 2025

Framework Agreements on Critical Minerals

1. Armenia: Republic of Armenia – United States of America Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, May 26, 2026
2. Australia: United States-Australia Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, October 20, 2025
3. Azerbaijan: critical minerals framework announced June 2, 2026. Title and text not available
4. Bahrain: critical minerals framework announced January 27, 2026. Title and text not available
5. Cook Islands: Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, February 4, 2026
6. India: Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths announced, May 26, 2026; text not released
7. Japan: Framework for Securing the Supply of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths Through Mining and Processing, October 27, 2025
8. New Zealand: negotiations for a critical minerals framework mentioned in a February 2, 2026 State Department release. New Zealand released a partial description of a draft United States – New Zealand Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, May 5, 2026
9. Pakistan: Framework Agreement Between the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Government of the United States of America on Strategic Cooperation and Supply of Rare Earth Minerals and Metals, unsigned DRAFT submitted for U.S. review: May 30, 2025. It seems this diplomatic agreement laid the foundation for a later (confidential) MOU between Missouri-based U.S. Strategic Metals and Pakistan’s military-run Frontier Works Organisation for a $500 million investment
10. Poland: Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining Processing and Recycling of Critical Minerals including Rare Earths, May 6, 2026
11. Saudi Arabia: Strategic Framework for Cooperation on Securing Uranium, Metals, Permanent Magnets, and Critical Minerals Supply Chains announced November 17, 2025; text not released.
12. United Arab Emirates: Framework on Securing Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths announced on February 6, 2026; text not released
13. Multilateral: Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework among the United States, Japan, Australia, and India, May 26, 2026

Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) on Critical Minerals

1. Argentina: Critical Minerals MOU announced February 4, 2026; text not released.
2. Bolivia: Critical Minerals MOU announced April 27, 2026; text not released
3. Chile: Joint Declaration to Establish Consultations on Critical Minerals and Rare Earths announced March 13, 2026; text not released
4. Ecuador: Critical Minerals MOU announced February 4, 2026; text not released
5. European Union: MOU Between The European Union and The United States of America on a Strategic Partnership on Critical Minerals, April 24, 2026
6. Guinea: Critical Minerals MOU announced February 4, 2026; text not released
7. Japan: Memorandum of Cooperation Regarding Deep‑Sea Mineral Resource Development, March 19, 2026
8. Kazakhstan: Critical Minerals MOU announced November 2025; text not released
9. Malaysia: MOU Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Malaysia Concerning Cooperation to Diversify Global Critical Minerals Supply Chains and Promote Investments, October 26, 2025
10. Morocco: Critical Minerals MOU announced February 4, 2026; text not released
11. Paraguay: Critical Minerals MOU announced February 4, 2026; text not released
12. Peru: Critical Minerals MOU announced February 4, 2026; text not released
13. Philippines: Critical Minerals MOU announced February 4, 2026; text not released
14. Thailand: MOU Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Kingdom of Thailand Concerning Cooperation to Diversify Global Critical Minerals Supply Chains and Promote Investments, October 26, 2025
15. United Kingdom: MOU between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, February 5, 2026
16. Uzbekistan: Memorandum of Understanding between the Governments of Uzbekistan and the United States of America for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths announced, February 5, 2026

Appendix 3: Provisions on Critical Minerals in the Agreements on Reciprocal Trade and “Minerals for Security” Agreements

Argentina: Agreement between the United States of America and Argentina on Reciprocal Trade and Investment

Section 5. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities, Article 5.1: Investment 

1. Argentina shall allow and facilitate U.S. investment in its territory to explore, mine, extract, refine, process, transport, distribute and export critical minerals and energy resources and to provide power generation, telecommunication, transportation, and infrastructure services on terms no less favorable than it accords to its own investors in like circumstances and shall regulate those investments in keeping with minimum standards of international law

Annex III, Specific Commitments, Section 1. Non-Tariff Barriers and Related Matters, Article 1.15: A More Resource Efficient Economy 

2. Argentina shall take measures to promote the recovery of critical minerals from waste streams. Such measures may include encouraging regulations, infrastructure, or technologies to expand the collection of electronic waste and spent lithium-ion batteries for recycling and recovering critical minerals.

Section 4. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities, Article 4.1: Critical Minerals 

1. Argentina shall work with provincial governments to facilitate investment by U.S. companies in critical mineral projects, according to its laws and regulations.
2. Argentina commits to fast tracking applications for eligible projects through the Incentives Regime for Large Investments (RIGI) program.
3. Argentina shall encourage Federal-level Argentine Government investment in mining infrastructure to enable access to the mining sector for U.S. companies, according to its laws and regulations.
4. Argentina intends to prioritize the United States as a trade and investment partner for copper, lithium, and other critical minerals including raw, processed, and finished products, over market manipulating economies or enterprises.

Bangladesh: Agreement between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of Bangladesh on Reciprocal Trade

Section 5. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities, Article 5.1: Investment 

1. Bangladesh shall allow and facilitate U.S. direct investment in its territory to explore, mine, extract, refine, process, transport, distribute and export critical minerals and energy resources and to provide power generation, telecommunication, transportation, and infrastructure services on terms no less favorable than it accords to its own private investors in like circumstances and shall regulate those investments in keeping with minimum standards of international law.

Cambodia: Agreement between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Cambodia on Reciprocal Trade

Section 6. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities, Article 6.1: Investment

1. Cambodia shall allow and facilitate U.S. investment in its territory to explore, mine, extract, refine, process, transport, distribute, and export critical minerals and energy resources and to supply power, telecommunication, transportation, and infrastructure services on terms no less favorable than it accords to its own investors in like circumstances, and shall regulate those investments in keeping with minimum standards of international law.

Democratic Republic of the Congo: Strategic Partnership Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Acknowledging the United States’ interest in building secure, reliable and durable supply chains for critical minerals, safeguarding its national security, supporting reindustrialization, and maintaining competitiveness in strategic sectors including defense, energy, advanced technologies, and automotive industries;

ARTICLE II – OBJECTIVES 

8. Facilitate stable, predictable, long-term access for U.S. persons and aligned persons to critical minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to support safety, security, and prosperity for both the United States of America and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in a manner that promotes local value addition, industrialization, and long-term economic growth in the Democratic Republic of Congo;
9. Promote responsible mining practices in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and support the formalization and industrialization of the artisanal mining sector, while actively working to reduce illicit trade in minerals, combat the use of critical minerals to finance conflict, and create alternative livelihoods for artisanal mining communities;

ARTICLE III- STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP STATUS 

2. As part of this strategic partnership, the Parties intend to explore the following areas for cooperation:
3. Economic Cooperation, with particular emphasis on cooperation relating to critical minerals, energy, infrastructure, technology-driven initiatives, beneficiation, and industrialization;

ARTICLE VI – JOINT STEERING COMMITTEE 

9. The functions of the JSC shall include:
10. Discussing how the Parties may support investment in and development of SAR Projects, Qualifying Strategic Projects (QSPs), DRC Designated Strategic Projects, and the Strategic Minerals Reserve (SMR) including through technical cooperation, project planning, and mobilizing investment;
11. Facilitating bilateral technical cooperation on legal, regulatory, and policy reforms needed to attract and de-risk investment into the DRC critical minerals sector for U.S. persons and aligned persons;
12. Identifying means to cooperate to advance and promote fair market-based approaches to critical minerals;

ARTICLE IX – SAKANIA-LOBITO CORRIDOR 

1. The Parties recognize the strategic nature of the Sakania-Lobito Corridor project and that it serves as a key route for the transport and export of copper, cobalt, zinc, and other critical minerals, as well as other commercial goods, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the United States of America.
2. The Parties intend to cooperate to increase the competitiveness of the Sakania-Lobito Corridor, including by increasing the volume of critical minerals being exported from the DRC using the Sakania-Lobito Corridor under market conditions. To accomplish this, the DRC and its SOEs intend that, within five (5) years, at least fifty (50) percent of the volumes of copper, ninety (90) percent of the volumes of zinc concentrate, and thirty (30) percent of the volumes of cobalt that the DRC and its SOEs elect to commercialize pursuant to their equity and contractual marketing rights over production from certain partnerships, are exported from the DRC using the Sakania-Lobito Corridor. The JSC may evaluate and decide to modify these numbers, taking into account commercial and logistical developments, to include the competitiveness of the Sakania-Lobito Corridor.

ARTICLE XI-· STRATEGIC MINERALS RESERVE AND OFFTAKE AGREEMENTS 

1. The Parties recognize the strategic importance of securing reliable, transparent, and mutually beneficial access to critical minerals in support of their shared industrialization, supply chain, and national security objectives. To this end, the Parties shall explore the establishment of a coordinated Strategic Minerals Reserve (SMR) located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The SMR is intended to:
2. Ensure predictable and durable supply of critical minerals, including cobalt, for the United States;
3. Enhance the DRC’s capacity for domestic resource management, value stabilization, local beneficiation, industrialization, and job creation; and
4. Promote resilience and fair market-based approaches within global supply chains.
5. The DRC and its SOEs intend to utilize their equity and contractual marketing rights relating to critical minerals production to provide access to offtake for U.S. persons and aligned persons and for use by the U.S. market.
6. To accomplish this the DRC and its SOEs shall include a right of first offer on marketed critical minerals destined for export originating from SAR Projects and QSPs, to U.S. persons and aligned persons on commercially comparable terms that guarantee such minerals shall be directed for use by the U.S. market.
7. Where appropriate, this offtake should be exported using the Sakania-Lobito Corridor. Subject to the availability of funds, the United States may provide targeted technical support or assistance to facilitate this access.

ANNEX 1: ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR QUALIFYING STRATEGIC PROJECTS 

2. Offtake Requirements: A project must meet both of the following criteria·
3. It meets the offtake guidelines for SAR Projects, once developed by the JSC as set out in Article VI(9)( d), or it is otherwise demonstrated to the satisfaction of the JSC how offtake would further the objectives of this Agreement; and
4. It shall be designed such that critical mineral offtake exported from the project is transported using the Sakania-Lobito Corridor rail infrastructure where geographically feasible.
5. Project Type and Technical Scope-The project must fall into one or more of the following categories and shall comply with all applicable DRC law:
6. Greenfield exploration, expansion or development of mining of critical minerals;
7. Brownfield exploration, expansion or development of existing critical mineral assets;
8. Downstream beneficiation of Democratic Republic of the Congo-origin critical minerals;

ANNEX 2: DEFINITIONS 

9. “Critical minerals” means any minerals, materials or rare-earth elements identified as critical or strategic by the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Energy, or the U.S.  Department of War, as well as those identified as strategic by the Democratic Republic of the Congo in accordance with its laws.

Ecuador: Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Ecuador on Reciprocal Trade

Section 6. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities, Article 6.1: Investment 

1. Ecuador shall allow and facilitate U.S. investment in its territory to explore, mine, extract, refine, process, transport, distribute, and export critical minerals and energy resources and to supply power, telecommunication, transportation, and infrastructure services on terms no less favorable than it accords to investors from any third country in like circumstances, and shall regulate those investments in keeping with minimum standards of international law.

Section 4. Economic and National Security, Article 4.1: Government Procurement 

2. Ecuador commits to issue open public tenders for energy projects, including the Sacha oil concession, future power generation, critical mineral extraction and processing.

Section 5. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities Article 5.1: Investment in Critical Minerals 

Ecuador shall work with the United States to facilitate investment in critical mineral projects.

El Salvador: Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of El Salvador on Reciprocal Trade

Section 6. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities, Article 6.2: Investment 

1. El Salvador shall allow and facilitate U.S. investment in its territory to explore, mine, extract, refine, process, transport, distribute, and export critical minerals and energy resources and to provide power generation, telecommunication, transportation, and infrastructure services on terms no less favorable than it accords to its own investors in like circumstances and shall regulate those investments in keeping with minimum standards of international law, in compliance with the commitments set out in the CAFTA-DR.

Guatemala: Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Guatemala on Reciprocal Trade, critical minerals not in the text. 

Indonesia: Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Indonesia on Reciprocal Trade

Section 6. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities Article 6.1: Investment 

1. Indonesia shall allow and facilitate U.S. investment in its territory to explore, mine, extract, refine, process, transport, distribute, and export critical minerals and energy resources and to provide power generation, telecommunication, transportation, and infrastructure services on terms no less favorable than it accords to its own investors in like circumstances and shall regulate those investments in keeping with minimum standards of international law.

Section 2. Non-Tariff Barriers and Related Matters, Article 2.36: A More Resource Efficient Economy 

2. Indonesia shall take measures to promote the recovery of critical minerals from waste streams. Such measures may include encouraging regulations, infrastructure, or technologies to expand the collection of electronic waste and spent lithium-ion batteries for recycling and recovering critical minerals.

Section 6. Commercial Considerations, Article 6.1: Critical Minerals 

1. To strengthen supply chain connectivity between the Parties, Indonesia shall remove restrictions on exports to the United States of industrial commodities, including critical minerals.
2. Indonesia and the United States shall intensify their cooperative efforts to accelerate the secure supply of critical minerals, including rare earths. Indonesia shall cooperate with U.S. companies on mining, processing, and downstream production of critical minerals based on commercial considerations.
3. To this end, Indonesia shall cooperate on the expedient development of its rare earth and critical minerals sector in partnership with U.S. companies to ensure secure and diversified supply chains. Indonesia shall provide greater certainty for companies involved in critical mineral extraction, creating certainty for businesses to increase production capacity and supporting operational growth.
4. Indonesia and the United States commit to continued cooperation and engagement on critical mineral supply chains.
5. Indonesia shall:

(a) implement restrictions on foreign-owned processing facilities’ excess production (footnote: This includes processing facilities for nickel, cobalt, bauxite, copper, tin, and manganese) by ensuring that production conforms to Indonesia mining quotas; and

(b) ensure that foreign-owned industrial parks and processing facilities are subject to the same tax, environmental, labor, quota, and other legal requirements as other companies and entities.

Jordan: Agreement between the United States of America and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on Reciprocal Trade

Section 5. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities, Article 5.1: Investment 

1. Jordan shall allow and facilitate U.S. investment in its territory to explore, mine, extract, refine, process, transport, distribute and export critical minerals and energy resources and to provide power generation, telecommunication, transportation, and infrastructure services on terms no less favorable than it accords to its own investors in like circumstances and shall regulate those investments in keeping with minimum standards of international law.

Malaysia: Agreement between the United States of America and Malaysia on Reciprocal Trade

Section 5. Economic and National Security, Article 5.2: Export Controls, Sanctions, Investment Security, and Related Matters

3. Malaysia shall explore the establishment of a mechanism to review inbound investment for national security risks, including in connection with critical minerals and critical infrastructure, consistent with widely accepted international best practices, and shall cooperate with the United States on matters related to investment security.

Section 6. Commercial Considerations and Opportunities, Article 6.1: Investment 

1. With respect to the central level of government, Malaysia shall, in accordance with its laws and regulations, facilitate and promote investment by the United States in sectors including critical minerals, energy resources, power generation, telecommunications, transportation, and infrastructure services.

Taiwan: Agreement between the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States on Reciprocal Trade between the United States of America and Taiwan

Article 3.11: Environment, More Resource Efficient Economies 

6. TECRO, through its Designated Representative, shall take measures to promote the recovery of critical minerals from waste streams. Such measures may include encouraging regulations, infrastructure, or technologies to expand the collection of electronic waste and spent lithium-ion batteries for recycling and recovering critical minerals.

Section 6: Commercial Considerations and Opportunities Article 6.1: Investment 

1. TECRO, through its Designated Representative, shall allow and facilitate investment from the territory represented by AIT in the territory it represents:

(a) to explore, mine, extract, refine, process, transport, distribute, and export critical minerals and energy resources; and

(b) to provide power generation, telecommunication, transportation, and infrastructure services, on terms no less favorable than what the authorities of the territory represented by TECRO accord to investors in like circumstances from a territory not represented by a Party, and shall regulate those investments in keeping with minimum standards of international law.

Ukraine: Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Ukraine on the Establishment of a United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund, uses the term natural resources

WHEREAS, Ukraine has, in accordance with international law, sovereignty over its natural resources located in its territory as well as in its territorial waters, in addition to sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, which allow for Ukraine to conclude this Agreement and fulfill the aims of this Agreement;

WHEREAS, Ukraine retains the right to determine the areas within its territory as well as in its territorial waters, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf to be made available for the exercise of the activities of prospecting, exploring for, and producing natural resources, and the rights to be conveyed in the LP Agreement referenced herein are applicable to the entirety of such areas; and …

Article VII: Investment Opportunity Rights

1. (a) Each Governmental Authority of Ukraine that is authorized to issue a license or special permit for subsoil use for any Natural Resource Relevant Assets shall include in such license or special permit, and in the related agreement on subsoil use conditions or production sharing agreement with subsoil users, a provision requiring the recipient thereof, at any time it is seeking to raise capital, to make relevant investment information available to the Partnership in accordance with the LP Agreement.

Article VIII: Market-Based Offtake Rights 

1. Each Governmental Authority of Ukraine that is authorized to issue a license or special permit for subsoil use for any Natural Resource Relevant Assets shall include in the terms of such license or special permit and in the related agreement on subsoil use conditions or in a production sharing agreement with subsoil users: (i) a provision allowing the U.S. Partner ( or its designee or assignee) to negotiate for, in accordance with the terms of the LP Agreement, offtake rights on market-based commercial terms during the term of such license or special permit; and (ii) a requirement for the recipient to, for a period of time and on conditions to be specified in the LP Agreement, refrain from offering to any third party materially more favorable financial or economic terms for offtake of a substantially similar quality or quantity of product.
2. In recognition of the shared interest in ensuring that this Agreement and the LP Agreement are consistent with the strategic interests of both Parties, the Government of Ukraine shall cause each Governmental Authority of Ukraine that is authorized to issue licenses or special permits for subsoil use for any Natural Resource Relevant Assets to include in the terms of such licenses or special permits certain restrictions on entry into offtake arrangements with counterparties, on terms to be specified in the LP Agreement.

Appendix A: Definitions 

“Natural Resource Relevant Assets” means the sites, reserves, and deposits in the territory of Ukraine of aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, cerium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, copper, dysprosium, erbium, europium, fluorine, fluorspar, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, gold, graphite, hafnium, holmium, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, neodymium, nickel, niobium, palladium, platinum, potash, praseodymium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, tantalum, tellurium, terbium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc, zirconium, oil, natural gas (including liquified natural gas), and other minerals or hydrocarbons otherwise agreed by the Principals.

“Ukraine Agreed Revenue” means 50% of all royalties (rent payments), license fees, and amounts payable under production sharing agreements received by any Governmental Authority of Ukraine from or relating to: (i) the issuance of new licenses or special permits on or after the effective date of the LP Agreement by any Governmental Authority of Ukraine with respect to the exploration, production, mining, development, extraction, exploitation, processing, refining or other use of Natural Resource Relevant Assets (provided that, unless included pursuant to clause (ii) below, any renewals or extensions of any licenses or special permits that were issued prior to the effective date of the LP Agreement will be excluded), or (ii) the exploitation of licenses or special permits with respect to the exploration, production, mining, development, extraction, exploitation, processing, refining or other use of Natural Resource Relevant Assets, which licenses or special permits were issued prior to the effective date of the LP Agreement but were not industrially exploited as of such effective date; provided, however, that in no event shall Ukrainian Agreed Revenue include any revenues (x) received from the Partnership, in the form of distributions or otherwise, or (y) received from Russia or its designees as reparations for the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

 

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This report was written by Nghia Nguyen, Global Trade Watch (GTW) Research Director at Public Citizen. It was edited by GTW Director Melinda St. Louis and GTW Deputy Director Melanie Foley. Thanks to GTW Program Associate Alana Matthew for research assistance, to GTW International Campaign Coordinator Sarah Grace Spurgin for copy editing, and to GTW National Field Director Ryan Harvey for the report design.

Cover photo depicts President Trump in the Oval Office receiving a gift of critical mineral samples from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif (official White House photo).

Medicare Quietly Gifted AbbVie’s Blockbuster Drug Seven Extra Years Before Price Negotiations

Trump Proposed Rule Would Continue Policy, Benefiting Drugmakers at the Expense of Seniors, Taxpayers

By Sarah Karlin-Smith

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Key Takeaways:

• AbbVie’s Creon appeared to meet all the qualifications for selection to Medicare’s Drug Price Negotiation Program (MDPNP) in 2025, including having more spending in 2024 than six other products Medicare picked for the second round of negotiations. But the drug is not in the group of medicines whose negotiated prices will take effect in 2027, or Initial Price Applicability Year (IPAY) 2027.
• More than 185,000 Medicare beneficiaries used Creon in 2024, costing Medicare $1.49 billion in gross spending[1]. The drug picked in Creon’s place for IPAY 2027, Amgen’s Otezla, accounted for about half a billion less Medicare spend ($1.05 billion) over the same period and was used by only 31,000 beneficiaries. Medicare was entitled to a much larger mandatory discount on Creon than Otezla.
• A Public Citizen investigation found that Creon’s lack of selection for Medicare price negotiation was due to a quiet change in policy interpretation between the first and second cycles of the program that was not initially publicly debated or thoroughly justified.
• The policy change will give Creon seven extra years before it can be selected for drug price negotiation. At least two other drugs, Novo Nordisk’s Tresiba and Nestle’s Zenpep, will likely get a similar perk. This runs counter to Congress’s intent and will harm seniors who could benefit from Medicare negotiating the prices of these medicines sooner.
• Comments on the policy change, which is codified in the proposed rule issued June 12 for the upcoming round of Medicare negotiations, IPAY 2029, are due by Aug. 17.

Background

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 allowed Medicare for the first time to use its substantial leverage to negotiate a limited number of drug prices each year for its beneficiaries. The law gives small molecule drugs approved under new drug applications (NDA) seven years before prices can be negotiated. Biologic medicines approved under biologic license applications (BLA) get 11 years before they are eligible for selection in the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program (MDPNP). It takes two additional years for the price to be negotiated and implemented from the time it is eligible for selection, meaning that small molecules get at least nine years before a negotiated price takes effect and biologics get at least 13 years. Drugs must meet other criteria to be selected for negotiation, including hitting certain Medicare spending thresholds and lacking “bona fide” generic or biosimilar competition, meaning that all products eligible for negotiation are older medicines that are still under monopoly control and costly to the Medicare program. Even for drugs with prices negotiated by Medicare, Americans still typically pay more than other countries of similar size and wealth, and prices far exceed the marginal cost of production.

Negotiation program criteria already are very generous to drugmakers, allowing them too much time to set unaffordable price points and gouge American patients. Some patients are forced to forgo treatment with needed drugs due to high prices. Public Citizen has called on Congress to amend the law so that all brand drug prices could be negotiated at or soon after market launch. This is consistent with practices in other similar countries. In the interim, it is critical that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) execute the current drug price negotiation program in a manner that gets the best deal for Americans. But AbbVie’s Creon was not picked for Medicare’s second round price negotiation, or Initial Price Applicability Year (IPAY) 2027, despite seemingly meeting all the criteria laid out in law and guidance and having $1.49 billion in gross Medicare spending in 2024 per Medicare’s drug pricing dashboards, more spending than six other drugs picked by Medicare for IPAY 2027. Why?

Sub Silentio

Creon is a pancreatic enzyme prescription medication used by people who cannot digest food normally. More than 185,000 Medicare beneficiaries used the drug in 2024. Creon was first approved as a new drug by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2009, and its manufacturer AbbVie made $13.52 billion in net revenue in the U.S. on the drug from 2011-2025.[2] Due to the unique regulatory history of pancreatic enzyme products, versions of Creon have been available in the U.S. since 1987.

A Public Citizen investigation found that Creon’s lack of selection for price negotiation was due to a quiet change in policy interpretation that CMS made between the first and second years of the drug price negotiation program, outside of the formal Oct. 2024 guidance that implemented the program for IPAY 2027. Draft and final guidance are published several years in advance for future negotiation years, referred to as IPAY. Starting in IPAY 2029, CMS is required to implement the program via rulemaking.

An infographic created on February 26, 2025, more than a month after CMS published the list of drugs selected for the 2027 negotiation cycle, contains some text that explains Creon not being selected but is highly technical and may not be obvious to even well-versed drug policy experts. In fact, many experts who modeled likely drug candidates for IPAY 2027 believed Creon would be selected as well.

It wasn’t until CMS issued draft guidance in May 2025 for the third round of drug price negotiations, IPAY 2028, that CMS offered a more formal indication of why Creon didn’t make the 2027 list. The policy change is also in the proposed rule for the program for IPAY 2029 issued June 12. Comments on the proposed rule are due by Aug. 17.

The May 2025 draft guidance says that when dealing with biologics that were previously submitted to the FDA as small molecules or NDAs, but were later deemed to be approved biologics license applications (BLAs) effective March 23, 2020, that CMS will use March 23, 2020, as the licensure date for the purposes of identifying whether 11 years have elapsed since the date of licensure, allowing a drug to be picked for negotiation. This “deeming policy” means that Creon’s clock for negotiation eligibility starts March 23, 2020, the date it became regulated as a BLA, not 2009, the date it was first approved as a drug by the FDA under an NDA. The choice delays Creon’s eligibility for price-cutting negotiation by about seven years.

The draft May 2025 guidance acknowledges that this was not CMS’s policy in IPAY 2026, the first year of the program, saying that “no interested party suggested interpreting the statute to make the March 23, 2020, deemed date for biologics the licensure date for this purpose.” Moreover, in 2026, CMS selected Novo Nordisk’s insulin aspart products, Fiasp and Novolog, for price negotiations, a drug that, like Creon, was initially approved under an NDA but was later deemed a biologic under the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (BPCIA), which became law in the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

CMS Decision Runs Counter to FDA Application of Law

Through the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act, Congress created a pathway for drugmakers to get cheaper biosimilar versions of complex biologic medicines approved. The 2010 legislation changed the definition of “biological product”, necessitating that the FDA reclassify some protein products like insulins or Creon that were historically approved as NDAs, not BLAs. After a lengthy process of rulemaking and guidance and a transition period, the FDA issued a list of the products approved under NDAs that were deemed to be BLAs on March 23, 2020. The list of drugs includes a range of products, some approved more than 50 or 60 years ago.

A prime motivation for converting these medicines from NDAs to BLAs was that their complexity made it difficult to get a substitutable generic approved. Once classified as BLAs, the biosimilar pathway offered an opening to bring down costs.

This history makes CMS’s IRA policy interpretation baffling, as CMS’s policy does the opposite of what the BPCIA intended: allowing these drugs another way to maintain high prices for more years. The FDA, on the other hand, understood that the conversion of these NDAs to BLAs did not suddenly make old products new again. For example, FDA guidance made clear that the transition from NDA to BLA would not entitle a product to obtain the 12-year exclusivity period the BPCIA granted for newly licensed biologics. FDA specifically distinguishes a drug that was first licensed under the biological pathway to be different from a drug that was originally approved as an NDA and later “deemed licensed” under the pathway due to the BPCIA.

What is the Reason for the Change?

Amgen, the sole party who publicly commented on CMS’s policy change following the May 2025 draft guidance, told CMS that its decision is “improper because it conflicts with the FDA’s prior findings as to approval dates for deemed biologics.” The agency’s list of licensed biological products known as the “Purple Book” identifies the approval date of deemed biologics as the date of their original NDA approval, Amgen wrote. The drug manufacturer also took issue with the process CMS went through in making the policy change. “CMS adopted this new interpretation without any, let alone sufficient administrative process,” Amgen wrote. CMS also did not explain why it changed its interpretation, other than “no ‘interested party’” initially brought the issue to its attention for IPAY 2026, the company said. Amgen suggests that CMS’s stated reasoning for the change and the absence of public comments on the topic for IPAY 2027’s 2024 Draft Guidance imply the “interested party” brought the issue to CMS’s attention “outside of the public process.”

CMS’s final version of the 2025 guidance for IPAY 2028 doesn’t provide any additional new information on why it changed its policy on deemed biologics following IPAY 2026, nor does CMS address the inconsistencies between the FDA’s treatment of deemed biologics when it comes to identifying their original approval date and CMS’s interpretation.

Amgen likely had a vested interest in protesting CMS’s change in policy for deemed biologics. Amgen’s Otezla (apremilast) was the 15^th or last drug to be selected for IPAY 2027 based on total prescription drug spending. The company’s product would not have been picked if Creon had been selected.

Patient Fallout

CMS’s policy on deemed biologics will give a select group of drug companies extra time to rake in higher profits before the government can negotiate the cost of those drugs. This will cost the government more money and compromise patient access. The IRA requires that drugs selected for the Medicare price negotiation program be covered by all Medicare Part D plans, which has improved coverage of these drugs. Medicare beneficiaries also may pay higher coinsurance due to a high-spend drug’s escaping negotiation.

Creon’s exclusion from IPAY 2027 price negotiation is a double whammy for many patients relying on the drug, as patients faced large price increases when the FDA changed the regulatory requirements for pancreatic enzyme products at the beginning of the 21^st century. That regulatory change led to a more concentrated market. AbbVie, which currently holds the U.S. rights to Creon, has made $13.52 billion in net revenue in the U.S. on the drug since 2011.

Because the Medicare price negotiation program obligates CMS to select the maximum number of drugs statutorily allowed for negotiation each year, if there are products that meet the eligibility criteria, other products should get selected in place of drugs like Creon. However, this may force Medicare to select drugs that cost the program less money overall, as it did with Creon, achieving less savings for taxpayers.

Medicare’s decision not to select Creon for IPAY 2027 meant the agency had to go further down its list of drugs with the most gross spending in the program to fill out that round of price negotiation. Instead of picking Creon, a drug with $1.49 billion in gross spending in 2024 used by more than 185,000 beneficiaries, it picked Otezla, a drug that accounted for about a half billion less Medicare spend over the same period and was used by only 31,000 beneficiaries. Medicare would have been entitled to a larger mandatory discount on Creon, than Otezla if the deeming policy was not in place. As a long-monopoly drug, approved for more than 16 years before the negotiated price would take effect, the statutory upper limit for the maximum fair price for Creon would be 40% of the drug’s average non-federal average manufacture price (non-FAMP). Non-FAMP is the average price wholesalers pay manufacturers for drugs distributed to non-federal purchasers. Because Otezla has been on the market a shorter period – since 2014 – the statutory upper limit for the drug is 75% of the drug’s average non-FAMP.  Creon also appears to be a lower-rebated drug than Otezla, which means the government would have a greater opportunity for additional savings via negotiation than with Otezla. Creon’s net price is estimated to be about 20% lower than its list price, whereas Otezla’s, in the crowded class of disease-modifying anti-rheumatoid drugs, net price is likely 30% to 40% lower than its list price.

Moreover, some experts have predicted that due to the exclusion of drugs with less than $200 million in annual Medicare spending and other exemptions, there may be a point at which there are fewer drugs eligible for negotiation than the 20 CMS is obligated to select for price negotiation each year. In that scenario, if Medicare defers negotiation on a drug like Creon due to the March 2020 start of the negotiation delay clock, then there will not be another drug negotiated in its place, further raising taxpayer costs.

Delaying a drug like Creon’s eligibility for Medicare negotiation also could mean that some of these drugs never have a negotiated price because biosimilar competition comes on the market before or during the negotiated period. Only single-source drugs without generic or biosimilar competitors are eligible for negotiation. If Creon faces biosimilar competition before IPAY 2034, then it will evade price negotiations entirely.

Public Citizen identified two other drugs that would stand a good chance of being picked for Medicare drug price negotiations in the next few years if it weren’t for the deeming policy. Those drugs include Novo Nordisk’s Tresiba (insulin degludec) which was first approved in September 2015.

Medicare spent $1.83 billion in gross dollars on Tresiba in 2024 and $1.57 billion in 2025. Based on the drug’s original FDA approval year, it could qualify for IPAY 2029 if not for the deeming policy put forth by CMS. Under the CMS proposal, Tresiba couldn’t be selected for negotiations until IPAY 2034, giving Novo Nordisk five additional years of unmitigated pricing without Medicare negotiation. Since 2016, the first year Tresiba was on the U.S. market, Novo Nordisk has made $13.23 billion in international net sales on the drug.[3]

The third drug that would likely be picked for Medicare negotiations earlier, if not for the change in policy, is Zenpep, another pancreatic enzyme product that was granted an NDA on Aug. 27, 2009. Zenpep had $709.48 million in gross sales in Medicare Part D in 2025 and $597.44 million in 2024. Zenpep has gone through several owners since 2009. Its current owner, Nestle, bought the drug in 2020. Nestle does not break out its revenues for the drug in financial filings

Future Impacts

There is a real possibility that CMS’s deeming policy could impact other products not on the FDA’s 2020 list of drugs that were converted from NDAs to BLAs due to the BPCIA, as there is reason to believe that in the future the agency could have to reclassify other drugs. The FDA is currently tasked with better defining biologics due to an ongoing legal battle with Eli Lilly. The BPCIA updated the definition of biological product to include “protein” or “analogous product.” In 2020, the FDA finalized its definition of protein in rulemaking. Since that decision, the FDA has faced legal challenges related to its interpretation of “analogous to a protein.”

Eli Lilly believes the FDA misclassified its experimental GLP-1 retatrutide as a small molecule, not a biologic. In Sept. 2025, an Indiana district court judge ruled that the FDA’s classification of Lilly’s drug wasn’t arbitrary, but it also set aside a secondary FDA determination that the product is not “at least analogous to a protein” and asked the agency to better define this classification. FDA’s eventual definition of products that are analogous to proteins could impact what products are regulated as drugs or biologics. If any drugs are converted to biologics post-approval, under CMS’s current interpretation, they’d likely get to restart their clock under the Medicare drug price negotiation program and delay or escape price negotiation.

The implications of a potential reclassification of a drug like retatrutide post-approval would be huge, as the drug, which is currently being studied for obesity and a range of related conditions, including diabetes, heart and kidney problems, and liver disease, is expected to be a multi-billion-dollar blockbuster. Every year that CMS is prevented from negotiating the price of this drug could cost the U.S. government vast sums of money.

It is possible that Medicare will have plenty of drugs to negotiate in place of a product like retatrutide. But these drugs are likely to cost Medicare less money, resulting in billions of dollars in lost savings.

Conclusion

The IRA already gives drugmakers too much time on market before Medicare drug price negotiations can kick in. Now, CMS is proposing to codify in rulemaking a policy that would grant some products even more time on market before they could be eligible for negotiations, without any clear policy rationale. This is unacceptable. As drug development and regulation have evolved over the years, the FDA, under the direction, of Congress has pivoted to regulating some drugs as biologics that were once regulated as drugs. But this switch, which was done in large part to encourage cheaper competition known as biosimilars, did not make old drugs new again or erase the many years of revenues without Medicare-negotiated prices that drugmakers earned on these reclassified products. As such, the treatments’ initial FDA approval dates should start the negotiation eligibility clock, not the date the application was converted from a drug to a biologic. Doing the latter unfairly gives preferential treatment to certain products and harms patients at the expense of big pharma.

CMS should immediately rectify this policy in final rulemaking for IPAY 2029. Congress should go further and make this issue a moot point by eliminating the Medicare drug price negotiation program’s delay periods and requiring Medicare to negotiate the prices of all branded drugs at launch.

 

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[1] Medicare Part D gross spending figures pulled from public data available on data.cms.gov.

[2] Data pulled from SEC filings. Solvay Pharmaceuticals received FDA approval for Creon on April 30, 2009. Abbott acquired Solvay and Creon in Feb. 2010. In 2013 Abbott’s pharmaceutical business was spun off into AbbVie which has since marketed Creon in the U.S. AbbVie does hold the rights to market the drug outside the U.S. 2011 was the first year that SEC filings broke out U.S. revenues for Creon.

[3] Tresiba was first approved internationally in 2013. Data compiled from SEC filings.

August 5, 2026

Testimony at the FDA Public Meeting on the Reauthorization of the Medical Device User Fee Amendments

By Michael T. Abrams, M.P.H., Ph.D.

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I’m Dr. Michael Abrams, a senior health researcher with Public Citizen. Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization with over one million members. We have no financial conflicts of interest related to medical device regulation, including today’s topic: the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) draft commitment language regarding the future of the Medical Device User Fee Amendments (MDUFA) program.[1]

Public Citizen is concerned that the draft commitment language for 2028-2032 focuses on advancing the interests of device manufacturers at the expense of consumer interests and expectations. Accordingly, we recommend these changes to the proposed language.

The FDA should…

1. … ask Congress for more direct appropriations to evaluate medical devices before they are approved or cleared for marketing in the United States.
2. … give consumers and public interest organizations more meaningful input into the medical device review process. Presently, patient stakeholder groups, ironically, are “second class” compared to device manufacturers, who have a financial interest in marketing new devices. Increased transparency through more public advisory committee meetings would be valuable as well.
3. … add program performance measures that quantify health improvements or spared morbidity for newly cleared or approved devices. At present, “performance” under MDUFA is focused on how quickly the FDA responds to device-maker (companies the agency often refers to as their “customers”) applications and related requests.
4. …advance efforts to optimize diversity in premarket clinical trials for medical devices. For example, the FDA should add performance measures that benchmark the accuracy of wearable technologies, such as pulse oximeters, to detect physiological signs in persons across the skin pigmentation spectrum.
5. … be far more cautious about using “real-world” rather than higher-quality evidence to support regulatory decision-making. Per a 2025 FDA report, real-world evidence is defined as routinely collected health care information from questionable sources that include electronic billing records.[2] The FDA has stated that such information can be used as the main evidence in support of high-risk devices, including implantable spinal cord stimulators. Review of the report, however, suggests that reliance on “real-world evidence,” rather than randomized clinical trials with contemporary, comparator arms, is often a fool’s errand.
6. Finally, the language should be more proactive and detailed than it currently is regarding the FDA’s pledge to bolster its capacity to regulate artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled and related devices. Recent reporting suggests that AI-enabled medical technologies of many types (including diagnostic software and mental health therapy chatbots) are flooding the market, many without FDA oversight.[3][4] At this critical moment for regulation of AI technologies, the commitment language should reflect the FDA’s distinctive obligation to protect public health.

Thank you.

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References

[1] U.S. Food and Drug Administration. MDUFA performance goals and procedures, fiscal years 2028 through 2032. Undated. https://www.fda.gov/media/193465/download?attachment. Accessed August 3, 2026.

[2] U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Report: Examples of Real-World Evidence Used in Medical Device Regulatory Decisions (Fiscal Years 2020–2025). April 2026. https://www.fda.gov/media/191805/download. Accessed August 3, 2026.

[3] Abrams MT. Testimony to the FDA’s Digital Health Advisory Committee regarding generative artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital mental heath medical devices. November 6, 2025. https://www.citizen.org/article/testimony-to-fdas-digital-health-advisory-committee-regarding-generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-enabled-digital-mental-health-medical-devices/. Accessed August 4, 2026.

[4] American Psychological Association. Psychologists say patients are turning to chatbots as mental health professionals. June 16, 2025. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2026/06/patients-chatbots-mental-health. Accessed August 4, 2026.

August 4, 2026

Intersecting Vulnerabilities — Climate Change

Housing Costs, Energy Burdens, and Extreme Heat in Washington, D.C.

By Mahin Rahman Tawrat & Craig Holman, Ph.D.

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Key Findings

Housing costs, utility bills, and extreme heat converge in the same homes and household budgets. The data show overlap—but they also show why one map cannot substitute for another.

• Rent burden is citywide. About 84,085 renter households spend at least 30% of income on gross rent; 42,629 spend at least half. A majority—57.9%—live outside the two highest RBII tiers.¹
• Energy unaffordability is concentrated. Among 202 modeled tracts, 71 meet the 6% high-burden threshold and 14 exceed 10%. The severe-burden tracts contain about 5,300 modeled low- and moderate-income renter households.²
• Heat follows a third geography. The 52 highest-exposure tracts average 15.4% tree cover and 63.7% impervious cover; the remaining tracts average 33.6% and 43.0%, respectively.³
• Forty-seven tracts cross multiple thresholds. Four cross the housing, energy, and heat thresholds simultaneously: Census Tracts 30, 47.04, 89.03, and 92.04.
• The burdens are not interchangeable. Pairwise tract correlations range from -0.08 to 0.11. A housing-only, energy-only, or heat-only screen misses communities visible in the other dimensions.
• CEPI identifies overlooked climate-energy need. Eleven tracts score at least 80; only four also meet the high-RBII threshold, and six fall in the lowest relative housing-priority tier.
• A light-shaded tract is not a no-need tract. Thresholds organize outreach and verification; they must not become automatic eligibility or denial rules.

Executive Summary

The problem

Housing affordability is climate infrastructure because rent, electricity, safe cooling, transportation, food, medicine, and emergency expenses all compete for the same household income. Yet housing, energy, and heat assistance remain fragmented across different agencies, data systems, applications, and entry points. Renters also face a structural split incentive: residents often pay the utility bill while owners control insulation, windows, roofs, cooling systems, and major appliances.

What this report does

This report connects three public-data systems at the census-tract level. It measures housing pressure through the Rent Burden Impact Index V.1 (RBII V.1), energy affordability through modeled home-energy burden for renter households at 0% to 80% of area median income, and physical heat exposure through D.C.’s index of afternoon air temperature, lack of tree canopy, and impervious surface. Transparent thresholds and the Climate-Energy Priority Index (CEPI) then show where the burdens overlap and where they diverge.

Why the timing matters

The timing is important. Beginning July 1, 2026, a typical Pepco Standard Offer Service customer using 614 kilowatt-hours per month faces a reported 7.0% total-bill increase, or $9.56.⁴ At the same time, D.C. already has strong policy assets—including Solar for All, the D.C. Sustainable Energy Utility, Building Energy Performance Standards, utility discounts, retrofit assistance, and Keep Cool DC.⁵

The central gap is not the absence of programs but the absence of a shared outcome framework. Housing, energy, and heat initiatives should be coordinated around measurable results: lower bills and arrears, fewer shutoffs, safer indoor temperatures, completed repairs, reduced emissions, expanded canopy, and stronger housing retention.

What the evidence shows

The evidence supports a dual strategy. Rent burden is broad enough that basic protections must remain citywide, while energy burden is concentrated enough to support targeted enrollment and bill-affordability work. Heat exposure follows a different geography, requiring building and public-realm interventions beyond conventional housing targeting. The four triple-burden tracts are immediate places for coordinated validation, and the very-high-CEPI tracts show where a housing-only screen would overlook climate-energy need.

Introduction: Affordability Is Climate Vulnerability

Public policy often treats housing, energy, and heat as separate sectors. Households do not. Rent and utility bills draw from the same income; building condition shapes both energy use and indoor temperature; and a heat emergency raises electricity demand when residents may be least able to pay. Renters often pay the bill while owners control the improvements that determine comfort and efficiency. A retrofit can lower costs and emissions, but without tenant safeguards it can also create rent pressure or displacement risk.

Three complementary measures

The report uses three complementary measures. Rent burden means gross rent equal to at least 30% of household income, while severe burden begins at 50%.⁶ Energy burden is annual home-energy cost divided by household income; this analysis uses 6% as the high-burden threshold and 10% as the severe threshold.⁷ Physical heat exposure is D.C.’s composite of afternoon air temperature (50%), lack of tree canopy (25%), and impervious surface (25%). It describes physical exposure rather than complete health risk.⁸

Why no single measure is enough

Each measure answers a different question. RBII shows where housing cost pressure is widespread, severe, numerous, and concentrated. Energy burden identifies where modeled home-energy costs consume a large share of income. The heat index shows where the physical environment intensifies exposure. Their limited correlations are not a defect; they are the reason the measures must remain visible side by side.

How to read the results

Threshold counts and percentile ranks serve different purposes. The overlap screen is easy to interpret because it records whether zero, one, two, or three conditions cross selected cutoffs. CEPI preserves more relative information by ranking energy and heat together. Using both reduces the risk that a hard cutoff hides near-threshold need or that a composite score conceals which condition is driving priority.

These tools must be interpreted carefully. Tract averages are not individual facts, and a low or light-shaded tract is not a no-need tract. The results are intended to guide outreach, verification, program design, and geographic accountability—not to determine a person’s eligibility, identity, or health risk.

1. Rent Burden Is the Foundation of Climate Vulnerability

RBII V.1 begins from the premise that neither prevalence nor scale is sufficient on its own. A small tract can have a very high burden rate but relatively few affected households, while a larger tract can contain many burdened households even when its rate is more moderate. The index therefore keeps four signals visible—burden rate, severe-burden rate, affected-household count, and burden density—and applies a transparent correction for unusually large tracts.

RBII V.1 component	Weight	Question answered	Planning use
Rent burden rate (30%+)	30%	How widespread is pressure?	Affordability outreach
Severe burden rate (50%+)	30%	How acute is residual-income loss?	Crisis prevention
Rent-burdened households	25%	How many households are affected?	Service capacity
Rent-burden density	15%	How concentrated is place-based need?	Clinics and inspections
Large-tract adjustment	-20% of positive standardized area	Could tract size distort concentration?	Transparent correction

 

Figure 1 – Darker purple in the map indicates higher relative priority under RBII V.1. Two tracts lack sufficient data for a score; the tiers do not define household eligibility. ⁹ The bar chart shows that the two highest RBII tiers contain 42.1% of rent-burdened renter households; 57.9% live in Tier 3 and Tier 4 tracts. ¹⁰

Why the component mix matters

The weights intentionally balance rates with scale. The two 30% rate measures keep widespread and severe cost pressure central, while the household-count measure prevents small high-rate tracts from automatically outranking larger places with many affected renters. Density supports place-based delivery, and the area adjustment reduces distortions from unusually large tracts. Because RBII is standardized within D.C., its tiers indicate relative planning priority—not household eligibility or a national benchmark.

What the map and chart show

Tier 1 and Tier 2 contain 35,357 rent-burdened renter households, equal to 42.1% of the citywide total. The typical Tier 1 tract has a 71.8% burden rate and a 46.9% severe-burden rate. Yet Tier 3 and Tier 4 together contain the remaining 57.9% of burdened households, demonstrating that concentrated priority and citywide need coexist.

Geography should therefore determine the intensity and mix of delivery—not access to basic protections. High-RBII areas warrant additional outreach, inspections, legal support, arrearage resolution, and retrofit planning, while citywide protections remain necessary because most burdened households live outside the two highest tiers.

Planning use

In practice, agencies should prioritize outreach where high rates and large affected populations coincide, match service capacity to the number of households rather than the tract rank alone, and use density to plan place-based clinics, inspections, and building-level engagement. Universal protections should remain available everywhere.

2. Utility Costs Create a Second Affordability Crisis

Across 202 tracts with DOE LEAD estimates, modeled energy burden averages 5.62% when weighted by approximately 89,383 low- and moderate-income renter households. Seventy-one tracts meet or exceed the 6% high-burden threshold, and 14 meet or exceed the severe 10% threshold. About 37.8% of modeled LMI renters live in tracts between 6% and 10%, while another 5.9% live in tracts at or above 10%.

These estimates should be used as screening evidence rather than precise household determinations. Extreme tract values, especially where modeled household counts are small, require verification with local utility, program, and building-condition data.

 

Figure 2. Dark outlines in the map mark tracts at or above the 6% high-energy-burden threshold. Burden is a cost-to-income ratio—not a direct measure of consumption or efficiency.¹¹ About 37.8% of modeled LMI renter households live in tracts between 6% and 10% burden; another 5.9% live in tracts at or above 10%.¹²

 

At the tract level, energy burden declines as modeled income rises (correlation -0.62) and increases as modeled annual energy cost rises (correlation 0.67). The policy response must therefore be layered: emergency aid and arrearage management should be paired with income-responsive discounts, efficiency, solar, storage, and verified tenant savings.¹³

3. Physical Heat Exposure Follows a Different Geography

Heat exposure is built into the urban landscape through streets, roofs, buildings, trees, and land cover. D.C.’s physical index measures exposure rather than full health risk, intentionally excluding health status, social isolation, homelessness, cooling access, indoor temperature, and power reliability. The highest-exposure quartile includes 52 census tracts and approximately 175,319 residents.

 

 

Figure 3. Dark outlines in the map identify the 52 tracts in the highest citywide quartile of physical heat exposure.¹⁴ Highest-exposure tracts average 15.4% tree cover and 63.7% impervious cover, compared with 33.6% and 43.0% elsewhere.¹⁵

Why indoor safety remains distinct

Outdoor exposure does not automatically reveal indoor safety. Poor insulation, inadequate windows, roof conditions, broken equipment, electricity affordability, and power reliability determine whether residents can cool safely. Housing and public-realm interventions must therefore work together: building repairs and utility protections address indoor conditions, while trees, shade, cool surfaces, water access, and safer transit stops reduce neighborhood exposure.¹⁶

4. Overlapping Burdens Identify Urgent Places—and Important Gaps

The overlap screen uses three transparent thresholds

The overlap screen applies three transparent thresholds: RBII V.1 at or above 0.50 for housing, modeled LMI renter energy burden at or above 6% for energy, and physical heat exposure in the highest citywide quartile for heat. It counts how many thresholds each tract crosses without concealing the individual components inside a composite score.

 

 

Figure 4. Four tracts cross all three thresholds, 43 cross two, 85 cross one, and 70 cross none. Four tracts lack modeled energy data.¹⁷ Among 202 complete-data tracts, 23.3% cross at least two thresholds and 65.3% cross at least one.¹⁸

 

The four triple-burden tracts contain 2,468 rent-burdened households and 3,088 modeled LMI renter households, although these figures come from different source universes and must not be added together. Overlap should guide the intensity and combination of services, but it should never determine whether residents receive basic protection.

Priority Tract Profiles and the Mismatch Among Burdens

Tract	RBII tier / score	Rent burden	Severe burden	LMI energy burden	Heat exposure
30	Tier 2 / 0.504	49.6% (524 HH)	25.4%	6.53% (585 HH)	0.802
47.04	Tier 1 / 1.687	75.1% (408 HH)	50.8%	8.22% (640 HH)	0.754
89.03	Tier 2 / 0.984	56.1% (678 HH)	35.7%	6.93% (854 HH)	0.733
92.04	Tier 2 / 0.985	61.5% (858 HH)	27.7%	6.45% (1,008 HH)	0.777

These four tracts warrant coordinated resident engagement, building assessment, bill-affordability screening, tenant protection, and heat mitigation. Household counts come from different survey and modeled universes and should not be added across columns.

What distinguishes the four tracts

Among the four tracts, 47.04 shows the most acute housing pressure, with a 75.1% rent-burden rate, a 50.8% severe-burden rate, and the highest RBII score. Tract 92.04 contains the largest affected counts, making service capacity especially important. Tract 30 has the highest heat-exposure score of the group but the lowest housing score, illustrating how heat can elevate priority even when RBII is only slightly above the threshold. Tract 89.03 presents substantial pressure across all three measures. Even triple-burden tracts therefore require differentiated intervention packages.

Different combinations require different interventions

Different burden combinations call for different intervention packages. Housing-plus-energy tracts need bill relief, arrearage prevention, housing stability, legal support, and tenant-protected efficiency. Energy-plus-heat tracts need efficient cooling, distributed energy, weatherization, bill safeguards, and resilience planning. Housing-plus-heat tracts need stabilization, safe cooling, code enforcement, repairs, and public-realm mitigation.

Figure 5. Modeled energy burden and physical heat exposure have a near-zero tract-level relationship (-0.08). The dimensions can compound household hardship without producing similar citywide geographies.¹⁹

INTERPRETATION  Near-zero geographic correlation does not mean that the burdens cannot compound within a household. It means their highest-value tracts do not follow the same citywide pattern.

5. CEPI Finds Places a Housing-Only Screen Can Miss

CEPI gives equal weight to each tract’s modeled LMI renter energy-burden percentile and physical heat-exposure percentile. A score of 80 or more is designated very high; this is a transparent planning threshold, not a forecast of individual harm. Eleven tracts meet the threshold, but only four also meet the high-RBII threshold.

What CEPI adds

CEPI does not replace RBII; it answers a narrower question: where do elevated energy burden and physical heat exposure coincide? Equal weighting makes the formula easy to audit and prevents either component from dominating. This is useful for cooling, weatherization, solar, storage, and resilience planning because a tract can rank highly on climate-energy conditions even when it does not cross the housing threshold.

 

Figure 6. Higher CEPI scores identify tracts that rank highly on both modeled energy burden and physical heat exposure. Outlines identify tracts that also meet the high-RBII threshold.²⁰ Seven of the 11 very-high-CEPI tracts do not meet the high-RBII threshold; six of those seven are in RBII Tier 4.²¹

Three examples of overlooked climate-energy priority

The mismatch is clearest in three tracts. Census Tract 95.09 has the city’s highest CEPI score, 96.57, but falls in RBII Tier 4. Census Tracts 48.01 and 95.04 score 87.15 and 86.67, respectively, and also fall in Tier 4. A climate-energy screen therefore adds information that a housing-only screen would miss.

POLICY VALUE  CEPI prevents housing-only screening from overlooking acute energy-and-heat exposure.

6. From Maps to Decisions: A Public-Interest Action Framework

The table translates analytical categories into operational choices. It is not a set of mutually exclusive programs; many households need more than one service, and universal access must remain intact. Its purpose is to identify which agencies should coordinate first, what safeguard must accompany the intervention, and which household outcome should be monitored. This keeps targeting tied to public purpose rather than treating a tract score as the outcome itself.

Screening profile	First-line public action	Required safeguard	Outcome to track
Housing + energy + heat	Joint outreach; bill screening; rental inspection; efficient cooling; retrofit and public-realm plan	No displacement; no tract-only eligibility	Bills; indoor heat; repairs; housing retention
Housing + energy	Bill relief; arrearage management; deep efficiency; legal support	Verified tenant savings; preserve affordability	Burden; shutoffs; rent changes
Housing + heat	Safe cooling; code enforcement; shade, roof, window, and tree work	Safety not conditioned on ability to pay	Indoor heat; repair time; displacement
Energy + heat	Weatherization; efficient cooling; solar/storage; cool corridors	Protect renters and master-metered residents	Bills; outages; cooling; canopy
One / none	Targeted referral plus citywide protections and reassessment	Never interpret as no need	Program access; threshold trends

Recommendation 1: Create one shared screen and referral system

D.C. should adopt one shared planning layer that preserves the housing, energy, and heat component values rather than replacing them with an opaque score. The system should support a no-wrong-door referral protocol, disclose where resources are delivered relative to measured need, and give tenant and community representatives a formal role in definitions, update schedules, privacy rules, and permitted uses. Geography may trigger outreach or verification, but it must never become an automated denial rule.

Recommendation 2: Make essential energy affordable by design

D.C. should evaluate an income-responsive discount or percentage-of-income plan; the OPC study describes programs that typically cap bills between 3% and 6% of income.²² The design must also reach master-metered buildings, households with utilities included in rent, and residents facing arrears, language barriers, shutoff risk, or delayed restoration. Major rate proposals should include an affordability impact statement by income, tenure, and geography.

A Six-Part Policy Agenda

Recommendation 3: Retrofit rental housing without displacing renters

Publicly supported rental retrofits should produce measurable tenant savings, prohibit inappropriate cost pass-throughs, preserve affordability, and protect residents against retaliation. Programs must also fund enabling repairs—such as roofs, moisture remediation, wiring, windows, and health-hazard correction—because efficiency equipment cannot perform effectively in unsafe or deteriorated homes.²³

Recommendation 4: Treat safe cooling as an essential housing service

Safe cooling should be treated as an essential housing service by connecting public-health guidance, housing enforcement, utility protection, and retrofit funding through one coordinated pathway. D.C. should evaluate maximum indoor-temperature rules with funding, technical assistance, enforcement capacity, and a workable phase-in, while expanding trees, shade, cool surfaces, water access, resilience hubs, and safer transit stops.²⁴

Recommendation 5: Fund a durable safety net and distributed clean energy

A durable safety net should allow residents to register need and retain a dated place in line even when one funding pool is temporarily exhausted. Agencies should publish processing times and remaining funds, screen residents for related benefits, and expand renter access to solar and storage. Realized savings should be reported by tenure, building type, and geography.²⁵

Recommendation 6: Require geographic accountability

Utilities, regulators, and program administrators should report arrears, shutoffs, restorations, enrollment, processing time, and bill impacts at the smallest reliable geography. Rate and investment proposals should show who pays, who benefits, and whether projects reduce household costs or shift them. Privacy suppression should protect individuals without erasing neighborhood-level accountability.

ACCOUNTABILITY STANDARD  Judge programs by bills reduced, shutoffs prevented, homes made safer, neighborhoods cooled, emissions avoided, and households able to remain in place.

7. Implementation Roadmap and Performance Measures

First 100 days: establish the operating system

During the first 100 days, D.C. should convene a cross-agency working group with compensated resident and tenant representatives, adopt shared definitions and privacy rules, publish a transparent update schedule and program crosswalk, establish a no-wrong-door referral protocol, and begin resident-led validation in the four triple-burden tracts and selected very-high-CEPI tracts.

Within one year: test integrated delivery

Within one year, the District should test integrated delivery through multilingual pilots with trusted partners, connected housing-energy-heat case pathways, a common tenant-protection standard for public climate investments, an income-responsive affordability proposal, a privacy-protected dashboard, and an evaluation of indoor-temperature standards.

Within three years: institutionalize and scale

Within three years, D.C. should refresh the indices and delivery data on a predictable schedule, scale coordinated service delivery while preserving citywide access, tie performance incentives to household outcomes, and expand multifamily upgrades, community solar, cooling infrastructure, and independent evaluation.

Sequencing principle

Sequencing is essential. The first phase establishes shared rules and resident governance before technology or scoring systems are scaled. The one-year phase tests whether referrals lead to completed services and whether tenant protections work in practice. The three-year phase should expand only those pathways that demonstrate lower bills, safer homes, and stronger housing retention, with independent review of unintended effects.

Level	Core measures	Why it matters
Household	Energy burden; bill; arrears; shutoff/restoration; rent burden; benefit uptake; housing retention	Tests affordability and stability
Building	Energy use; peak demand; indoor temperature; repair completion; equipment; tenant savings	Tests durable capital benefits
Neighborhood	Canopy; shade; cool surfaces; hub access; heat incidents; outreach coverage	Tests exposure and access
Program	Processing time; denial reason; referrals; repeat documents; tenant-directed dollars	Tests usability and accountability
Equity	Outcomes by income, tenure, language, disability, and geography—with privacy controls	Tests distribution of benefits

8. A Replicable Model for U.S. Cities

The framework has national relevance because ACS rent-burden data, census-tract geography, and DOE energy-burden estimates are available across the United States.²⁶ Heat measures can be adapted to local conditions using existing heat maps or locally appropriate combinations of temperature, canopy, and impervious surface. The method is modular: publish the components first, count thresholds when agencies need to identify elevated conditions, and use percentiles only when a compact ranking is useful.

Four-step replication protocol

Replication should begin by defining the decision the tool will support—such as outreach, investment, emergency response, regulation, or evaluation. Each source’s universe, vintage, geography, missingness, and uncertainty should be documented before data are joined. Housing, energy, and heat components should be published before any composite measure, and priorities should be validated through inspections, program data, outcomes, and resident experience, with revisions made openly.

What replication should avoid

Cities should not copy D.C.’s thresholds without local testing, treat tract averages as individual facts, add variables without a documented purpose and uncertainty assessment, or define success through targeting alone. Performance must ultimately be judged through bills, safety, housing retention, emissions, access, and resident experience.

Minimum replication package

At minimum, a city should publish a tract-level data dictionary, exact formulas and thresholds, source vintages, missing-data flags, and a crosswalk connecting each classification to an action. Sensitivity tests should show how results change under alternative cutoffs or weights. A governance process should also define how updates, corrections, and resident feedback are incorporated. Producing a map alone is not successful replication; the model must improve decisions and accountability.

NATIONAL CONTRIBUTION  The method joins three burdens without concealing their differences or weakening universal protections.

Methods

Unit of analysis and alignment

The analysis covers 206 D.C. census tracts using 2024 TIGER/Line boundaries. Two tracts lack an RBII score, four lack modeled LMI renter energy data, and the overlap and CEPI analyses therefore use a 202-tract complete-data universe.

Dimension	Measure	Elevated threshold	Source / vintage
Housing	RBII V.1: prevalence, severity, number, density, area adjustment	RBII ≥ 0.50	ACS 2020-2024; 2024 TIGER
Energy	Modeled home-energy cost / modeled income for LMI renters	≥ 6%; severe ≥ 10%	U.S. DOE LEAD, 2022
Heat	50% air temperature; 25% lack of canopy; 25% impervious surface	Highest quartile; ≥ 0.729324	D.C. DOEE, 2022
Climate-energy	Equal mean of energy and heat percentile ranks	CEPI ≥ 80	Author calculation

Calculation details

RBII standardizes burden rate (30%), severe-burden rate (30%), logged burdened-household count (25%), and logged density (15%), then subtracts 0.20 times positive standardized land area. Energy burden is modeled annual home-energy cost divided by modeled annual income for renter households at 0% to 80% of area median income. The physical-heat highest-quartile cutoff is 0.729324, while CEPI is the equal average of each tract’s energy-burden and heat-exposure percentile ranks; scores of 80 or more are designated very high.

Weighted averages use modeled LMI renter-household counts where stated. Pearson correlations are descriptive rather than causal, and household totals remain within their original source universes; figures from different universes are not added together.

Data joins, missingness, and uncertainty

Tract identifiers were harmonized to 2024 geography before the datasets were joined. Missing component values remain visible in the source tables and are excluded only from calculations requiring complete cases; they are never treated as low burden. Because the data vintages differ, the combined measures are used for screening rather than as simultaneous observations. RBII and CEPI are planning constructs whose results depend on weights, transformations, and cutoffs. Agencies using them for major allocations should test alternatives, review ACS margins of error, verify extreme LEAD values with small modeled populations, and rerun the analysis when updated data become available.

Limitations, Responsible Use, and Conclusion

Six limitations

The analysis is ecological rather than individual: tract averages cannot establish a person’s need, eligibility, identity, or health risk. It also joins data from different periods—ACS 2020-2024, 2022 DOE and DOEE estimates, and 2024 tract boundaries—and both ACS estimates and modeled energy values carry uncertainty, especially in tracts with small populations.

Results are also sensitive to the selected weights and thresholds, so agencies should publish alternatives before making major allocations. Physical heat exposure is not complete heat risk because it excludes health, isolation, homelessness, cooling access, indoor temperature, and power reliability. Finally, geographic concentration, overlap, and mismatch do not establish causation or prove program effectiveness.

RESPONSIBLE-USE STANDARD  Use the report to coordinate agencies and choose places for verification—not as proof of individual need, causation, or automatic allocation.

Conclusion

D.C.’s next climate-policy stage should connect buildings, household bills, and heat resilience. A transition is not equitable when efficient equipment remains unaffordable, retrofits displace tenants or shift costs onto them, or outdoor heat investments ignore unsafe indoor temperatures.

The tract analysis identifies four triple-burden tracts, 43 double-burden tracts, and 11 very-high-CEPI tracts that a housing-only screen does not fully capture. At the same time, the evidence supports universal protections because most rent-burdened households live outside the two highest RBII tiers.

FINAL TAKEAWAY  The best climate policy is not only low-carbon. It is affordable, protective, measurable, and designed around the people who live with its consequences.

Acknowledgments and author contributions

This report was researched and written by Mahin Rahman Tawrat & Craig Holman, Ph.D. Tawrat developed RBII V.1, CEPI, the integrated threshold framework, the tract-level analysis, and all derived figures and tables. The work draws on public data and methodology from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Energy, D.C. Department of Energy and Environment, D.C. Public Service Commission, D.C. Office of the People’s Counsel, and the numbered source notes at the foot of each page.

Appendix A. Very-High Climate-Energy Priority Index Tracts

Tract	CEPI	LMI energy burden	Heat exposure	RBII tier	High RBII?
95.09	96.57	17.34%	0.791	Tier 4	No
48.01	87.15	7.73%	0.770	Tier 4	No
95.04	86.67	8.00%	0.763	Tier 4	No
47.04	85.22	8.22%	0.754	Tier 1	Yes
30	82.39	6.53%	0.802	Tier 2	Yes
28.02	82.35	6.02%	0.828	Tier 3	No
19.01	81.46	7.05%	0.758	Tier 4	No
69	80.70	12.03%	0.697	Tier 4	No
79.01	80.63	8.99%	0.724	Tier 2	Yes
92.04	80.18	6.45%	0.777	Tier 2	Yes
33.02	80.10	5.60%	0.837	Tier 4	No

CEPI ≥ 80 is the report’s very-high threshold. Seven of 11 tracts do not meet RBII V.1 ≥ 0.50; six of those seven are in RBII Tier 4.

How to read the table

The table should be read by component, not by CEPI rank alone. The RBII columns show whether housing priority reinforces the climate-energy signal. A “No” in the final column does not mean low housing need; it only means the tract falls below the report’s 0.50 high-RBII threshold.

Data products accompanying the analysis

The accompanying data products include the RBII V.1 tract table with its component measures and large-tract adjustment; the LMI renter energy-burden table with modeled households, income, costs, and threshold status; the physical heat-exposure table with population, canopy, impervious surface, air temperature, and index values; the integrated priority-area table with threshold classifications and missing-data status; and the CEPI table with percentile ranks, combined scores, RBII status, and formula.

Appendix B. Tracts With Severe Modeled LMI Renter Energy Burden

Tract	Energy burden	Modeled LMI renter HH	Avg. annual income	Avg. annual energy cost
10.03	23.31%	48	$6,474	$1,509
78.09	21.35%	492	$10,780	$2,301
8.04	18.97%	9	$6,562	$1,245
95.09	17.34%	26	$12,081	$2,095
20.02	14.32%	88	$21,171	$3,032
95.03	14.20%	57	$27,420	$3,895
69	12.03%	111	$17,645	$2,123
74.01	11.56%	521	$17,264	$1,996
98.02	11.33%	354	$20,023	$2,270
111	10.87%	581	$16,225	$1,763
78.08	10.39%	617	$24,174	$2,513
76.01	10.20%	1,049	$22,919	$2,338
96.01	10.13%	501	$28,965	$2,934
74.06	10.10%	853	$21,029	$2,123

Severe burden is defined here as modeled home-energy cost equal to at least 10% of modeled annual household income. Small modeled household counts make some extreme estimates less stable. Use the table to prioritize verification—not as an automatic allocation list.

How to use the appendix

The appendix should be used to prioritize verification rather than automatic allocation. Extreme estimates should be checked against local utility, program, and building-condition data; outreach should focus on households rather than treating every resident of a high-burden tract as identical; bill assistance should be paired with weatherization, repairs, efficient cooling, solar, storage, and tenant protections; and outcomes should be tracked through bills, arrears, shutoffs, restoration time, indoor safety, and housing retention.

Data priorities for future updates

Future editions would be stronger with privacy-protected utility arrears, shutoff, restoration, indoor-temperature, cooling-equipment, repair, and realized-savings data by tenure and geography. These measures would allow the screening framework to be tested against observed outcomes rather than exposure and modeled burden alone.

 

 

Meta Must Put Consent Before AI Data Collection

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Mark Zuckerberg
Chief Executive Officer
Meta Platforms

Meta Must Put Consent Before AI Data Collection

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge Meta to commit to a simple principle that will be incredibly important in the Age of AI: people should affirmatively choose whether their identity, likeness, voice, and personal experiences may be used to power artificial intelligence systems.

Although Meta recently withdrew its Muse AI image generation feature following widespread public backlash, the underlying concerns remain unresolved. Before being pulled from the market, Muse permitted users to generate AI-created images depicting individuals with public Instagram accounts through a default opt-out system rather than obtaining affirmative consent. Consumers were automatically enrolled without their permission, generally received no notice when AI-generated images involving their likeness were created, and were required to navigate complex privacy settings to prevent future use.

The widespread pushback, and subsequent market removal of Muse, served as an important acknowledgement that the public expects stronger privacy protections. But it does not resolve the broader direction Meta appears to be taking. Public reporting indicates that Meta is developing increasingly sophisticated AI-powered wearable technologies capable of continuously capturing images, audio, and other information about users and the people around them. These systems reportedly create searchable records of everyday life, extract detailed metadata about individuals’ activities and relationships, and may ultimately be used to improve Meta’s AI models. Reports also suggest that future devices may reduce or eliminate visible indicators that recording is occurring, making it increasingly difficult for bystanders to know when they are being observed.

This is an upside down approach to privacy. Rather than asking permission before collecting and repurposing deeply personal information, Muse and new technologies reportedly under consideration by Meta place the burden on consumers to discover, understand, and disable complicated privacy settings after the fact. Even more troubling, bystanders often have no meaningful opportunity to consent at all rendering any sense of privacy obsolete.

People do not surrender control over their identity simply because they maintain a public social media profile or exist in public spaces. No person should have to fear that their biometric information will be captured by a technology company simply because they exist in public. Consumers reasonably expect that sharing photographs with friends, walking through a neighborhood, attending school, shopping, or participating in community life does not constitute blanket permission for those experiences to become commercial training data for AI systems.

Privacy is not merely a preference setting, it is a fundamental component of human dignity, individual autonomy, and civil rights and civil liberties.

Accordingly, we urge Meta to:

• Obtain genuine, clear, affirmative consent before collecting or processing biometric information, including to identify a person
• Cease business and data practices that replicate a person’s voice or likeness, or train AI models
• Ensure that privacy protections are easy to understand, easy to exercise, and enabled by default where appropriate.
• Publicly commit that meaningful affirmative consent, not data maximization, will guide Meta’s responsible innovation principles.

Meta can demonstrate that technological leadership includes respecting the dignity, autonomy, and informed choices of the people whose lives make these technologies possible. We urge Meta to adopt these principles before introducing additional AI products that further erode personal privacy.

 

We look forward to your timely reply.

 

Public Citizen
American Civil Liberties Union
Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network
Center for AI and Digital Policy
Center for Oil and Gas Organizing
Climate Crisis Working Group of Moore Co.
Color of Change
Common Cause
Common Sense Media
Consumer Action
Consumer Federation of America
Demand Progress Education Fund
Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)
Encode AI
Evitable
Innovate EDU
Innovation for Everyone
MIT Data + Feminism Lab
MPower Change
National Black Justice Collective
NoSo Connection Collective
Open MIC (Open Media and Information Companies Initiative)
Oregon Consumer Justice
Our Subscription to Addiction
People Power United
Public Knowledge
Rinascimento Green
ReThink Citizens
SAG-AFTRA
Stand.earth
Techtonic Justice
The Oversight Lab
The Tech Oversight Project
The Value Alliance
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Transparency Coalition
UltraViolet
UnidosUS
Women’s Media Center

 

CC:

U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee
U.S. Senate Oversight Committee
U.S. Federal Trade Commission

August 3, 2026

The Food and Drug Administration and ‘Gas Station Heroin’ — The Kratom Crackdown That Wasn’t

By Peter Whoriskey, Research Director, Health Research Group

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Scores of people have died in recent years from products made from kratom, an evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia. Yet the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has chosen not to regulate kratom products, often known as “gas station heroin,” and has even promoted them.

Among the deaths is a Florida man who consumed a kratom tonic sold by a company in which Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin held a stake. Mullin reportedly urged officials to remove language from the FDA’s website warning of kratom’s harms.

Public Citizen tracked down kratom’s victims.

On the morning of April 21, 2025, Kevin Oliveira, 32 (photo below), was found dead in his bedroom at his parents’ home in Tequesta, Florida. Found with him were more than a dozen small blue bottles of Feel Free Classic, a tonic made from the leaves of kratom, an evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia. Sold at gas stations and vape shops across the United States, Feel Free and other kratom products promise “energy” and “focus.”  A musician who played at weddings and local bars, Oliveira had been buying Feel Free by the case — 12 bottles for more than $100, his family said. Weeks before he died, he checked into a rehabilitation facility to quit. He left after two days.

What killed him, according to the medical examiner, was high blood levels of mitragynine, the opioid most abundant in kratom leaf.

The leaves of the kratom plant have been used in traditional medicine for centuries. In smaller doses, kratom leaf acts as a stimulant. At larger doses, it acts as an analgesic and sedative.

Since the sale of kratom products began surging in the United States around 2015, authorities have counted scores of overdose deaths. Survivors of addiction to Feel Free post their stories on TikTok. On Facebook, groups have formed to allow mothers of the dead to express their grief. Some former users have published books, such as My Kratom Hell: A Users Guide to Quitting Kratom, a 2019 personal account written by a former kratom addict.

Yet efforts to regulate kratom products repeatedly have failed to overcome industry lobbying.

Then, in July 2025, Trump officials announced that they were acting to “protect Americans.” But a closer look at the measures they put forth reveals that they missed the target. They chose not to regulate the opioid in kratom blamed for the death of Oliveira and hundreds of others. Using toxicology reports, death certificates, lawsuits and other public records, Public Citizen found 26 deaths over the last five years that coroners attributed to that opioid, known as mitragynine, and toxicologists say there have been hundreds more that have received little attention. Today, to the bewilderment of survivors, kratom products remain on store shelves.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S “BOLD STEP”

Three months after Oliveira’s death, the Trump administration staged a press conference to announce measures that were described as a “bold step” toward addressing the rising toll of kratom-related addiction and death. The nation’s top health officials, including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and then-FDA Commissioner Dr. Martin A. Makary spoke. Also present, for no apparent reason, was then-Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, who praised Kennedy for having the “backbone” to act to restrict 7-OH.

“It’s an addiction that’s ruining lives,” Mullin said. “It’s an addiction that’s truly killing people.”

Yet nothing in the announcement acknowledged that deaths like Oliveira’s had occurred.

Federal health officials proposed no limits on mitragynine, the kratom opioid that killed Oliveira and many others, according to medical-examiner reports. Instead, the officials called for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to place restrictions on another opioid found in trace amounts in the kratom plant. That compound, 7-hydroxymitragynine, is commonly known as 7-OH and is sold in concentrated synthetic forms. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary branded it “a killer.” The FDA recommended that the DEA restrict 7-OH products by scheduling them under the Controlled Substances Act.

To the casual observer, it may have seemed like the Trump administration was getting tough on kratom. But the exclusive focus on 7-OH allowed the continued sale of kratom tonics and powders. Because 7-OH is present only in trace amounts in kratom, banning 7-OH products does not ban kratom or products made directly from it; the 7-OH levels are too low.  In effect, the FDA recommendation allowed the continued sale of kratom and products derived from it, such as Feel Free.

Mullin at some point acquired a financial interest in kratom. According to March 2026 financial disclosures, Mullin has invested between $500,001 and $1 million in Botanic Tonics, LLC, of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, the company that makes Feel Free Classic— the tonic found in Kevin Oliveira’s bedroom. Mullin filed the disclosures upon being nominated to be secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, but the documents do not include the date when Mullin made the investment.

Previously, Mullin had urged officials to remove language from the FDA website warning of kratom’s harms, according to New York Times reporting based on four people familiar with his efforts.

Makary, Kennedy and Mullin at the July 2025 press conference announcing a “bold step” to protect Americans from 7-OH products, but not mitragynine products.

At the press conference last July, federal officials even promoted kratom: A woman from Kalamazoo, Michigan, with chronic pain presented a testimonial about the benefits of kratom. She told the audience that kratom had given her back her life.

In the media, reports about the dangers of kratom typically cover single incidents, highlighting one overdose death at a time. The kratom industry has dismissed the cases as anomalies. But the trail of the dead now crosses the country. The deaths refute industry claims that kratom products are safe.

“It’s like we’re selling morphine at a gas station – that doesn’t make sense,” Carolina Panoff, a close friend of Oliveira, said at a meeting in 2025 with reporters and Oliveira’s weeping parents. “I don’t understand how this fell through the cracks.”

 

DEATHS BY MITRAGYNINE

Industry advocates tout kratom’s power to relieve pain, boost mood and relieve symptoms of opioid withdrawal, even though there are few clinical data and the hypothesized benefits of mitragynine have not been established.

Kratom users who are found dead often have ingested a variety of other dangerous drugs. In these so-called “polydrug” cases, the industry argues, the kratom products could be blameless or at least not considered the primary reason for the death.

But in many other cases, such as Oliveira’s, mitragynine is present alone, or in such high amounts that medical examiners classify the cause of death as mitragynine toxicity.

Wendy Chamberlain, the founder of Kratom Danger Awareness, a grassroots advocacy group, estimates that at least two hundred of the group’s members are families who lost someone to mitragynine toxicity alone. In Florida, for example, according to a 2023 Tampa Bay Times investigation, there had been over 500 kratom-involved overdoses, 46 of which were determined to be caused by kratom alone.

“Though kratom-related deaths are low when compared to its widespread use, the denial that kratom use does not result in fatalities is false and misleading,” according to an article by four scientists at NMS Laboratories, a Pennsylvania company that is one of the nation’s leading forensic testing labs. In an interview, Donna Papsun, the lead author of the study, estimated that there have been hundreds of deaths in the U.S. over time.

Here are a handful of the scores of people who, according to coroner and toxicology reports, died from mitragynine, along with quotes from official documents regarding the cause of death.

In 2021 the parents of 23-year-old Ethan Pope (photo above) found him dead on the kitchen floor of his apartment. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation found that he had died of “Mitragynine Intoxication.” It said the toxicology tests did not find alcohol or “non-therapeutic drugs.”

In 2022 Breck Brossett, 38 (photo above), a warehouse supervisor, was found unresponsive in his bedroom in Springfield, Missouri. His mother attempted CPR three times. The coroner blamed “Mitragynine Intoxication.”

In 2023 Robert Simmons, 34, of Greely, Colorado, collapsed near his truck after consuming kratom powder. He was a father of four. The coroner determined the cause of death to be acute mitragynine toxicity.

In 2024 Tyrell Trouville, 25, of Florida, a waiter at a waterfront restaurant, died after having a kratom seltzer. The coroner cited “mitragynine toxicity.”

In 2025 Kielee Rustici (photo above), 23, a college student from Idaho interested in forensic accounting, died of an overdose. The coroner blamed “Acute Mitragynine Intoxication.” She had no illicit substances in her body, the toxicology report said.

 

ORIGINS OF THE KRATOM FAD

The psychoactive power of kratom leaves comes from mitragynine, a compound that binds to mu-opioid receptors, the same receptors in the brain that are affected by heroin, fentanyl and other powerful opioids.

Kratom leaves. Photo by Manuel Jebauer, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

General interest in kratom began to take off in the United States about a decade ago. Today, kratom products are commonly sold at convenience stores and online. An estimated 5 million Americans reported using kratom at least once during their lifetime, according to an analysis of survey data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. From 2015 to 2025, kratom-related calls to poison control centers increased by approximately 1,200%, reaching more than 3,400 calls in 2025, according to a March 2026 article in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publication.

Botanic Tonics, whose products reach 30,000 stores across the United States, sells Feel Free Classic as a healthful herbal supplement. Sold in 2-ounce bottles, it contains 40 milligrams (mg) of mitragynine and no 7-OH, according to its label. The company enlisted health and wellness influencers to gain customers.

“Our original feel-good tonic is thoughtfully crafted with noble kava root and other functional botanical ingredients that have been used for centuries,” according to the company’s website. “Our unique blend is designed to create a state of chilled energy, helping to clear your mind and elevate your mood, so you can be more present and in the moment.”

A Feel Free display at a gas station in Washington, DC. Photo by Peter Whoriskey

The marketing appeals to the sense that natural substances are beneficial. “The branding was really great because it hooked somebody like Kevin who’s into wellness and into living a healthy lifestyle,” said Panoff, the close friend of Oliveira. “He was gluten free and organic food and all these things.”

KRATOM POLITICS

The American argument over kratom has two sides: those who say it helps people and those who say it kills them.

In an online survey conducted by researchers funded by the American Kratom Association, an industry group, 48% of respondents said they used kratom mainly for pain; 22% for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); 10% for energy; and 10% to help cut down on opioid use and/or relieve withdrawal.

Since 2025, Trump administration officials have embraced the industry claims that kratom products may benefit people and resisted sales restrictions. Their stance may have been most obvious at the Kennedy-Makary press conference, when a kratom user and advocate was brought forward to speak.

Makary said that Melody Woolf, the chronic pain patient from Kalamazoo, “has experienced suffering looking for pain relief, and she is going to share a bit about her story.”

Before taking kratom, Woolf said, she had been using as many as 11 drugs at a time to treat her pain, including the highest doses of fentanyl. But her discomfort remained.

“I’m just so thankful that I found a botanical called kratom,” she said. “Right away my life improved…It was kratom only, the powdered leaf, that saved my life.”

The press conference did not present an opposing view from the advocates of kratom regulation or the families of kratom users who have overdosed.

Although kratom products are sold across the United States, political opinion about whether they should be legal is divided.  Six states (Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Vermont and Wisconsin) have banned all kratom products, classifying both mitragynine and 7-OH as controlled substances, according to the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association.

As of 2022, more than a dozen countries had banned kratom, including Australia, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden and Vietnam. Most kratom in the United States comes from Indonesia, where kratom exports are encouraged but its use as a health supplement within the country has been prohibited.

FEDERAL POLICY FLIP-FLOPS

In the United States, federal policy has flip-flopped between radically different views about kratom.

In August 2016 the DEA proposed to classify mitragynine and 7-OH as Schedule 1 drugs, in effect banning kratom products. Schedule 1 is the category for substances with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, such as heroin. The DEA received immediate bipartisan opposition; two months later, the agency withdrew the proposal.

In February 2018, during the first Trump administration, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned, based on academic research and other data, that there had been 44 reported deaths associated with the use of kratom. He recommended that the DEA classify both opioid substances in kratom leaf – mitragynine and 7-OH – as Schedule 1.

“Claiming that kratom is benign because it’s ‘just a plant’ is shortsighted and dangerous,” Gottlieb’s statement said. “After all, heroin is an illegal, dangerous, and highly addictive substance containing the opioid morphine, derived from the seed pod of the various opium poppy plants.”

Within months, however, Brett Giroir, then Assistant Secretary for Health, rescinded Gottlieb’s recommendation. Giroir later posted on X that Gottlieb’s recommendation had been dropped because of “embarrassingly poor evidence & data.”

Gottlieb’s statement is no longer available on the FDA’s website.

The flip-flops have continued. In March 2023, during the Biden Administration, U.S. Marshals and the FDA seized over $3 million worth of products containing kratom that were manufactured by Botanic Tonics and marketed under the brand name “Feel Free Plant Based Herbal Supplement.”

“This seizure underscores our commitment to taking aggressive action when companies distribute products that contain dangerous ingredients such as kratom,” Judy McMeekin, then the FDA’s Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs, said at the time.

Botanic Tonics contested the seizure; for two years, the case was dormant.

Then, in another striking reversal, in December 2025 federal prosecutors under the Trump administration filed a motion to drop the seizure litigation, explaining that “it would not be a prudent use of government resources to sustain this action.”

A spokesperson for Botanic Tonics told a columnist from the Kansas City Star that since the seizure, the federal government’s stance on kratom had changed.

The “agency was still developing its understanding of kratom” when it seized the goods, the spokesperson said.

In March 2026, just months after the government dismissed the case, Botanic Tonics wrote a $500,000 check to the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) PAC, a political group aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Its mission is to elect Republicans “who will champion the MAHA agenda.”

THE SCIENCE

Government scientists have begun to examine the use of kratom, but so far, the research record is sparse.

In 2024 a study led by FDA scientists considered the effects of a single dose of a powder made from kratom leaves in 40 recreational drug users. Doses in the trial ranged from 1 to 12 grams; surveys of kratom users had shown average consumption ranging from 3 to 8 grams per day. The most common side effects were sleepiness, vomiting and nausea. Researchers reported that increasing doses of kratom led to increases in subjects’ ratings of feeling high or drunk.

The subjects in the study described kratom’s effects “as resembling those of THC [the main psychoactive compound in cannabis], and being somewhat similar to opioids and benzodiazepines,” the authors reported.

There are two other kratom studies listed as completed in clinicaltrials.gov, the federal clinical trials registry. One study with fewer than 20 participants examined how the body metabolizes kratom; in another study, from 2022, researchers questioned kratom users about their use of the substance and obtained blood specimens.

In June 2026 the National Institutes of Health announced that it had initiated a new drug application for mitragynine, “the primary psychoactive compound” in kratom, as a potential treatment for opioid use disorder. As part of the phase 1 clinical trial, 32 healthy adults will receive one dose of mitragynine in varying amounts, ranging from 25 mg to 100 mg, or a placebo. The research uses a purified formulation of mitragynine, developed by researchers at the NIH and the University of Florida.

The study will help gather “important first information on [mitragynine’s] safety and tolerability” according to the NIH description.

DEATH, ADDICTION AND LAWSUITS

As federal regulators have dithered and kratom products have grown in popularity across the United States, allegations of death and addiction have piled up in lawsuits, coroner reports and on social media.

On social media, former users of kratom and drinks like Feel Free describe the addiction and warn potential customers of the dangers. So do their relatives.

“Three years ago, I unknowingly spiraled into a severe addiction to an herbal tonic called Feel Free,” according to one post by McKenzie Wisdom of Chicago. “What I ultimately thought was a wellness drink ended up being an opioid-like substance that completely derailed my life, destroyed my health and upended my career as a wellness entrepreneur – ultimately led me to rehab.”

In January 2024 the company updated the warning label on Feel Free to say, “This product contains leaf kratom which, like caffeine and alcohol, can become habit-forming and harmful to your health if consumed irresponsibly. Consider avoiding any potentially habit-forming substances if you have a history of substance abuse. If consumed in recommended quantities, feel free CLASSIC has not been shown to cause any serious physical or social harm.” The label warns against consuming more than one ounce a day.

Lawsuits across the country also reflect the rise of kratom use and its adverse effects.

One of the largest cases about kratom’s addictive properties was Torres v. Botanic Tonics, a class action lawsuit filed in 2023 over deceptive marketing and failure to warn consumers of the potential dangers. The plaintiffs alleged Feel Free was sold as a safe, sober alternative to alcohol, but was addictive because of the kratom content. The case settled for $8.75 million in 2024 with no admission of wrongdoing.

Dozens of lawsuits have involved people who died with only mitragynine and no other illicit substances in their bodies.

“Many companies’ position is that mitragynine alone doesn’t cause death,” said Tamara Spires of mctlaw, a national law firm that has handled dozens of kratom lawsuits. But “in a number of cases we’ve seen, death certificates and toxicology reports indicate that mitragynine was the cause of death, and that it was the only substance in the body at the time of death.”

CONCLUSION

In July the DEA announced that it was preparing to classify 7-OH as Schedule 1 as the FDA had requested, leaving kratom untouched by any new regulation.

The debate goes on, however. In March, eight U.S. Senators led by Pete Ricketts, Republican of Nebraska, and Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, wrote to the FDA urging the agency to act against all kratom products, not just 7-OH. The current focus on 7-OH, they wrote, leaves “these addictive products on the shelf and tacitly declared them safe for consumption.”

It’s true that kratom leaves have been used for centuries in Southeast Asia for energy and as a sedative, and clinical trials may one day establish whether mitragynine has a role in medical care. But currently there is no accepted medical use for mitragynine in the United States. The record of kratom has been marked by tragedies regularly documented in headlines and coroner reports.

Seeking to regulate only 7-OH, as the federal government is doing now, was presented as a responsible measure. It’s not. The continued sale of kratom products over the counter, as if it were just a Pepsi, will subject more consumers to addiction and death. The FDA and the DEA must act soon to regulate both mitragynine and 7-0H.

35+ Groups Call on SEC to Withdraw Proposal to Rescind Climate Disclosure Rule

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Ms. Vanessa Countryman 
Secretary 
Securities and Exchange Commission 
100 F Street, NE 
Washington, D.C. 20549 

Re: Rescission of Climate-Related Disclosure Rules
Attention: 91 FR 33296; RIN 3235-AN76; File No. S7-2026-19 

Dear Ms. Countryman: 

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, Public Citizen, and the 35 undersigned organizations strongly oppose the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (the “Commission”) Proposed Rule (the “Proposal”) that would rescind its 2024 climate disclosure rule. The climate disclosure rule was a critical effort—informed by years of public consultation with registrants, investors, and the public—to deliver the consistent, comparable, and decision-useful information that market participants need to assess public companies’ climate-related financial risks and their strategies to manage those risks, and to value their securities. The rule elicited the most comments the Commission has ever received and garnered nearly unanimous support from institutional investors managing over $50 trillion in assets. The need for this type of disclosure has only grown as climate-related financial impacts accelerate and reshape the economy. The Commission should withdraw the Proposal.

Climate change is a growing source of financial risk for public companies and investors.

Recent studies find global warming is accelerating and global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to rise. Financial impacts on companies are undeniable. In Florida, nine property insurance companies—including three of the 10 largest in the state—have gone insolvent since 2021 due to worsening hurricanes. State Farm, the largest U.S. property insurer, received an emergency rate hike in California and required a $400 million cash infusion from its parent company to its California subsidiary to ensure it remained solvent following the 2025 Los Angeles fires. The World Economic Forum estimates that climate hazards will drive around $600 billion in yearly losses by 2035 for listed companies globally, representing a seven percent average drop in earnings, with certain sectors even more exposed. Researchers estimate global losses from fossil fuel asset stranding will reach $2.3 trillion by 2040 due to regulatory and legal challenges, new technologies and innovations, and shifting consumer preferences. 

Outside of the United States, financial regulators are continuing to respond to these impacts. As of 2024, jurisdictions representing over half of global GDP and over 40 percent of global market capitalization were implementing climate disclosure standards aligned with the International Sustainability Standards Board framework. The Bank of England announced in June 2026 it will incorporate transition risk into its corporate bond collateral framework. Market participants and regulators around the world recognize that climate change and the clean energy transition create significant financial risks and opportunities that all public companies need to manage.

The Commission responded to a clear market failure with the climate disclosure rule, which investors overwhelmingly supported.

The Commission has recognized the need for registrants to make climate disclosures dating back to its 2010 climate guidance, but the lack of specific, mandatory requirements in that guidance resulted in many firms providing only vague, boilerplate climate disclosures, or none at all. Due to strong investor interest, several private sector-led voluntary disclosure frameworks proliferated, but inconsistencies between frameworks and incomplete reporting resulted in incomparable, low quality data, making it expensive and time-consuming for investors to access and analyze. 

The Commission’s 2021 request for information on climate disclosure generated thousands of comments. “[M]ost commenters support[ed] the SEC’s effort to develop mandatory climate-related disclosures,” while “[n]early all letters, regardless of commenter type, express[ed] support for modeling mandatory disclosures on Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) recommendations.” With its 2022 climate disclosure proposal and 2024 final rule, the Commission was responding to a well-defined and extensively documented market failure to provide comparable and decision-useful information on the financial risks associated with climate change. All workers with savings in 401ks, pensions, or other stock market investments stand to benefit from the greater price accuracy and lower volatility, even if they never access the disclosures themselves.

The Proposal ignores this history and suggests the climate disclosure rule was based on “[g]eneralized invocations of…investor demand” which cannot “form the basis for Rulemaking.” The Commission did not base or justify the climate disclosure rule merely on ‘generalized invocations’ of investor demand—the 2022 proposal received more explicit support from investors than any other in the agency’s history, and investors identified specific ways they use climate risk information when investing, for example, to attribute value to company cash flows, for overall company valuations, and for portfolio analysis. By disregarding the overwhelming and rationally explained investor support for the climate disclosure rule, the Proposal is inconsistent with the central premise of TSC Industries vs. Northway: that the concept of “materiality” is grounded in the views of investors.

The Commission’s Proposal would undermine transparency in capital markets to protect companies with high climate-related financial risks.

The biggest beneficiaries of the Proposal would be companies with high climate-related financial risks seeking to avoid disclosing their risks—including those stemming from their greenhouse gas emissions—in financial regulatory filings. The Washington Post reported in February 2025 that the Commission’s suspension of the climate disclosure rule was an “early gift” to the fossil fuel industry which had made significant campaign donations and organized fundraising efforts for Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. With this rescission, the Commission is seeking to protect America’s largest corporations, especially those with high climate-related financial risks, at the expense of investors, market participants, and the public broadly. 

The SEC has clear and specific authority and responsibility to require standardized, comparable climate-related disclosures in furtherance of its mandate to protect investors; support fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation. Climate-related disclosures are used and needed not just by purchasers of securities, but also creditors, suppliers, customers, and other market participants that need the information to maintain smooth functioning of the capital markets, and the current system in the U.S. of voluntary disclosure is not meeting the needs of investors. Therefore, the SEC and other financial regulators must mandate public companies, including financial institutions, to disclose climate-related financial risks. The Commission must reverse course. 

Sincerely,

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund
Public Citizen
Adrian Dominican Sisters
Affordable Homeownership Foundation Inc
AFT
Better Markets
Center for Climate Integrity, National
Center for Insurance Research
Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)
Clean Air Task Force
Climate Defenders
CT COALITION FOR ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Congregation of St. Joseph
Consumer Watchdog
Daughters of Charity, Province of St. Louise
For a Better Bayou
Freeport Haven Project for Environmental Justice
Friends of the Earth US
Future Group
Green America
Investor Advocates for Social Justice
MARBE SA
Mercy Investment Services
Oxfam America
People Power United
Rainforest Action Network (RAN)
Rise Economy
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Sierra Club
The Academy of Financial Education
The Phoenix Group
UCBerkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy, Environment Center
Union of Concerned Scientists
United Church Funds
United Policyholders
U.S. PIRG
Wooley Energy & Environment

Individual Signatories
Dave Jones, Former California Insurance Commissioner