India signs agreement to join U.S.-led coalition Pax Silica

India joined the Pax Silica group on on Friday (February 20, 2026), teaming up with the United States and other countries that have sought to build a common supply chain for electronics and critical minerals. At an event during the AI Impact Summit, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw signed a document formally including India in the group, along with U.S. Undersecretary of State for economic growth, energy, and the environment Jacob Helberg. Mr. Helberg has been a major force in creating the group, which had its inaugural summit at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. last December. In a brief impassioned address on Friday, Mr. Helberg asserted that “we have allowed the foundations of our economic security to drift,” adding that it was important for countries like India and the U.S., who had both rejected “a king oceans away”, to reclaim sovereignty over their supply chains. #### Resilient to Chinese shocks Pax Silica’s other signatories include Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union. They have sought to make their supply chains more resilient to shocks from China, which has exercised its leverage over the last year as the sole source of refined rare earth elements, to gain an upper hand in trade negotiations with the U.S. India was not a signatory at the initial summit for reasons that remain unconfirmed. However, the U.S., as the convening party of the group, has said for weeks that it is open to India joining. “We have a very large talent pool, and we have conducted our foreign policy in a manner that builds trust,” Mr. Vaishnaw said on the sidelines of the summit. #### ‘Say no to blackmail’ “We find ourselves grappling with a global supply chain that is massively overconcentrated,” Mr. Helberg said. “We watch as our friends and allies face daily threats of economic coercion and blackmail, forced to choose between their sovereignty and their prosperity. We have seen the lights of a great Indian city extinguished by a keystroke from across the border,” he added, in an apparent reference to alleged sabotage that caused a blackout in Mumbai in October 2020. “And we’ve seen our friends denied essential minerals simply because a leader dared to speak her mind,” he said, in an apparent reference to China’s recent restrictions on rare earth element exports as a response to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan. “So today, as we signed the Pax Silica Declaration, we say no to weaponised dependency, and we say no to blackmail,” Mr. Helberg said. Published - February 20, 2026 10:58 am IST ### Related Topics India-United States / USA