WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance delivered a blunt warning Wednesday at the US-hosted Critical Minerals Ministerial, declaring the global market for key minerals is “failing” and leaving America and its allies dangerously exposed.

But the second-in-command danced around the elephant in the room: that China is causing it.

Addressing the group of 55 nations in attendance, Vance argued that modern industries — from missile defense to AI to energy — now depend on critical minerals just as much as oil and the US needs to shore up its own supply.

Vance touted the new $12 billion “Project Vault” initiative, America’s first-ever national critical minerals stockpile — the brainchild of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The veep said foreign market manipulation, price dumping, and unstable supply chains have crushed domestic investment and left America reliant on adversarial producers — an allusion to China, which he never referred to by name, but the global competitor lingered heavy in the background.

“I think every single one of us represented in this room has become dependent on arrangements we did not choose, and right now, arrangements that we cannot control,” he said. “We all face the same vulnerability: access to the things that protect our people and sustain our way of life.”

The meeting came the same day that President Trump on Truth Social said he held an “excellent telephone conversation” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which they discussed a range of topics including trade, global conflicts and Beijing’s purchase of American oil, gas and soybeans.

But China has monopolized the sourcing and refining of many critical minerals necessary for the production of “everything from missile defense systems to energy infrastructure to advanced manufacturing to emerging technologies,” Vance said.

“The fundamental supply chains that support these industries sometimes can vanish in the blink of an eye — without any control or influence from the other countries In this room, ” Vance said, calling the current system “distorted beyond recognition.”

Rubio took the allusions a step further, noting that the world’s critical minerals supply is “heavily concentrated in the hands of one country.”

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“That lends itself to, at worst-case scenario, being used as a tool of leverage in geopolitics, but it also lends itself to any sort of disruptions, like a pandemic or anything that could – political instability or anything that could happen,” he said.

Previously, Beijing has used critical minerals export controls against the US as leverage to get what it wants.

From acquiring Greenland to the US-Ukraine mineral deal, the Trump administration has centered much of its foreign policy initiatives around addressing the China problem.

The strategy proposes a preferential trade zone among allied nations, designed to stabilize prices, block the flood of foreign products and guarantee secure access to essential materials.

Vance pitched the Project Vault effort as both an economic and national security mission — and urged allies to join quickly.

The objective is “diversifying global supply in the critical minerals market, while strengthening the partner countries who help all of us in this shared effort,” he said.