By Andrea Shalal
It was the third meeting of the Quad foreign ministers this year, with plans taking shape for US President Donald Trump to attend his first formal meeting of the leaders of the four countries next month in Manila during a conference of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The group pledged more than $85 million in assistance to support trusted artificial intelligence technologies across the Indo-Pacific region and said it would launch a new effort to identify vulnerabilities in semiconductor and related supply chains before they cause disruptions. Rubio said the four countries had already made substantial progress in ensuring they could pool resources in the event of a humanitarian crisis or national disaster, and also planned to set up a business forum so that businesses in all four nations could find new opportunities to work together.
The joint statement by the foreign ministers of the Indo-Pacific “Quad” came at a time when Japan has been extremely critical of Beijing over its restrictions on critical mineral exports, and the US has been assembling a coalition aimed at uniting G20 countries concerned about China’s dominance in rare earths and other critical minerals. Rubio told reporters that a Quad leaders meeting in Manila would “hopefully” be announced very soon, but gave no further details.
