ATLANTA — Foreign ministers from the US, Australia, India and Japan on Saturday pledged to work on building reliable global supply chains and expressed grave concerns about what they called 'economic coercion' through export restrictions and non-market practices, but stopped short of calling out China, Reuters reported. 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.

Source: Reuters via WNFL, Oct 31, 2026

The four ministers — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong — met in Atlanta on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting, IANS reported. Their joint statement set out initiatives spanning economic security, technology, maritime cooperation and disaster response. 'They expressed grave concerns regarding economic coercion, including through arbitrary export restrictions, as well as non-market policies and practices that result in overcapacity to disrupt global supply chains in critical industries,' the joint statement said, in the passage quoted by Reuters — which did not name any country.

Source: IANS, Oct 31, 2026

On technology, the partners said they intend to provide more than $85 million in technical and financial assistance to support access to trusted technology across the Indo-Pacific, including through the Quad SI Accelerator, IANS reported — yaani more than 8.5 crore dollars. The US release used the term 'Super Intelligence', with a footnote explaining that it refers to artificial intelligence in Australia, India and Japan, IANS noted; the statement did not specify individual country contributions or how the assistance would be distributed. The group also pledged more than $85 million in assistance to support trusted artificial intelligence technologies and said it would launch a new effort to identify vulnerabilities in semiconductor and related supply chains before they cause disruptions, Reuters reported.

The statement also carried a US commitment of $10 million for critical minerals recycling facilities in India and Southeast Asia, the announcement of a business leaders' forum, plans to identify semiconductor supply chain vulnerabilities and new maritime cooperation activities, and a pledge to dismantle cyber scam operations, IANS reported. On the seas, the ministers emphasised the 'absolute necessity to protect and preserve navigational rights and freedoms in the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait', Reuters reported from the statement. The Quad ministers reiterated their support for a free and open Indo-Pacific, underscoring the importance of economic security in maintaining global stability and prosperity, including through reliable and open global supply chains.

The meeting was held shortly before Rubio hosted the final session of the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in Atlanta, which includes China — and which ended without a joint communique, with Rubio issuing only a chairman's statement, as Awaaz Punjab reported earlier. The contrast is the story: where the 20-member table could not agree a text, the four-member Quad produced a funded programme — money for trusted AI, a minerals-recycling commitment touching India directly, and a supply-chain mapping effort aimed squarely at the chokepoints Beijing's export controls have exposed, even as all four governments avoided naming China in the document itself.