Tariff Times Daily: Rubio Signs Armenia Critical Minerals Deal in Yerevan
The administration continues to build the foundation for a prosperous manufacturing future.
THE BOTTOM LINE
People continue to be mislead about the reason that manufacturing is comparatively expensive in the United States compared to China. The key cost input is NOT labor. The largest factor in making manufacturing in the United States often prohibitively expensive is the high cost of raw materials. That is why Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s deal in Armenia is such an important win. The United States needs a shield for its domestic manufacturers, in particular its infant industries: that is the point of the tariff. At the same time, manufacturers need a good business environment, without prohibitive overregulation and permitting, and with competitive flowing supply of the raw materials needed to build their products. For our national security and long-term cost effectiveness, the United States cannot rely on our adversaries for critical minerals and processing facilities for raw material. At home, Norfolk Naval Shipyard broke ground on Dry Dock 3 modernization that will widen the country’s capacity to service the fleet at home. On Capitol Hill, eight Republican senators are supporting USTR Greer to use the USMCA review to harden North American auto rules against Chinese capital. Commerce also opened a new AD/CVD case on air compressors from China, Malaysia, and Vietnam, and posted the first Federal Register implementation of the U.S.-Taiwan trade and security framework. The day’s signal is consistent across each item: tariff policy is functioning as a coherent system, with industrial, diplomatic, and legislative pieces moving in tandem to ensure American workers and industry will prosper in the days and years to come.
TODAY’S STORIES
Rubio Signs Critical Minerals and Transit Corridor Agreements With Armenia
Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed agreements in Yerevan on Tuesday covering critical minerals and rare earths cooperation as well as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, a regional transit corridor running through southern Armenia. The minerals piece adds another producing country to the administration’s growing network of non-Chinese supply agreements, complementing the Quad framework, the Sweden technology understanding, and Project Vault. Each individual deal is modest; together they are beginning to form the architecture of a parallel supply system for the materials the U.S. industrial base needs.
Inside Trade — Armenia critical minerals signing
Norfolk Naval Shipyard Begins Dry Dock 3 Modernization
The Navy broke ground at Norfolk Naval Shipyard on Tuesday to begin modernization of Dry Dock 3, part of a multi-year recapitalization of the four public shipyards that sustain the fleet. Public shipyards have been operating with infrastructure that in some cases predates World War II; investment in dry-dock capacity is the kind of foundational industrial spending that has to happen if the United States wants a Navy that can be maintained at home rather than offshored to allied yards. The same skilled-trades labor pool now in demand at Lockheed’s Alabama interceptor plant and U.S. Steel’s Gary tin mill restart will be needed in greater numbers at Norfolk over the next decade.
DVIDS — Norfolk Naval Shipyard
Senate Republicans Press Greer to Harden USMCA Against Chinese Auto Capital
A group of eight Republican senators sent USTR Jamieson Greer a May 21 letter urging that the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement joint review prioritize strengthened guardrails against Chinese investment in Mexico’s auto sector and roll back Canada’s proposed quota for Chinese-made electric vehicles. The letter frames Chinese capital flowing into Mexican assembly plants as a back-door pathway around U.S. tariffs and rules of origin, a structural risk the existing USMCA text does not adequately address. Strengthening rules-of-origin and ownership tests during this review is one of the cleanest mechanisms available to prevent the North American market from becoming a transshipment platform for subsidized Chinese production.
Senate Letter to USTR (May 21, 2026)
White House Ties Trades Resurgence to the Industrial Strategy
The White House released a statement on Wednesday tying the administration’s tariff and industrial policy directly to rising demand for skilled blue-collar workers, citing apprenticeship growth, trade school enrollment, and manufacturing payrolls as the leading indicators of the policy’s effects. The release describes the trades as the labor backbone of the reindustrialization the tariff regime is designed to produce, a framing that matches what readers of this newsletter see in factory-opening and groundbreaking coverage every week.
CPA Pushes Back on the Froman Argument That Manufacturing Jobs Are Bad Jobs
The Coalition for a Prosperous America published a direct response to former USTR Michael Froman, who told a Council on Foreign Relations audience last week that manufacturing employment is no longer a desirable rung of the American labor market. CPA notes that average manufacturing compensation continues to exceed the broader private-sector average, that unionized manufacturing wages further outpace it, and that productivity in U.S. plants outpaces most international competitors. The exchange matters because the Froman frame is the rhetorical scaffolding for the case against tariffs; if the premise that factory work is undesirable does not hold, the case for outsourcing it does not hold either.
Coalition for a Prosperous America
FEDERAL REGISTER WATCH
Notice — Commerce: First implementation of the U.S.-Taiwan Trade and Security Agreement under Executive Order 14346, setting tariff-related procedures for goods traded under the framework. This is the first concrete Federal Register footprint of the administration’s bilateral trade-and-security model and a template for future agreements with other partners. Read notice
Notice — Commerce: Initiation of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on stationary and portable air compressors from China, Malaysia, and Vietnam. A new AD/CVD case against a tri-country sourcing pattern aimed at U.S. compressor producers; the geographic spread reflects how production has shifted as China-only cases mature. AD investigation | CVD investigation
Notice — ITC: Institution of Section 201 monitoring investigation on fine denier polyester staple fiber, the periodic check on conditions in a domestic industry already under safeguard relief. The continued monitoring keeps the ITC’s posture active and signals to importers that the safeguard is not winding down quietly. Read notice
Notice — Commerce: Amended preliminary AD determinations on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from Indonesia and Laos, with the Indonesia amendment relying on adverse facts available. Solar AD enforcement against Southeast Asian routes for Chinese cells continues to tighten, an important backstop for the domestic solar manufacturing base. Indonesia | Laos
Notice — Commerce: Amended final results on certain aluminum foil from China for the 2023-2024 review period, correcting a ministerial error in the AD margins. The case is mature, but the steady cadence of margin corrections shows the AD regime continuing to do durable work behind the headline tariff actions. Read notice
ON THE DOCKET
A thin Docket this week; the only imminent comment windows are Commerce’s annual defense-offsets reporting reminder and CBP’s Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset distribution notice.
Jun 15 (new, closes in 18 days) — Department of Commerce: Annual reporting on offsets agreements tied to defense-article sales to foreign countries or firms. Defense exporters and their trade counsel should confirm internal records against the reporting threshold; the Bureau of Industry and Security uses this data in its industrial-base assessments. Read notice
Jul 27 (new, closes in 60 days) — Department of Homeland Security / CBP: Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset distribution for FY2026 (the Byrd Amendment distribution). Domestic producers that supported the petitions underlying covered AD/CVD orders should review eligibility now and prepare their certifications. Read notice
ON THE HILL
BILLS TO WATCH
HR 8780 — Critical Mineral and Extraction Tax Parity Act: Would extend tax treatment for critical minerals extraction and processing on par with other resource industries, lowering the after-tax cost of standing up domestic mines and refining capacity. Advances the American System agenda by treating mineral self-sufficiency as worth tax incentives, not just tariffs. Referred to House Ways and Means (May 13). View bill
S 1473 — Stop Stealing our Chips Act: Targets unauthorized diversion of U.S. semiconductor technology, tightening the enforcement piece of the chips strategy that CHIPS Act subsidies alone cannot deliver. Held at the desk (May 21), one procedural step from Senate floor action. View bill
HR 9028: Would bar brokers, dealers, and investment advisers with material connections to the People’s Republic of China from SEC registration. A financial-side complement to the trade and supply-chain restrictions, closing a channel through which Chinese state-linked capital reaches U.S. listed firms. Referred to House Financial Services (May 26). View bill
HR 9042: Would promote development, production, and deployment of secure and resilient Unmanned Aerial Systems to support U.S. national security and Taiwan’s defense. Aligns the UAS industrial base with the broader push to reshore defense-critical electronics off Chinese supply. Referred to House Foreign Affairs (May 26). View bill
House Armed Services FY2027 NDAA chair’s mark: Includes language directing the Defense Secretary to use Defense Production Act authorities for critical-minerals workforce development across mining, processing, and refining. Markup in HASC next week. Read chair’s mark
COMMITTEE STATEMENTS
Ways and Means quiet on trade this week; the active Congressional trade signals today are the Senate GOP letter on USMCA and the HASC critical-minerals workforce language covered above.
TODAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY
On May 28, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicular traffic, built from American steel fabricated by Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania, shipped through the Panama Canal, and assembled by American workers during the depths of the Depression; the bridge held the record for the world’s longest suspension span for nearly three decades.
The article you linked to regarding the Armenian critical minerals deal is behind a paywall. Can you say how much detail it included? I have not been able to find any detailed reports. Thanks.