Critical Minerals Investments Are Kicking Off As Demand Rises, Sprott's SETM ETF Offers Wide Exposure

By Kyle Anthony, Benzinga

DETROIT, MICHIGAN - February 23, 2026 (NEWMEDIAWIRE) - While recent technological advances have highlighted the importance of rare earths and critical minerals, the trade war between the U.S. and China truly conveyed their significance to the global economy when China threatened the global rare earth market by expanding export controls on rare earth materials and related technologies, citing national security and non-proliferation concerns. Against this backdrop, the realization that China held dominant control over essential inputs needed within the global economy increased the urgency for developed nations and economic entities to safeguard their access to these materials. For investors, this was a clear sign that rare earths and critical minerals are an emerging area of opportunity, where those maintaining exposure to them could be poised to benefit significantly in the years ahead.

The Competitive Landscape For Critical Minerals

As mentioned earlier, China's actions woke up the U.S. and other developing countries to their lack of control over critical minerals. As a result, President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently signed a critical minerals framework, representing a significant step toward the energy and mineral leadership goals of both countries. Completed after five months of talks, the agreement seeks to accelerate the development of robust, allied mineral supply chains and reduce dependence on rival nations. The G7 nations have also announced a critical minerals production alliance, with Canada recently announcing the first round of investments.

Another example of the U.S.’s assertive approach to securing critical minerals access is its recently announced public-private partnership with MP Materials Corp., a company that produces and markets rare-earth specialty materials. Through this strategic investment, the U.S. government, via the Department of Defense, will hold a 15% ownership stake in the company.

With the growing demand for critical minerals, resource nationalism and supply-chain security are becoming major themes across the global economic landscape. The U.S., EU, and Japan have all passed or proposed “critical minerals” strategies to reduce dependence on China for rare earths, graphite, manganese, and other strategic inputs. These policies often involve subsidies, domestic mining incentives, and stockpiling - all of which can support the companies involved in critical minerals exploration, refinement, and distribution. While energy development and storage is a top-of-mind use case for critical minerals, governments want secure supply chains for these minerals, as they are used in defense, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing. Furthermore, rare earths, such as neodymium, dysprosium, Praseodymium and other specialty metals are essential for jet engines, missiles, radar, and precision optics - not just EV motors.

Investing in Critical Minerals With Sprott

The Sprott Energy Transition Materials ETF (NASDAQ: SETM) aims to capitalize on the growing demand for critical minerals and their integral role in the global economy.

Rather than picking one metal or one company, SETM offers diversified exposure to many materials companies (uranium, lithium, copper, rare earths, etc.). This approach facilitates capturing broad market opportunities and reduces single-commodity risk to some degree. Given that many of these critical materials could face supply constraints, due to long lead times for new mines/refineries or geopolitical intervention, this could result in upward pressure on prices, benefiting companies involved upstream.

SETM gives investors a “pure-play” diversified equity exposure to the upstream miners/explorers/developers/refiners of materials deemed critical for the energy transition. These critical minerals, metals and raw materials include uranium, copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, manganese, rare earths and silver.

SETM seeks to provide investment results that, before fees and expenses, correspond generally to the total return performance of the Nasdaq Sprott Critical Materials Index. The Index is designed to track the performance of a selection of global securities in the critical materials industry.

Click here to learn more about SETM.

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