🇺🇲 Major SIG - Mining, Influence, and Power: The Dominican Republic and the Emerging Critical Minerals Competition in the Caribbean
Felipe Cuello, Former Deputy Director, Senate of the Dominican Republic. Guest Contributor, MSI²
Executive Summary
The struggle for critical minerals is no longer confined to Africa, the Indo-Pacific, or the Arctic. It is increasingly arriving in the Caribbean basin, where countries historically viewed through the lenses of tourism, migration, and trade are beginning to acquire new strategic relevance within the broader industrial competition reshaping relations between the United States and China.
The Dominican Republic now finds itself positioned within that transition. Recent decisions by the administration of President Luis Abinader to prioritize rare earth exploration and critical mineral extraction reflect an effort to integrate the country into the evolving supply chains that Western economies increasingly view as essential to technological resilience and industrial security. Yet the controversy surrounding the halted GoldQuest mining project in San Juan Province suggests that participation in the critical minerals economy also carries geopolitical consequences that extend well beyond domestic development policy.
This debate is therefore about more than mining alone. Mining is merely the mechanism through which larger questions involving industrial power, supply-chain security, strategic dependence, and hemispheric influence are beginning to manifest themselves in the Caribbean basin. As global powers reorganize economic and technological systems around resilience rather than efficiency alone, smaller states increasingly find themselves navigating pressures generated by the return of geopolitical competition to the Western Hemisphere.
The Caribbean’s Strategic Relevance Is Returning
For much of the post-Cold War period, the Caribbean occupied a diminished place within the strategic imagination of major powers. The ideological struggles that once defined the basin receded, while globalization fostered the belief that economic integration alone would soften geopolitical friction and gradually diminish the importance of geography itself. That assumption now appears increasingly fragile.
The Caribbean is entering a different strategic phase, one shaped less by Cold War ideology than by industrial competition, technological dependency, supply-chain resilience, logistics, and access to strategic resources. Geography, despite years of globalization rhetoric suggesting otherwise, still exerts a persistent influence over the architecture of power, particularly as advanced economies attempt to reduce vulnerabilities associated with concentrated production networks and externally controlled industrial inputs.
Within that broader transition, critical minerals have moved steadily toward the center of strategic planning among industrial powers. Rare earth elements and strategic minerals are essential to the manufacture of semiconductors, telecommunications systems, advanced batteries, defense technologies, electric vehicles, renewable energy infrastructure, and the digital ecosystems increasingly underpinning economic and military power alike.
As the United States and allied economies seek to reduce strategic dependence on Chinese-dominated supply chains, countries capable of contributing to diversified sourcing networks are acquiring heightened geopolitical relevance, and the Dominican Republic increasingly appears to be one of them. President Luis Abinader’s administration has signaled its intention to position the country within the emerging critical minerals economy through a series of policy initiatives that suggest Santo Domingo increasingly understands these resources not merely as commodities, but as strategic assets tied to the restructuring of global industrial systems.
In 2024, Abinader signed Decree 453-24 establishing a state mining company tasked with supporting the exploration and extraction of rare earths and other strategic minerals (Presidencia de la República Dominicana, 2024). One year later, Decree 388-25 elevated rare earth exploration and extraction to the level of national security priority, integrating senior state institutions into the strategic oversight process (Ministerio de Energía y Minas de la República Dominicana, 2025). Those measures reflected something larger than routine economic planning. They suggested that the Dominican Republic increasingly recognizes that industrial competition is reorganizing the geopolitical landscape around strategic materials, technological sovereignty, and supply-chain resilience.
China’s Expanding Presence and the 2018 Diplomatic Shift
The Dominican Republic’s growing relevance within critical mineral discussions cannot be separated from the broader geopolitical transformation that accelerated after Santo Domingo’s 2018 decision to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan and establish formal ties with the People’s Republic of China (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China [Taiwan], 2018). The move formed part of a wider expansion of Chinese economic, diplomatic, technological, and infrastructure influence across Latin America and the Caribbean during the past decade.
At the time, Dominican authorities emphasized trade, investment, and development opportunities as the principal motivations for the diplomatic shift. Yet Beijing’s expanding regional presence has rarely been limited to commerce alone. Across the hemisphere, Chinese engagement increasingly intersects with sectors tied to ports, telecommunications infrastructure, logistics corridors, energy systems, digital architecture, and strategic commodities, all of which carry long-term geopolitical implications that extend beyond short-term investment flows.
Gutierrez and Marrero (2026) describe this broader phenomenon as “Chinese Social Imperialism,” a model of strategic expansion combining economic integration, infrastructure dependency, technological penetration, and political leverage without requiring direct territorial control. Whether one fully adopts that terminology or not, the structural trend itself is increasingly difficult to ignore. Strategic competition between Washington and Beijing is no longer confined to East Asia or the Pacific theater. It is steadily extending into the Western Hemisphere, where questions about industrial access, technological influence, and strategic positioning are beginning to shape political and economic decisions that were once viewed primarily through domestic lenses.
The Dominican Republic now sits within that evolving environment, and its growing interest in critical minerals inevitably places it closer to the fault lines emerging between the world’s two largest powers.
Critical Minerals and the Politics of Extraction
The recent controversy surrounding the GoldQuest mining project in San Juan Province illustrates how quickly local economic disputes can become entangled with broader strategic realities. In May 2026, President Abinader ordered a halt to the approval process for the proposed mine following protests and environmental concerns surrounding the project (Reuters, 2026).
Environmental concerns regarding large-scale mining projects are legitimate and deserve serious consideration. Questions about water use, ecological sustainability, land management, and long-term community impact cannot be dismissed in pursuit of industrial development. Responsible extraction policies require transparency, environmental safeguards, and sustained public trust, particularly in smaller states where local communities often bear the immediate consequences of resource extraction.
At the same time, the uneven political pressure surrounding mining controversies deserves closer examination. The GoldQuest project, backed primarily by Canadian interests, generated substantial public opposition despite efforts to present the initiative as environmentally sustainable and economically beneficial to one of the Dominican Republic’s poorest provinces. Meanwhile, Chinese-owned mining operations in the country, including the CORMIDOM copper and zinc extraction site, have attracted considerably less controversy despite operating within the same national political and environmental landscape (CORMIDOM, 2024).
That disparity does not prove coordinated foreign interference, nor should serious analysis make unsupported claims based on publicly available evidence. Yet it does raise legitimate strategic questions about how influence, narratives, and economic interests increasingly interact within sectors tied to industrial competition and strategic resources. Modern geopolitical competition rarely manifests itself solely through confrontation. Increasingly, influence operates indirectly through economic incentives, political pressure, information environments, regulatory friction, financial leverage, activist ecosystems, and narrative shaping.
As competition between Washington and Beijing intensifies across strategic industries, it would be naïve to assume that critical mineral sectors remain insulated from those pressures. The issue is not whether every protest movement or political controversy is externally directed. The issue is that industries tied to strategic supply chains increasingly become arenas in which larger geopolitical rivalries generate friction, incentives, and competing pressures that shape national decision-making in ways not always immediately visible on the surface.
Industrial Competition Is Reshaping the Hemisphere
The larger issue, therefore, extends far beyond a single mining dispute in the Dominican Republic. What is emerging instead is a broader restructuring of industrial geography itself.
For decades, globalization prioritized efficiency, low-cost production, and concentrated supply chains. That model is now under visible strain. The COVID-19 pandemic, technological competition, sanctions regimes, geopolitical fragmentation, and growing concerns regarding strategic dependency have accelerated efforts by the United States and allied economies to diversify production networks and reduce vulnerabilities associated with concentrated industrial control, particularly in sectors where China acquired dominant positions over the course of globalization’s most expansive phase.
Within that transition, critical minerals increasingly function not simply as commodities but as instruments of industrial leverage. International organizations and Western governments now frame mineral security as an essential component of national security, technological resilience, and long-term economic stability. The International Energy Agency’s 2026 ministerial declaration emphasized the importance of securing diversified and resilient critical mineral supply chains capable of supporting future technological and energy transitions (International Energy Agency, 2026).
In this context, the Caribbean basin acquires renewed strategic significance. Geography still matters because proximity, logistics, maritime access, political stability, and resource integration collectively shape the resilience of industrial systems. The Dominican Republic, therefore, occupies a more important strategic position than many observers may currently appreciate, particularly as industrial geography begins reorganizing itself around resilience, redundancy, and access to strategic materials rather than globalization’s earlier assumptions of frictionless integration.
The debate unfolding in the Dominican Republic consequently extends well beyond mining permits or foreign investment alone. Beneath the immediate political controversy lies a larger question: how do smaller states navigate industrial competition during periods of geopolitical transition, especially when major powers increasingly view strategic sectors through the lens of national security and long-term technological rivalry?
Strategic Competition Beneath the Surface
One of the defining characteristics of modern geopolitical competition is that it frequently unfolds beneath the level of formal confrontation. Infrastructure projects, telecommunications systems, ports, financing arrangements, industrial standards, supply chains, technology ecosystems, and resource extraction increasingly function as arenas through which influence and leverage are exercised without requiring overt coercion.
It is increasingly difficult to imagine the Caribbean remaining insulated from those pressures as strategic competition deepens across industrial, technological, and logistical sectors. China’s expanding presence throughout Latin America and the Caribbean has already altered regional economic patterns, investment relationships, telecommunications infrastructure, and political alignments in ways that would have been difficult to imagine only two decades ago. At the same time, Washington has begun responding more assertively to the realization that industrial dependency carries strategic consequences extending far beyond economics alone.
This dynamic does not mean every local controversy should automatically be interpreted as evidence of covert manipulation or geopolitical conspiracy. Such simplistic readings often obscure more than they reveal. Yet it would be equally shortsighted to ignore how strategic competition increasingly shapes the environment within which economic and political disputes unfold, particularly in sectors tied to industrial resilience, technological infrastructure, and strategic materials. The Dominican Republic is beginning to encounter that reality directly, perhaps earlier than many expected.
Conclusion
The future of strategic competition in the Americas may not be determined solely through military deployments, naval exercises, port acquisitions, or telecommunications infrastructure. Increasingly, it may also be shaped through control over the minerals required to sustain the industries, technologies, and supply chains underpinning the next phase of global economic and strategic power.
The Dominican Republic now finds itself positioned within that larger contest. Its efforts to modernize its economy and participate in the critical minerals sector may create meaningful investment opportunities, industrial integration, and long-term development. Yet those same opportunities also expose the country to the geopolitical pressures accompanying renewed competition between the United States and China throughout the hemisphere.
Mining is therefore not the true subject of this debate. Mining is the mechanism through which deeper questions are beginning to surface, questions involving industrial power, strategic dependence, supply-chain security, and the return of geopolitical competition to the Caribbean basin. How Santo Domingo navigates those pressures in the years ahead may shape not only the country’s economic trajectory but also the strategic balance gradually emerging across the wider hemisphere.
References
CORMIDOM. (2024). Presidente de CORMIDOM junto a comisión de Perilya Limited sostuvo encuentros en el Senado de la República y la Dirección General de Minería. https://cormidom.com.do/presidente-cormidom-junto-a-comision-perilya-limited-sostuvo-encuentros-en-el-senado-de-la-republica-y-la-direccion-general-de-mineria/
Gutierrez, J. A., & Marrero, R. (2026). Chinese Social Imperialism: The CCP’s expanding footprint in Latin America. Bravo Zulu Publishers.
International Energy Agency. (2026). 2026 IEA ministerial declaration supporting the IEA’s work on critical minerals security. https://www.iea.org/news/2026-iea-ministerial-declaration-supporting-the-iea-s-work-on-critical-minerals-security
Ministerio de Energía y Minas de la República Dominicana. (2025). Decreto núm. 388-25. https://mem.gob.do/transparencia/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Decreto-num.-388-25-de-fecha-17-de-julio-de-2025.pdf
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan). (2018). The government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) expresses deep regret and strong disappointment at the Dominican Republic’s decision to establish diplomatic relations with China. https://en.mofa.gov.tw/News_Content.aspx?n=1330&s=34150
Presidencia de la República Dominicana. (2024). Decreto 453-24. https://presidencia.gob.do/decretos/453-24
Reuters. (2026, May 5). Dominican Republic president halts GoldQuest mining project after protests. https://www.reuters.com/world/dominican-republic-president-halts-goldquest-mining-project-after-protests-2026-05-05/
Author
Felipe Cuello is an economist, political analyst, and public policy professor recognized in the Dominican Republic for his expertise in governance and international affairs. He previously served as Deputy Director of the Senate of the Dominican Republic (2022–2023) and currently teaches Public Policy at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra and the Universidad Pontificia de Santo Domingo. In the United States, Cuello has remained active within Republican political circles, contributing to both Trump presidential campaigns and the 2016–2017 transition team in a substantive foreign policy role. His prior experience includes work with the United Nations expert system, the International Maritime Organization, the European Union’s development assistance arm, and the office of a Member of the European Parliament before the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. He is also co-author and audiobook narrator of the book Trump’s World: Geo Deus.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).