Designing Resilience: A New G7 Architecture for Economic Security
Over the past decade the boundaries between economic policy and national security have all but dissolved. Trade, technology, investment and capital flows are now seen not just as engines of growth but as levers of strategic influence and sources of geopolitical vulnerability. The imperative to ensure economic security – the ability to safeguard the stable functioning and resilience of economies, industries, supply chains, and critical infrastructure from external shocks, coercion, or cyber attacks – now drives 21st-century economic statecraft. While Japan and the EU have adopted dedicated economic security strategies, no country can manage these challenges successfully alone and legacy institutions have failed to provide adequate countermeasures. What is missing is a coherent, effective multilateral economic security architecture to match this moment, especially at a time when multilateralism itself is under strain and the Trump Administration has lost the trust of its trusted partners.
G7 Platform: Turning Rhetoric Into Reality?
The G7’s focus on economic security and coercion is not new, and is a step in the right direction. All members agreed in 2023 to common principles in the Leaders’ Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security, introduced under Japan’s G7 Presidency in Hiroshima. Though anchored in the G7, the initiative aimed to broaden the coalition with trusted partners well beyond the group, including developing countries, and to move towards governing interdependence in an age of purposeful disruption. The initiative targeted key shared threats, including 1) China’s non-market policies and practices – across supply chains and at unprecedented scale – designed to reinforce dependencies and flood markets with subsidized overcapacity; 2) economic coercion, particularly in critical minerals and rare earth elements; 3) cyber vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and securing the digital domain, and 4) technology leakage and the need for controls on a narrowly defined set of sensitive advanced technologies crucial for national security, through export controls, investment restrictions and other tools. While Canada’s recent G7 did not conclude with a Leader’s Statement, the collective need to build from the consensus on economic security in 2023 has never been greater and, in theory, should not have changed. The French G7 in 2026 should seize the opportunity to advance collective economic security and build on these previous areas of agreement.
Central to this effort was the G7 Coordination Platform on Economic Coercion (the “Coordination Platform”). To move beyond rhetoric, this Coordination Platform must institutionalize joint approaches to everything from investment screening, export controls, and supply chain diversification – within and beyond the G7. It must progress from joint assessments and information sharing to meaningful collective deterrence and response, actively countering the weaponization of economic vulnerabilities. This requires not only defensive measures but also proactive support for markets and significant investment in resilience, even as G7 budgets are constrained.
The Test of China Shocks and Looming Cyber Threats
Recent events underscore the urgency of this agenda. The test is whether a G7-anchored mechanism can sufficiently catalyze collective action to counter current shocks. China’s dominance across critical mineral supply chains, especially rare earth elements, gives it the power to disrupt civilian and defense industries worldwide. Its recent export controls on heavy rare earth elements needed for magnets are an acute demonstration of economic coercion. It was not the first and most certainly will not be the last time China weaponizes critical materials. In response, Canada just launched a separate G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan to coordinate supply chain diversification and investment in mining, processing, manufacturing, and recycling. To tackle China’s market distorting investment practices the G7, Australia, India, and South Korea will work across the supply chain to assess how critical minerals markets should reflect the real costs of responsible extraction, processing, and trade. To leapfrog China’s chokehold, Canada’s plan also proposes joint investment in public and private innovation ecosystems to close technology and processing gaps to bring critical minerals to market. However, underinvestment in refining and competition with Chinese non-market actors mean timelines and costs remain misaligned with the immediacy of the threat. At the same time, each member country has complicated relationships with China, and with each other. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s preference for unilateral action – prioritizing domestic resources and bilateral deals – sidelines G7 partners and, at times, undermines Europe directly, particularly in its pursuit of Greenland.
The second shock the G7 should collectively counter is China’s overcapacity. Currently each country responds independently, rather than collectively, imposing tariffs on goods flooding markets, especially autos, to protect commercial viability of local industries. Chinese dumping on both developed and developing markets ricochets exports into new markets as each barrier rises, resulting in multilateral rhetoric but bilateral countermeasures. Addressing this shock demands greater coordination, ideally through a new G7 plus economic security architecture. Solidarity that bridges the developed-developing divide would send a stronger message to Beijing.
A third, ever-present threat that the 2023 G7 Coordination Platform aimed to address is the escalation of state-backed cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. It is unclear whether current collective plans and information sharing will be implemented swiftly or robustly enough to deter attacks on civilian infrastructure that underpins economic security – especially amidst heightened conflict in the Middle East, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and intensifying U.S.-China rivalry. Disabling economic attacks could escalate rapidly.
Trust Deficit Trumps Architecture?
A deepening trust deficit with the United States complicates G7-based efforts. What once drove allied cooperation against assertive rivals like China and Russia has given way to high-stakes disarray. President Trump’s return has accelerated U.S. withdrawal from the multilateral order it helped build, with the administration rejecting trade treaties, discrediting multilateral and rules-based institutions, and treating allies as economic adversaries. Economic security is now negotiated by President Trump alongside tariffs, as a bargaining chip – not a shared goal. Worse, the administration’s alignment with rivals, especially Russia, undermines the very foundations of strategic alliance and collective security. As G7 partners absorb the shock of an America no longer committed to the postwar order, the urgency of building a new economic security architecture based on trust has never been greater.
This uncertainty must not paralyze coordination and resolve, but instead accelerate and reinforce it. For Europe, the stakes are existential: U.S. disengagement from treaties, institutions, and norms it once championed raises profound economic and strategic questions. G7 members and trusted partners, especially Australia, India and South Korea, must now implement the G7 Coordination Platform architecture with the understanding that “America First” may mean “America Alone.”
The U.S. clearly prioritizes its own economic security. While U.S. participation would strengthen the G7’s Coordination Platform, its absence must not halt itsprogress. A new G7 action plan must be resilient – with or without the United States.
From Rhetoric to Reality
G7 and likeminded countries have taken commendable steps to align economic statecraft tools, but efforts remain ad hoc. Without robust mechanisms for shared strategy, risk assessments, and contingency planning, collective resilience will remain a slogan rather than a capability. Each G7 country and member of the Coordination Platform should establish a dedicated economic security strategy – similar to Japan and the EU – that integrates seamlessly into the G7’s new economic security architecture. Alignment on threat identification, national laws, regulations, and proposed countermeasures, will better facilitate effective crisis coordination.
The G7 should anchor the Coordination Platform in the OECD, leveraging its expertise to develop norms, share best practices, and charge it with supporting coordinated responses to strategic disruptions. The OECD’s continuity and capacity make it well-suited for ongoing research and adaptation, even as political cycles shift. An additional benefit, many developing country partners that share economic security vulnerabilities are already OECD members or accession candidates.
A sustainable architecture must include emerging economies as co-architects, not just rule-takers. Existing initiatives like the Minerals Security Partnership and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment that aim to underpin economic security should be expanded to include more regional voices, as should the G7’s Coordination Platform.
Investment in economic security priorities, especially critical minerals and rare earths mining, refining, recycling and new technology, will come from private companies and capital markets. They should be co-architects as well. Aligning private sector incentives with public resilience goals – through permitting reform and policy incentives, risk mitigation, procurement contracts, tax policy, and other financing mechanisms across the capital structure (including equity) – is essential.
Building economic security is resource-intensive, requiring robust public investment, sophisticated regulation, resilient infrastructure, and skilled labor. Most countries lack the capacity to achieve these goals at scale. While the IMF and World Bank were not designed to address economic coercion, MDBs and new financing mechanisms must be retooled to provide targeted support for resilience-building, from rare earths processing in Africa to digital infrastructure in Southeast Asia. One example supported by G7 Finance Ministers in Canada was commitment to strengthen the World Bank-led Resilient and Inclusive Supply Chain Enhancement (RISE) Partnership to promote responsible mining-related activities in emerging mining nations.
Just as the Bretton Woods system emerged from the ashes of war to govern global finance, today’s world requires a new economic security architecture order that reflects the realities of strategic interdependence. The challenge is not only to build this architecture, but to ensure it can counter real threats – without reliance on any one country, inside or outside the G7. France has a unique opportunity in its G7 presidency to do just that in 2026.