The Canadian government is refusing to say whether it will scrutinize a U.S. move to take ownership stakes in Canadian minerals, a Canadian-domiciled miner at the center of America’s push to onshore battery materials.
The silence underscores a sensitive new wrinkle in cross-border industrial policy at a time when both countries are racing to lock down critical minerals.
The U.S. Department of Energy said this week it reworked a federal loan to Lithium Americas and obtained warrants equal to 5 percent of the company and an additional 5 percent of its Thacker Pass joint venture with General Motors.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the revised terms “help reduce our dependence on foreign adversaries for critical minerals.”
Lithium Americas separately disclosed that Washington agreed to defer roughly $182 million of early debt service on the $2.26 billion loan and detailed the new warrants attached to the package.
The company said the changes clear the way for its first loan draw.
Thacker Pass in northern Nevada is slated to produce about 40,000 metric tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate annually once fully ramped, making it one of the linchpins of a domestic supply chain for electric vehicles and grid storage.
The loan was initially approved in 2024, then renegotiated amid weak lithium prices and Washington’s broader pivot toward taking equity in strategic companies.
Ottawa, for its part, has tightened foreign investment screening in critical minerals since 2022, including forced divestitures by state-owned enterprises.
Yet when asked whether the U.S. government’s new stakes in a Canadian-listed miner will face review under the Investment Canada Act, the federal government declined to say, citing confidentiality rules in the statute.
Legal experts told Canadian media the Act allows scrutiny of foreign government ownership, but that a small, non-controlling position tied to a U.S. project could prove a difficult test case.
The political context is hard to ignore, the equity move follows the Trump administration’s growing use of federal leverage to secure inputs seen as vital to national security, from semiconductors to rare earths. Similar approaches have included warrants, revenue-sharing and direct equity in U.S. companies.
Lithium Americas shares surged after reports that Washington would attach equity to the reworked loan, and climbed again after the Department of Energy formalized the arrangement.
Investors are betting that a clearer path to financing and a visible U.S. government backstop reduce project risk.
The Investment Canada Act permits national security reviews of any size of investment involving critical minerals. In practice, the government can impose conditions, seek undertakings, or move to block a transaction.
Any action would likely weigh the modest size of the U.S. stake against the precedent it sets and the broader bilateral climate that already features friction over trade and industrial policy.
