Republicans are sharpening a new prong in their anti-China policies: They want to break U.S. reliance on the country for critical minerals, used in everything from military equipment to renewable power to cellphone batteries.
The United States has been losing ground for years, while other countries, and especially China, have rapidly scaled up mining for lithium, cobalt, graphite, rare earth elements, and other critical minerals. Once home to the world’s largest critical minerals mine, the U.S. is now wholly reliant on foreign imports for 14 of the 35 minerals the Interior Department listed as critical in 2018, including graphite and rare earths.
That foreign reliance is not just a risk now, analysts and Republicans say, but an emerging threat in a future where the U.S. could find itself powered increasingly by renewables with energy storage and with millions more electric cars on the roads. If the U.S. doesn’t expand production of critical minerals, essential for those advanced energy technologies, it could find itself at the mercy of China.
That threat could be even more acute if the U.S., under a new administration, were to scale up renewable energy, electric cars, and other advanced energy technologies without securing a more stable supply chain for these minerals.
In May, the World Bank estimated that the world will need more than 3 billion tons of minerals and metals to deploy enough wind, solar, geothermal, and energy storage to meet the Paris climate agreement’s target to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. For minerals like lithium, graphite, and cobalt, that would mean a production increase of nearly 500% in the next three decades.
China hasn’t been afraid to flex its muscle, either, suggesting it could cut off U.S. supplies in response to President Trump’s escalating trade war with the country.
“This is an effort where the Chinese are systematically trying to get a market on critical minerals,” said Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, the top Republican on the House Natural Resource Committee.
The U.S. not only needs to be “very much aware” of China’s moves, but it needs to begin thinking about long-term policy implications “so that at no point are we found vulnerable to other countries,” Bishop told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview.
Bishop, along with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and top Republicans on his and the House Science committees, unveiled legislation earlier this month that aims to speed permitting for hard rock mines, boost funding for research and development of minerals recycling and processing, and keep better account of how much of each mineral the U.S. has in reserves.
Republicans say U.S. access to critical minerals has only gotten more important in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which has scrambled supply chains for everything from life-saving medical equipment to materials for wind turbines and solar panels.
“I think this wake-up call that we are having across the country on China is a silver lining in what has been a terrible pandemic,” said Rep. Michael Waltz, a Republican from Florida and one of the lead sponsors of the House GOP bill.
“When we say ‘made in America’ or ‘buy America,’ it’s truly understanding the national security implications,” Waltz told the Washington Examiner.
The House Republicans’ bill is one of several proposals on critical minerals in recent months. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Energy Committee, introduced similar legislation last year that Bishop and Waltz say their bill builds upon.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a bill in May that would offer tax incentives for companies that develop critical minerals mines and processing facilities in the U.S. and require the Defense Department to source minerals domestically.
The Trump administration, too, has started to make moves. The State Department has been working to forge partnerships on minerals with allies such as Canada and Australia. The Interior and Agriculture departments, at Trump’s direction, are exploring updates to their mining regulations.
And the Pentagon is poised to offer grants for rare earths pilot projects and is investing in a processing facility being constructed near the U.S.-only critical minerals mine, Mountain Pass in California.
At this point, though, the U.S. is fighting just to stay relevant in the global critical minerals market, as China works to corner it. Energy analysts caution China’s prowess means the U.S. strategy can’t just be to expand domestic production.
“If we are to say we want to become the dominant player once again, that’s going to be an extremely aggressive, if not almost unrealistic, goal,” said Jane Nakano, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Energy Security and Climate Change Program.
The right approach, she added, is to diversify U.S. supplies of critical minerals as much as possible, working with allies to expand the supplier pool.
Trump’s trade war with China, though, means tensions are already high. China has cut off rare-earth supplies before, to Japan in 2010, and Nakano pointed to a trip Chinese President Xi Jinping and his trade adviser made to a rare earths facility last year as a veiled threat to the U.S.
If the situation devolves, the world could see unofficial alliances emerge and tensions rise to a point where countries stop sharing patents with each other, essentially plunging the world into a “materials cold war,” said Jordy Lee, a research associate with the Payne Institute for Policy at the Colorado School of Mines.
Nonetheless, Republicans face political headwinds in their efforts. Those headwinds could exacerbate what Lee and others say is one of the biggest hurdles to expanding domestic production: The U.S. mining industry faces fierce opposition from many Democrats and environmental advocates.
Republicans accuse far-left Democrats and environmentalists as not wanting any mining at all in the U.S., a position they see as unsustainable.
“This is more than just ironic,” Bishop said. “The fact that they would oppose, just mindlessly oppose any kind of mining development just because they don’t think it’s a good thing — they haven’t made the connection to what it means for their lifestyle and what they want to have, as well as how you actually get there.”
Environmentalists say they have good reason not to support unbridled expansion of mining.
“Mining causes enormous environmental problems if it’s done in the wrong places and it’s done in the wrong ways,” said Jim Lyon, the National Wildlife Federation’s vice president of conservation policy. The U.S. is still dealing with the “toxic legacy” of hard rock mining, he said.
“A lot of this has to do with trust,” Lyon added. “We can’t fall back into the old way of doing things or using this as a cover for rolling back environmental standards.”
The industry, though, says the U.S. mining industry is subject to stringent environmental standards and regulatory oversight, whereas other countries that currently provide minerals to the U.S. skirt environmental protections and rely on child labor.
“Our system is much more rigorous than anything you will find in the world,” said Rich Nolan, head of the National Mining Association.
But Nolan said some of those regulations on permitting mining are a major barrier holding back what he describes as an opportunity for a “renaissance in domestic minerals mining” in the U.S. It currently takes seven to 10 years to get a mine up and running in the U.S., while it takes U.S. allies such as Canada and Australia just two to three years to permit a mine, he said.
Those long permitting timelines ultimately deter investment in new mines, which are capital intensive, Nolan added.
Ultimately, the most durable critical minerals policies are likely the ones with support across the aisle and among industry and environmentalists, analysts say.
The World Bank is encouraging a “climate-smart” mining approach that explores “how best to minimize emissions and reduce the carbon footprint, across the mineral value chain,” said Christopher Sheldon, a manager for the group’s energy and extractives global practice.
That approach could include integrating renewable power into mining operations, repurposing mine sites, and recycling minerals, he added.
Those types of efforts could help rebuild trust, Lyon said, adding he’s been part of informal discussions among industry, some environmentalists, and government officials on how to advance critical minerals policies.
During those conversations, Lyon said he’s noticed a “recalibration” both from environmental colleagues gaining a better understanding of the importance of critical minerals to renewable power and from industry that they must pursue a more environmentally sound approach.
“This could be a challenge that brings the two together,” said Sara Hastings-Simon, a senior research associate with the Payne Institute, of environmental groups and mining companies.
“We know we need to go down this path, but we know that we also need to do it in a way that is minimizing the impacts on the land and water and air and biodiversity and also the carbon impacts,” she added. “If we’re not thoughtful about the way these products are created, that leads to its own new set of problems.”
