America is more vulnerable today than it should be thanks to U.S. dependence on foreign minerals. The good news is that without resorting to government interventions such as tariffs or subsidies, Congress can boost domestic production of the minerals and metals that are so essential to our national security.
Instead, Congress can make us safer by reducing the heavy hand of government, bringing commonsense reform to our mine permitting process and allowing our miners to get to work producing the minerals and metals our military needs. Included in the House defense authorization bill is a key minerals permitting provision that would streamline our mine permitting process by reducing redundancy in environmental reviews and providing clear review timelines. It deserves strong bipartisan support.
How broken is our mine permitting process? It regularly takes 10 years, or more, to gain the necessary permits to open a new mine. This slothful system is chilling investment and eroding the competitiveness of U.S. operations. In Australia and Canada, nations with environmental safeguards comparable to our own, the permitting process takes just two to three years. We know we can do better, it’s time we do.
It’s not obvious to everyone that mine permitting and minerals import dependence are defense issues, but they are. The U.S. now relies entirely on imports for 21 critical minerals and is at least 50 percent dependent on another 29. These minerals — everything from nickel and silver to rare earths — are essential to the production of key military technologies. Nickel, for example, is used in body armor, silver in Apache helicopters, and rare earths in night-vision devices.
Rebuilding our defense supply chain means undoing the damage inflicted by years of bad policy. Our adversarial approach to mining has atrophied domestic production, leading to troubling consequences. The Department of Defense uses 750,000 tons of minerals each year, and an increasing number are coming from single overseas suppliers with a monopoly on production. This potentially crippling supply chain vulnerability will only get worse unless we act.
It may seem counterintuitive in our increasingly virtual world, but our demand for minerals and metals is growing, and growing rapidly. The Internet of things, and its ever-expanding nexus of devices and data, has made our way of life more resource intensive, not less. This burgeoning demand for materials is even more pronounced for our military.
Many of the technologies that have become the tip of the spear are mineral-intensive and metals-intensive. We must align our mining policy with the expanding demands of our defense supply chain.
If we can get out of our own way and reduce the self-imposed barriers to greater domestic production, we possess the minerals-rich geology to meet a far larger share of our minerals needs. After all, the U.S. possesses an estimated $6.2 trillion in minerals reserves.
The House defense authorization bill is the right opportunity to finally address a vulnerability we can no longer afford to ignore. With an efficient permitting system that unlocks our vast mineral reserves and restores our ability to compete in the global marketplace, we can rebuild our defense supply chain and turn a current vulnerability into a future strength.
Hal Quinn is president and CEO of the National Mining Association.
