“It’s a very significant strategic issue for the U.S. and the West. I almost liken it to Huawei. We wake up and they’re in control of the world,” Admiral Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 2020
The day after President Trump’s new executive order for mining, RealClearPolitics on October 1, 2020 hosted a bipartisan event sponsored by the National Mining Association: Reinventing Our Domestic Minerals Supply Chain in a Post-Pandemic World. Co-Chairs of the House Critical Materials Caucus Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA-15) and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA-14) started the discussion that then went to a three-expert panel of Morgan Bazillian, Joe Bryan, and Jane Nakano.
The timing for this talk is indeed perfect: finally, something both parties can agree on. For context, the House Republicans’ new China task force places mineral supply chains front and center. And a recent report from Securing America’s Future Energy makes minerals, and boosting domestic mineral output, a key piece of the effort to win the future of mobility. More critical mining production has become an noncontroversial, bipartisan initiative, uniting various interests from coal executives to climate hawks.
Government Panel: Reps Swalwell and Reschenthaler
Reps Swalwell and Reschenthaler kicked things off with a reality check: the energy transition to cleaner renewable technologies and electric cars will require a massive amount of scarce natural resources, namely “rare earth” elements, minerals, and metals (hereafter “critical materials”).
The primary problem is that we are losing the race to China, and we have become increasingly important dependent. In fact, 80% of our rare earths now come from China. And beyond just production, China is controlling entire global supply chains. Not just the trade war, the COVID-19 pandemic is showing the devastation that this can bring: “China Covered Up Coronavirus To Hoard Medical Supplies, DHS Report Finds.” For 31 of the 35 critical minerals in the executive order, the U.S. imports more than half of its annual consumption, with many at 100%.
Hunting global reach, China’s Belt and Road Initiative wants investment in smaller but heavily resourced nations so the Party can grab a stake in their critical materials. China has declared a cold war on the U.S., strategically guided to be the world’s superpower – economically, militarily, and resource wise (short oil and gas, China is also working closely with Russia for supply). Indeed, not just inherent to the energy transition, many of these resources are key to always advancing information technologies and America’s military, making China’s dominance of them a threat to our national security. Further, the global competition for critical materials is becoming increasingly fierce. The World Bank reports a 500% boom in demand over the next 30 years. And the list of such essentials only grows as the technologies they comprise continue to evolve.
In turn, demonstrated by this very Caucus, a coordinated U.S. mining transformation is gaining bipartisan support. There is also broad acknowledgment that we must strike a balance of new supply avenues and maintaining environmental safeguards. In many ways,…
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