As America wakes up from the dystopian dream that everything we need will always be readily available at affordable prices, even official Washington has recognized that we have a problem.
And it’s not China.
According to S&P Global, the U.S. has a sizable resource base, including ample reserves of copper, lithium, and several other critical minerals. But it takes an average of twenty-nine years (that’s 29 years!) to develop a new critical minerals mine in the United States, longer than any nation except Zambia. Without radical changes in the permitting process, minerals independence – even interdependence – is just another dystopian dream.
The sad result of this combination of negligence and intransigence has left the U.S. with just two domestic rare-earth mines – but not a single processing operation. Other mining operations are equally hampered by a combination of decades of well-organized, well-funded environmental opposition coupled with the naïve belief that Communist China would always provide cheap labor for America’s benefit.
The Chinese took full advantage of this gross negligence to build a virtual monopoly on production of lithium and other critical minerals – and to push a “clean energy” agenda that only their mines and factories, buoyed by slave labor, could supply. Lest anyone not realize China has the U.S. and much of the world over a barrel, consider that last December, China banned exports of germanium, gallium, antimony, and most graphite to the U.S.
The U.S. deference to China began with President Nixon’s “opening” to China, was augmented during the Clinton years, and had continued almost unabated until recently. In his first year in office, President Trump issued a wakeup call via Executive Order 13817, A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals.
Two years later, a Commerce Department report established a coordinated federal strategy to address critical mineral and material supply chain challenges. A year later, Congress passed the Energy Act of 2020. This foundational mandate to establish and update a national Critical Minerals List was a precursor to any formal action to address the disturbing shortfalls.
Critical minerals are defined as those that are essential to the economic or national security of the U.S., part of a supply chain vulnerable to disruption, and a component so essential in manufacturing a product that its unavailability would lead to significant consequences for the U.S. economy or national security.
The U.S. Geological Survey says that, of the 50 identified critical minerals, the nation is 100% dependent on imports for a full dozen and over 50% dependent on imports for another 28. Making matters worse, the primary source for three-fourths of imported rare-earth compounds and metals is the People’s Republic of China; Russia, too, is a primary supplier for some of them.
Many now see this as an unwelcome reality that must be addressed. Yet eight years after President Trump brought attention to the growing problem, the difficulties of fighting well-funded environmental, tribal, and NIMBY (not in my backyard) and NOPE (not on planet earth – except in China) opposition through often hostile courts remain major obstacles to decreasing our dependence on global adversaries to maintain and grow the U.S. economy.
The latest roadblock toward a secure critical minerals supply chain came in August, when a three-judge panel from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a land exchange vital for building the planned – and congressionally approved – Resolution Copper mine in Arizona. This mine was slated to provide 3,700 jobs and produce up to 25% of U.S copper demand for the next 50 years.
The fight against the Resolution mine, led by a politicized Native American tribe, comes on top of a 2021 decision by the Biden Interior Department to block mining for 20 years in an area in northeast Minnesota that stymied plans for the Twin Metals copper and nickel mining project. Officials said that any mining operation there could do harm to state waterways.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is not pleased with the delays and possible cancellation of the Resolution mine. Chastising the judges, Burgum said, “Continued judicial interference not only impedes progress, but it also weakens our strategic position at a time when the U.S. must lead in critical minerals production.” This mine, he added, is vital to national security, energy infrastructure, and global competitiveness.
Currently, with U.S. demand for copper expected to double in the next decade, there are only two active mines in the U.S. that can mine, smelt, and refine copper, including the 125-year-old Rio Tinto Kennecott mine in Utah that has produced more copper than any other mine on the planet. History reports that this mine was critical to defeating the Nazis in World War II.
Rio Tinto COO Clayton Walker, whose company has already invested 17 years in seeking permits for the Resolution mine, says, “We’ve got to create more mines. Open up some of those resources that we have right here in the U.S. and bring them online.” That, he says, feeds U.S. manufacturing and creates even more jobs – and a safer nation.
Similarly, the U.S. currently has only two domestic rare-earth mining operations. One is in Georgia, where rare-earth metals are a byproduct of heavy mineral sand mining; these metals are then shipped out of state and abroad for refining into materials used in renewable energy technologies and permanent magnets. In Mountain Pass, California, hard rock mining extracts a rare-earth carbonate mineral called basnaesite. Yet again, it is mostly shipped overseas for refining and processing.
On the positive side, the 10-year-old Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, created by Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, has approved a growing number of new critical minerals mining projects under the FAST-41 transparency status pursuant to President Trump’s March 20 executive order on Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production.
Among them are the Golden Mile gold and copper mining project in Nevada, the Tonopah Flats lithium project in Nevada, the Graphite Creek graphite project in Alaska, the South32 Hermosa zinc and manganese mining and processing project in Arizona, the Superior Exploration copper and molybdenum mining project in Arizona, and at least three uranium mines.
Despite the Trump administration’s efforts, permits for new mines still face stiff opposition from NIMBY and NOPE over issues ranging from sacred burial grounds to high water consumption and energy use to noise and dust and traffic – anything to stop a mine.
One of the fastest ways to increase U.S. rare-earth (and other critical minerals) production is harvesting these metals from existing mine waste piles. While titanium and zirconium are already mined in Florida and Georgia, rare-earth elements are being recovered as rare-earth concentrates from these mineral sands.
Colorado School of Mines mining engineering professor Elizabeth Holley found in a study that the potential for recovery at 54 U.S. mines for 70 critical elements is enormous. There is enough lithium, she says, in one year’s worth of U.S. mine waste to power 10 million electric vehicles, and tons more of manganese – and that’s just for starters.
Faster permitting, together with a public awareness campaign focused on economic and national security concerns from over-reliance on imports, are good steps toward reversing a decades-long war against domestic mining that has often been influenced by foreign dollars.
Time is short.
This piece originally appeared at CFact.org and has been republished here with permission.
