Amodei Reintroduces Strategic and Critical Minerals Bill

Congressman Mark Amodei, (NV – 02) has reintroduced a bill, along with 11 cosponsors, he has sponsored since the 115^th Congress in 2018. H.R. 3240 would require the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture to more efficiently develop domestic sources of the minerals and mineral materials of strategic and critical importance to the economic and national security and manufacturing competitiveness of the United States.

According to the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, “Minerals are deemed ‘critical and strategic’ because they are essential to the economic and national security of the United States and because the U.S. is dependent on imports, not only from China and Russia but also from other nations, for most if not all of our domestic supply.” Key to manufacturing and agricultural supply chains, there are 35 critical minerals on which the U.S. relies on imports to meet the supply chain needs and of those, 14 of those minerals are 100% imports.

“Critical and strategic minerals are essential to the technologies that make our daily lives and economy work,” said Rep. Amodei. “Unfortunately, duplicative regulations and bureaucratic inefficiencies have forced us to rely on foreign adversaries and competitors for critical minerals, a dependency that threatens the security of our nation and economy.”

The threats to the mineral supply chain are so great that President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order (13817) in order to ensure secure and reliable supplies of critical minerals, directing the Secretary of Commerce to submit a report to address the challenges. President Joe Biden has left the EO order in place, issuing one of his own (14017) directing the Secretary of Defense to submit a report identifying risks in the supply chain for critical minerals and rare earth elements. 

In the 2019 report produced by the Department of Commerce, the department recommends immediate action to ensure a reliable supply of minerals in the U.S. The report indicates it can take seven to ten years to obtain a mining permit in the U.S. In spite of the abundance of mineral resources in the U.S., and less than half of the minerals domestic manufacturers need are sourced in our own country.

“By streamlining the permitting process,” said Amodei, “this legislation will decrease our dependency on foreign sources of minerals and allow us to leverage our nation’s vast mineral resources while paying respect to economic, national security, and environmental concerns. This is a commonsense approach that has already passed the House four times and will not change any environmental regulations, protections, or opportunity for public input. I’m pleased to have several of my House colleagues join me in introducing this bill and look forward to working together to modernize the outdated, job-crushing policies that are hamstringing our economy and jeopardizing our national security.”

In 2019 Amodei introduced the same bill, with the Congressional Western Caucus applauding his efforts. Congressman Paul Goser, who represents the Arizona 4^th Congressional District and is the Chairman of the Caucus, said, "America's future economic prosperity and national security outlook is dependent upon the robust cultivation of our critical and strategic minerals. Unfortunately, our country is forced to rely on Chinese and Russian mineral exports to build up our military, bolster our energy infrastructure and meet the demands of a booming economy under President Trump. If we are to maintain American energy security, then mineral exploration and production must occur in the U.S. and not in a Chinese-owned Cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo with little to no standards. We need strategic and critical minerals for smartphones, solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, military aircraft as well as weapons and armor for our troops. No other developed country hamstrings themselves the way we do with domestic mining permitting and project delays - let alone a military superpower.”

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) recently said in a radio interview, making clear to differentiate between the Chinese people and the Chinese government, “They don’t believe in your rights. If you look at how they treat their own citizens, how do you think they think about Americans? They put a million people in prison by their religion, they harvest your organs if you’re in prison. They took away the basic rights of Hong Kong citizens. They built their military to defeat the U.S. military. They’re threatening Taiwan right now. So, the way we can beat them is we have got to stop doing business with them – stop.”

The final list of critical and rare earth minerals as named by the Department of the Interior, includes: Aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, cesium, chromium, cobalt, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, helium, indium, lithium, magnesium, manganese, niobium, platinum group metals, potash, and the rare earth group, rhenium, rubidium, scandium, strontium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, and zirconium.