May 2019

Reporting for the Daily Caller, Michael Bastasch zeroes in on what has once again become a hot button issue – Rare Earth Elements (REEs) in the context of trade relations, as reported Chinese threats to “escalate its trade dispute with the Trump administration to include rare earth minerals has, once again, shined a spotlight on U.S. dependency for elements used in hundreds of hi-tech products and military equipment.”

Bastasch cites ARPN’s Dan McGroarty, who says that “China is letting the U.S. know that it has leverage.”

Followers of ARPN will remember that China is no stranger to playing politics with its near-total rare earth supply monopoly.

McGroarty hopes that these threats could in fact serve as a catalyst for Congressional and/or executive actions to reduce our nation’s over-reliance on foreign mineral imports – because the issue is, to a large extent, a self-inflicted problem. 

Says McGroarty:

“The irony, and that is an understatement, is that the U.S. has rare earth deposits capable of meeting national security needs, and ending the reliance on China. With China saber-rattling on the rare earths, this could be the time for a strong U.S. response.”

In a new piece for The Hill, ARPN expert panel member and author of the recently-released “Groundbreaking! America’s New Quest for Mineral Independence” Ned Mamula laments the United States’ long-standing ignorance and even shunning of “the importance of its mineral wealth.” 

In spite of the fact that, as he says, mining is “the one economic sector that meets the American appetite for raw materials, gadgets, high-tech equipment, cars, jetliners and “renewable” energy technologies that we take for granted,” the United States has not only failed to use its mineral potential to its defense and economic benefit, but “‘boasts’ a growing list of groups that are openly hostile to extractive industries, especially mining.”

His latest case in point: The recently-introduced Hardrock Leasing and Reclamation Act of 2019, H.R. 2579, sponsored by Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.). In Mamula’s view, two provisions of the bill, which he says is “loaded with painful and unnecessary elements,” stand out as particularly harmful.

He writes:

Indeed, as followers of ARPN know, the United States has fallen behind when it comes to securing its mineral resource supply chains – a fact that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak) has called our “Achilles heel.”  For a sobering visual underscoring the dire situation from the viewpoint of the EV and energy storage sectors, see Benchmark Mineral Intelligence managing director Simon Moores’s latest tweet calling “China’s domination of REE supply and processing/refining capacity” a “warning shot” to these sectors.

Concludes Mamula:

As the global race for mineral resources heats up, the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management renewed two hardrock mineral leases in the Superior National Forest in Minnesota, opening the area up to copper mining. The leases granted to Twin Metals Minnesota LLC over heavy opposition from environmentalist groups, were first issued in 1966 [...]

In a new piece for The Hill, ARPN’s Dan McGroarty zeroes in on the inter-relationship of trade and resource policy, which has been an increasingly recurring theme over the past few months. McGroarty argues that the removal of U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from Mexico and Canada, which have been a “dead weight on [...]

While 2018 brought the inter-relationship between trade and resource policy to the forefront, this trend is continuing in 2019.   Last week, the White House announced sanctions on Iranian metals, which represent the Tehran regime’s biggest source of export revenue aside from petroleum.  The sanctions on Iran’s iron, steel, aluminum and copper sectors represent the [...]

Evolving out of its 2017 report “The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals for a Low Carbon Future”, which found that the sought-after transition to a “low-carbon future will be significantly more mineral intensive than a business as usual scenario,” the World Bank developed its “Climate-Smart Mining” initiative, which ARPN discussed a few weeks ago. [...]

As pressures mount for the United States to bolster its position as a non-fuel mineral raw materials producer amidst the ongoing battery tech revolution, a group of U.S. Senators have introduced legislation to boost domestic production of critical minerals. The legislation, sponsored by Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., Martha McSally, R-Ariz., and [...]

In an interview with Fox and Friends, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R, Iowa) discusses the path to what he terms a major trade victory for the U.S.  In order for this to happen, he believes removing the Sec. 232 tariffs from the USMCA, the new and yet-to-be-ratified U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal to replace NAFTA struck in [...]