National Security

In an interview with InvestingNews.com, Simon Moores, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s managing director and a member of the ARPN panel of experts, discusses challenges relating to Lithium – one of the key materials underpinning EV battery technology.

Moores says that big challenges still lie in bringing new supply to the market, but the situation is not “straightforward, it’s not just about getting the spodumene up and running, it’s about that conversion capacity and what’s actually real.”

As for opportunities, he says that automakers are realizing the challenges and are beginning to pay closer attention to Lithium:

“We are coming into a new era where the auto companies know that you have to –well, someone’s have to going to pay for the supply chain to scale and most are trying to work that out, they know that now, I think, they have to have some kind of input somewhere, but that’s the raw material or the cathode or the batteries. We think it’s going to lie with the raw materials, the two key ones, which are lithium and cobalt in our eyes and I think that’s the biggest opportunity that the lithium space faces right now.”

The U.S. – once the largest Lithium producer in the world – today lags far behind Chile, Australia and other nations in terms of production — but automakers, realizing the challenges, are beginning to turn back to the United States as a potential source of supply.

As we previously outlined:

“While challenges will remain, as ‘some of the deposits will require as-yet untested technology for extraction,’ experts, including our friends at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, believe that at least one or two U.S.-based projects could enter production in the next four to five years.

Much will depend on the domestic policy environment, where changes are on the horizon. If U.S. policy-makers and other stakeholders make good on their recently-found commitment to comprehensive resource policy reform, the United States could once more become the mineral resource power house it once was – and Lithium could be on the forefront of this development.

This will mean, however, that Washington, DC will have to do more than pay lip service.  An opportunity to improve the outdated and duplicative permitting process was just squandered when lawmakers on Capitol Hill struck the House-passed Amodei amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.  With reports offering reform solutions due from various government agencies, it remains to be seen whether policy makers are ready to actually tackle the challenges or merely kick the can down the road again.

In a new piece for The Hill, American Resources Policy Network principal Daniel McGroarty zeroes in on the intersection between trade and resource policy.

Against the backdrop of the current negotiations to update the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), McGroarty argues that one of the metals ARPN followers have come to know as a key Gateway Metal – Copper – should be included in the new set of rules on NAFTA’s “auto rules of origin” provision on which negotiators from the U.S., Canada and Mexico may be nearing agreement.

He explains:

“Metals used in our cars have simply been “deemed to originate’ within NAFTA, no matter that they come from Asia, the EU or elsewhere. Not surprisingly, the percentage of non-NAFTA materials in NAFTA country products has risen from 14 to 27 percent in the first 15 years of the treaty.

President Trump and his trade team have prioritized removing this blind spot on raw materials. According to officials close to the talks, there is an emerging consensus to add aluminum and steel to the country of origin requirements, which will strengthen the demand for these key metals.

That’s progress. But before the ink dries, here’s one more metal that the Trump team should be considering that would bring benefits to the western part of the U.S.: copper.” 

Followers of ARPN will understand the underlying reasons: Copper is far more than your old school mainstay metal, and is becoming increasingly indispensable for a broad range of technologies, including the electronic vehicle sector. It is also a Gateway Metal to co-products like Rhenium, Tellurium, Cobalt and REEs, all of which can be found on Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s recently-released draft critical minerals list – thus inviting beneficial national security implications to the suggested addition of Copper to NAFTA’s content list.

Concludes McGroarty:

“Right now, the U.S., Canada and Mexico are all among the world’s top 10 copper-producing countries (Nos. 4, 8 and 10, respectively), collectively producing over 2 million metric tons a year. With demand already outpacing supply, there’s a ready market for more North American copper production. There is simply no reason to allow non-NAFTA countries “copper citizenship” (or steel or aluminum for that matter) when it comes to calculating the North American content in our cars.

Doing so punishes North American metals and minerals producers, and contributes to a chilling effect that depresses the incentives for increased resource production. And while Mexico doesn’t produce much in the way of aluminum or steel, its significant copper production would give it a ‘metals win’ in the NAFTA negotiations.

With copper usage in electric vehicles ready to redefine metals requirements in the automotive sector, the U.S., Canada and Mexico should ensure that the supply chain for copper inputs is part of the strategy to make North America’s integrated supply chain — from mine to market — as competitive as possible.”

To read the full piece click here.

And to learn more about Gateway Metals and their Co-Products, read ARPN’s latest report here. 

In a new piece for National Review, geoscientist Ned Mamula, who is an adjunct scholar at the Center for the study of Science at the Cato Institute and a member of the ARPN panel of experts and Heritage Foundation senior fellow Stephen Moore offer up their take on the current – and long overdue – [...]

In a new piece for The Hill, member of the ARPN expert panel and president and founder of Washington, DC-based government relations firm J.A.Green & Company Jeff A. Green stresses the national security risks associated with our over-reliance on foreign sources of supply for key mineral resources. Citing FBI Director Christopher Wray, who recently told [...]

Amidst the latest political drama, bomb cyclones and button size comparisons which are dominating the news cycle, you may have missed two great pieces of analysis by member of the ARPN panel of experts Jeff Green, president and founder of Washington, DC-based J.A. Green & Company – so we are highlighting them for you: In [...]

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Ned Mamula, a senior geoscientist with over 30 years of experience in energy and mineral research and resource policy issues, has joined the ARPN Panel of Issue Experts. Currently a scholar with the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, Mr. Mamula has spearheaded resource [...]

In a recent piece for The Hill, William Murray, federal energy policy manager, and Ned Mamula, associate fellow for the Washington, D.C.-based R Street Institute, lament that while policy makers and stakeholders are increasingly focusing on energy security issues, leaders are failing to pay “the same attention to a national security risk at least as [...]

Against the backdrop of growing threats to U.S. security – recent flash points involve Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – a new Presidential Executive Order “On Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States,” zeroes in on defense readiness. The E.O. requires heads from various [...]

For over two decades, the United States Geological Survey has released its Mineral Commodity Summaries report.  And while ARPN followers will know how important this publication is, as it provides a snapshot of our nation’s mineral resource dependencies, in most years its release has gone largely unnoticed beyond the circles of mineral resource wonks. This year, a [...]

For the past few months, the American Resources Policy Network has highlighted the concept of “Gateway Metals” and “Co-Products” in the context of our “Through the Gateway”-campaign.  It would appear that people in government and the business community are taking note:  The Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI) has just announced it will join with global mining and minerals company Rio [...]