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As U.S. policy makers and other stakeholders scramble to secure supply chains to meet rising demand for battery criticals against the backdrop of a pandemic, geopolitical tensions and war, as well as rising resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere, a newly enacted law threatens to make President Biden’s already ambitious push to require that 50 percent of all vehicles sold be electric by 2030 even more difficult to see through.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act signed into law by President Biden on December 23, 2021 establishes “a rebuttable presumption that the importation of any goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China, or produced by certain entities, is prohibited by Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 and that such goods, wares, articles, and merchandise are not entitled to entry to the United States.”

In short, this means that companies importing goods from China’s Xinjiang region to must provide “clear and convincing evidence” that no component was produced with slave labor.  According to Cullen Hendrix, a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the measure will in all likelihood“amount to an effective ban on imports from Xinjiang and products that have Xinjiang-produced elements in their supply chains,” sending businesses scrambling to find different sources of supply for materials and products.

While a diversification of critical mineral supply chains away from China and other adversaries is long overdue, the enforcement of the new law underscores the real-life practical challenges associated with detangling complex supply chains, after having too many eggs in one basket for too long — particularly as demand for the metals and minerals underpinning the sought-after green energy shift has soared exponentially.

Having underestimated the seriousness of our nation’s critical mineral supply chain challenges for too long, the United States must now play catch up – fast – and harness a  comprehensive “all of-the-above” approach across the entire value chain — from mine to manufacturing.  Fortunately, as the National Mining Association’s Rich Nolan pointed out earlier this year, “our challenge is one of policy, not geology. We have the resources to supply significant domestic production for many of the metals most essential to advanced energy technologies.” 

Now is the time to kick our efforts to leverage them into high gear.

On the heels of the coronavirus pandemic having exposed the West’s overreliance on Chinese supplies of mineral resource supplies, Russia’s war on Ukraine has set off a potential realignment of critical mineral resource supply chains that warrants attention.

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has largely isolated it on the global front both diplomatically and economically, and, with sweeping sanctions taking hold, the Western world has turned elsewhere to meet certain critical mineral needs previously supplied by Russian companies and halted shipments of materials to the Russian Federation.

Unsurprisingly for followers of ARPN, Russian buyers have begun turning to China to plug shortfalls.

A case in point:

With Ukraine and Australia, two of Russia’s key suppliers of alumina before the war, halting shipments to Russia, China’s alumina exports to Moscow have skyrocketed in recent months. In March, Russia had bought 9,950 metric tons of alumina from China, amounting to almost 10 times more than purchases for the same period in 2021. In May, according to Bloomberg News, Russia received a whopping 190,000 metric tons from China, bringing the year-to-date figure to 380,000 – almost 1,000% higher than the numbers for the same period in 2021.

While to date, Beijing has walked a carefully calculated line on Russia’s war on Ukraine emphasizing its concern with violence while maintaining the need to respect territorial integrity and security interests of all parties, China stands to gain major strategic opportunities from filling the void left by a Western business pullout from the Russian market, both in terms of imports and exports. China will also be able to further its grip on global critical minerals via access to Russia’s vast mineral riches.

In a telephone conversation earlier this month, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry readout cited by Newsweek, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed support for “each other’s core interests,” with Xi telling Putin that “China stands ready to promote the stable and long-term development of pragmatic bilateral cooperation with Russia,” and is “ready to continue mutual support with Russia on issues concerning core interests and major concerns, such as sovereignty and security, and to deepen strategic coordination between the two countries.”

With China and Russia the number one and number two global producers and processors for many of the metals and minerals underpinning 21st Century technologies, the stakes cannot be underestimated. For years, ARPN sounded the alarm with regards to the lack of awareness of the geopolitics of mineral resource security, but it took the confluence of a global pandemic, subsequent supply chain challenges amidst growing demand, rising resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere and Russia’s war on Ukraine to get stakeholders’ full attention to the issue. Promising efforts to reduce our nation’s overreliance on metals and minerals from our adversaries are currently underway.

However, as we have previously pointed out:

“Those familiar with the inner-workings of Washington, D.C. know all too well that particularly in an election year policy efforts can quickly lose steam or fizzle over attempts to placate certain constituencies. Against all affirmations to strengthen domestic supply chains, the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) sentiment is still strong.”

Ultimately though, with the stakes as high as they are today, a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach to mineral resource security, from mine to manufacturing and across all segments of the value chain, is the only way to, in U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent words, “bet on ourselves and win the competition for the future.”

Underscoring the growing awareness that our nation’s overreliance on foreign supplies of critical minerals underpinning 21st century technology stretches beyond the much-discussed Rare Earths and battery criticals lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and manganese, the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services has released draft legislation to address China’s stranglehold on the supply chain for antimony. Used (…) more

It’s a brave new world. Rising geopolitical tensions in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increasing resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere and booming material demand to power the accelerating global push towards net zero carbon are warranting a rethink on the part of policy stakeholders not just in the United States, but (…) more

In yet another indication that increasing demand and supply chain challenges in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and war in Ukraine have raised the geopolitical stakes, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken explicitly referenced critical minerals and the United over-reliance on China both in terms of mining and processing in a speech outlining U.S. policy (…) more

Your mind may not immediately jump to semiconductors when you think about national security, but “a steady source of uninterrupted, trusted chips is necessary for the security of the nation – supporting the readiness of the U.S. military and protecting critical infrastructure like the electric grid,” writes Zachary A. Collier, Ph.D., an assistant professor of management at Radford University and a visiting scholar (…) more

Along with U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has long one of the lead champions of a more comprehensive approach to mineral resource security. On the heels of lamenting the delayed implementation of a set of critical mineral provisions included in the Energy Act of 2020 and the bipartisan infrastructure package (…) more

In a recent piece for The Hill, Adina Renee Adler, deputy executive director of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington, D.C.-area based think tank, calls for the increased harnessing of circular economy concepts in service to U.S. critical mineral resource policy. Acknowledging bipartisan efforts to strengthen U.S. critical mineral supply chains in the past year, for which (…) more

Acknowledging the vast material inputs required to power the EV revolution in the context of the push towards net zero carbon — as well as the significant supply chain challenges associated with the sought-after shift — the Biden Administration has announced a $3.1 billion funding program for U.S. companies producing and recycling lithium-ion batteries. According to Secretary (…) more

Against the backdrop of ever-increasing pressures on critical mineral supply chains, we are seeing a flurry of activity on the part of government stakeholders to shore up supply of the metals and minerals underpinning 21st Century. While it is certainly encouraging that these developments are not only underway but are also increasingly making headlines and garnering (…) more