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Over the past few weeks, China’s threat to play the “rare earths card” has generated quite a buzz and, along with growing concerns over supply chains for battery tech, has directed much-needed attention to our nation’s over-reliance on foreign mineral resources. 

As followers of ARPN know, many of these issues are in fact home-grown, as the United States is home to vast mineral resources beneath our own soil.  In fact, as North of 60 Mining News Editor Shane Lasley pointed out as part of his “Critical Minerals Alaska” feature series, several parts of which we have featured on our blog over the past few months:

“At least 29 of the 35 critical minerals and metals identified by the U.S. Geological Survey – antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, cobalt, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, indium, magnesium, manganese, niobium, platinum group metals, rare earth elements, rhenium, rubidium, scandium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium and zirconium – are found in Alaska.”

Coming as great news to those looking to get up to speed on the critical mineral issues, North of 60 Mining News is now offering a handy new resource (pun intended):  The publication has combined the individual segments of Lasley’s feature series investigating “Alaska’s potential as a domestic source of minerals deemed critical to the United States,” into a magazine (available as pdf here), and has also dedicated a separate page on its website to “Critical Minerals Alaska.”

The pdf and print version fo the magazine feature several bonus graphics, including a rundown of all the 35 metals and minerals that made the above-referenced Critical Minerals List released by the Department of the Interior in 2018. A second two-page graphic lists the individual rare earth elements – the 15 lanthanides as well as scandium and yttrium. 

It’s going to be a hot summer on the mineral resource issue front.  If you haven’t had a chance to read Lasley’s series, be sure to bookmark the page and grab your own copy of the Critical Minerals Alaska magazine.

Earlier this spring, the Department of the Interior released its finalized Critical Minerals List.  Jeffery Green, president and founder of government relations firm J.A. Green & Company and member of the ARPN panel of experts reminded us in a recent piece for Defense News why the current focus on our over-reliance on foreign mineral resources is relevant. Writes Green:

“(…) America’s critical minerals problem has gone from bad to worse. The nation’s only domestic rare earth producer was forced into bankruptcy in 2015 after China suddenly restricted exports and subsequently flooded the market with rare earth elements. Adding insult to injury, the mine was then sold last summer for $20.5 million to MP Mine Operations LLC, a Chinese-backed consortium that includes Shenghe Resources Holding Co. Now, according to MINE Magazine, this same mine is exporting critical minerals to a processing plant in China—because the United States cannot process or refine these materials at commercial scale. 

Without a dramatic change in minerals policies, the United States will not be able to minimize the economic damage that will come when China decides to leverage its minerals monopolies against us.”

Green outlines several key steps stakeholders should focus on:

• Creating a “whole-of-market approach to spur innovation in minerals production” – i.e. removing “regulatory hurdles that dissuade would-be investors,” including, most notably, reducing permitting delays.
• Focusing on “existing Department of Defense programs designed to support the U.S. defense industrial base.” Writes Green: “Each branch of service has a ManTech program intended to improve the productivity and responsiveness of the industrial base and to enable manufacturing technologies.” However, Green believes budget requests for FY 2019 are too low: “[D]edicating just 0.025 percent of the budget to the next generation of manufacturing technologies is nowhere near enough to catch up to China and shore up domestic capabilities.”
• Ensuring that ManTech and DPA projects are not only prioritized but that respective funds will fill vulnerabilities in the defense industrial base. Writes Green: “Building resiliency and operational capacity throughout the supply chain requires investing in more than just the finished product to include the many tools, technologies, and processes that get us there. With a calculated and strategic focus on filling these gaps in the supply chain, American companies can rise to the task.”
• Combating unfair trade practices “that have bankrupted American mining companies and left us dependent on China for minerals essential to the defense industrial base.”“The United States must make clear it will not tolerate these practices, and will take a strong stance against continued, aggressive trade actions.”

As Reuters columnist Andy Home has outlined, coming up with a list of Critical Minerals was the easy part. Green’s suggested list of policy recommendations gives us another glimpse into what comes next – the hard work of overhauling policies to appropriately address our nation’s critical mineral supply issues.

Click here to read the full text of Green’s piece.

“Identifying which minerals are ‘critical’ is the easy part. Working out what to do about them is going to be much harder.”  – That’s the conclusion Reuters columnist Andy Home draws in his recent piece on the current Administration’s efforts to develop a strategy to reduce import reliance for metals considered “critical to the economic and [...]