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In perhaps the strongest acknowledgment of the urgency of our critical mineral resource woes and over-reliance on foreign (and especially Chinese) supplies to date, U.S. President Donald Trump this week triggered rarely-used emergency government powers to address the issue.

On his way to a campaign rally in Minnesota, the president on Wednesday signed an Executive Order declaring a national emergency on critical minerals, determining that

“our Nation’s undue reliance on critical minerals, in processed or unprocessed form, from foreign adversaries constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

Among other provisions, the executive order calls for the Department of the Interior to invoke the Defense Production Act to expand and strengthen domestic mining and processing capacity in an effort to “guard against the possibility of supply chain disruptions and future attempts by our adversaries or strategic competitors to harm our economy and military readiness.”

Agencies are directed to “prioritize the expansion and protection of the domestic supply chain for minerals and the establishment of secure critical minerals supply chains,” and to direct agency resources accordingly, to ensure that these “do not depend on resources or processing from foreign adversaries.”

ARPN Principal Daniel McGroarty, who has long advocated the application of an “all-of-the-above” approach we’ve come to know from the energy policy discourse – in the context of working toward resource independence – called the executive order welcome, if also long overdue.

He said:

“Last July [2019], we saw the President use the Defense Production Act to designate the rare earths as essential to the national economy and national security. In this new Executive Order [EO], the extension of the U.S. Government’s ‘national emergency’ authority across not only the rare earths but the full range of critical minerals is a dramatic step, and clear recognition of the breadth and depth of the dangerous dependencies we focus on at ARPN.

As I’ve said before, we’ve spent enough time admiring this problem. The question now will be whether this EO triggers an immediate and active response on the part of the U.S. Government – one that will encourage American ingenuity, innovation and investment to bring new sources of supply into production.”

To read the full text of the order, click here.

The White House will be holding a stakeholder call later this afternoon to provide more information, so expect more coverage on our blog over the next few days.

As the U.S. explores its options when it comes to diversifying our critical minerals supply chains away from China in the wake of COVID-19, Europe is coming to grips with its own mineral supply challenges.

According to European metals association Eurometaux, the region “has reached a critical fork in the road,” as it grapples with addressing its largely hollowed-out production capacity against the backdrop of surging critical materials needs.

In an attempt to address current and future challenges, the European Commission earlier this month released its Action Plan on Critical Raw Materials, and an updated version of its List of Critical Raw Materials. The EU body also unveiled a foresight study on critical raw materials for strategic technologies and sectors from the 2030 and 2050 perspectives.

As Andy Home, senior metals columnist for Reuters, writes in a column for the news agency, Europe’s strategy — and the underlying critical raw materials list — is similar to that of the United States, and “largely boils down to (…) find, mine, refine and recycle.”

He adds:

“However, as the United States is already learning with rare earths, building an entire supply chain from scratch is a tricky business.”

Home uses lithium, newly added to the 2020 List of Critical Raw Materials, as an example, arguing that while the EU Commission estimates that by 2025, 80% of Europe’s lithium demand could be supplied from European sources, this target seems “highly ambitious given finding and mining the lithium is the (relatively) easy part. Refining it into chemical form and then making lithium-ion batteries is the hard part and the technical expertise currently resides in Asia, particularly China.”

In order to address this challenge for lithium and other critical materials, strategic partnerships with friendly trading partners will have to be leveraged, and the EU has made clear that in this context, it will be looking primarily to Canada and Australia.

The news of Europe shifting its supply chain overhaul into high gear should serve as another reminder for U.S. policy makers that “we can’t admire the problem any longer” because “we don’t have the luxury of time.”

Partisanship in a highly contentious election year may make consensus on these issues even more challenging — but for the sake of our national security and economic wellbeing, prioritizing the re-shoring and securing of our critical mineral supply chains cannot wait.

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Russia is certainly making headlines this week.  Quite obviously, much of the media attention is focused around President Vladimir Putin’s declaration that Russia has approved a vaccine for the coronavirus (after less than two months of testing) — but developments in the critical minerals realm also warrant attention: A top Russian government official has told [...]

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