In the 1970s, OPEC stopped shipping oil to the United States, and Congress established the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is an emergency measure to store oil to deal with future crises.
Now, 50 years later, the United States is building a new strategic reserve. As China has repeatedly threatened to halt exports of rare earth metals, the Trump administration launched Project Vault, a $12 billion program designed to store critical minerals ahead of possible shortages. Like the oil reserves of the 1970s, this “vault” will store critical metals and minerals to mitigate future supply chain disruptions.
Project Vault is the latest step by the U.S. government to counter China’s overwhelming global control of metals and minerals that are the cornerstone of U.S. technology and national security. Especially when it comes to “rare earth” elements used in everything from smartphones to nuclear submarines, China controls 70% of global mining production and 90% of processing. This gives Beijing’s iron-fisted control over minerals far greater than OPEC’s previous dominance of global oil.
The weakening of China’s mineral advantages will not happen overnight. Global demand for minerals has soared, and Beijing is redoubling its efforts to control the world’s mineral supply. Bringing new U.S. mines online and building new domestic processing and refining capacity will be a costly and time-consuming process.
China not only controls global mining production but also dominates the refining and chemical processing that convert minerals into usable industrial inputs. By comparison, the United States currently lags far behind in processing capabilities. In fact, most of the raw mineral products in the United States are actually shipped to China, only to be re-imported into the United States as higher value products.
Ironically, the United States has huge mineral reserves, including one of the largest copper resources in the world and massive lithium deposits along the Nevada and Oregon border. But failed federal policies continue to hinder the construction of new mines and processing operations domestically.
Currently, it takes a staggering 29 years to bring a new mine online in the United States—one of the longest times in the world. It is absolutely necessary to address this disturbingly slow process and start approving new mines.
Faster mine permitting alone won’t solve the problem, though. Without domestic and allied refining capacity, new U.S. mines will remain stuck in the same Chinese-controlled processing bottlenecks that created the vulnerability in the first place.
Therefore, Washington must combine licensing reforms with long-term incentives to rebuild refining and chemical processing at home and among its allies. That means production credits for capital-intensive facilities, federal procurement and defense procurement agreements, and safeguards against subsidized price suppression overseas. It also means closing loopholes that currently allow Chinese-controlled processing, whether located abroad or through a third country, to qualify for U.S. subsidies and tax credits.
In December, the House passed two bipartisan bills—the Standardized Permitting and Expedited Economic Development Act (SPEED) and the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act—that could significantly reduce permitting delays and create regulatory certainty for new projects. Now that the House has taken action, the Senate should quickly pass both bills.
The United States has the raw materials, technical expertise, and capital to rebuild its mineral security. As a country, we are not resource-poor, but we have limited processing capacity. Converting abundant resources into materials needed for advanced technology and national defense will require Congress and the Administration to act quickly to approve reforms as part of broader efforts to restore domestic mining and processing capabilities.
