Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
What is not on the Trump Administration’s list of Chinese goods slapped with a new 25 percent tariff is far more revealing than what is.
Omitted from the latest volley of the trade war are rare earths and other strategically important minerals whose supply is dominated by Chinese companies.
China’s grip on the minerals market is alarmingly tight and U.S. import reliance alarmingly high. Minerals — the very building blocks of every technology and gadget our modern economy relies upon — have become America’s soft underbelly. Or, as Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has pointedly labeled them, our “Achilles’ heel.”
Just how worrisome is the situation? The U.S. is now more than 50 percent import reliant on 48 minerals and metals. We’re 100 percent import reliant on 18 — 14 of which have been deemed “critical” by the departments of defense or interior.
Our mineral import reliance has doubled in the past 20 years and appears only poised to get worse.
What’s particularly galling about this situation is that it’s a product of our own making.
Consider rare earths, used in everything from missile guidance systems and satellites to smartphones. As recently as the early 1990s, the U.S. was the world’s largest producer. Today, we have just one rare earth mine left and it must ship its ore to China for processing.
China now controls 80 percent of the international rare earth market; in fact, China is the primary supplier of 26 out of the 48 minerals the U.S. is import dependent on. In an escalating trade war, where leverage is everything, that gives China a big advantage.
China’s President Xi Jinping recently visited a rare earth facility in China, fueling speculation that China will use minerals in the escalating trade war with the U.S.
An article in the latest issue of Foreign Policy says that China’s goal is to dominate the global digital economy by controlling the supply of strategically important minerals and metals.
“Operating in niche markets with limited transparency and often in politically unstable countries, Chinese firms have locked up supplies of these minerals and metals with a combination of state-directed investment and state-backed capital, making long-term strategic plays, sometimes at a loss.”
Chinese competition and ambition can only partly explain our minerals vulnerability. While China has made minerals production a strategic priority, we’ve done just the opposite.
Mining in this country has been pushed to the margins. The mining industry has been saddled with an ever-growing regulatory burden and a permitting process so cumbersome it’s little wonder mining investment has drifted elsewhere.
It takes seven to 10 years, and often far longer, to gain a mining permit. In Canada and Australia, nation’s with comparable environmental safeguards, mine permitting takes just two to three years.
Our mining industry is suffocating under a mountain of red tape.
As grim as the situation appears, it’s not without hope. Bipartisan support has started to coalesce around the goal of reinvigorating the nation’s mining industry and addressing our import reliance. New legislation introduced in the Senate, The Minerals Security Act, is a promising step in the right direction. It would counter China’s control of the mineral marketplace and reduce the impediments to greater mineral production here at home.
This commonsense bill has bipartisan backers. While working across the aisle is hardly in vogue these days, perhaps this issue and its burning need for action can overcome political divisions.
Jim Constantopoulos is a geology professor at Eastern New Mexico University. Contact him at:
