Critical Mineral Dominance Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1032, I call up the bill (H.R. 4090) to codify certain provisions of certain Executive Orders relating to domestic mining and hardrock mineral resources, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

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Mr. WESTERMAN. 4090.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4090, the Critical Mineral Dominance Act.

This legislation addresses one of the most urgent challenges facing our Nation today: our growing and unnecessary dependence on other nations for the critical minerals that drive our economy and sustain our national defense.

The United States has never been more reliant on hard rock minerals than it is today. Copper is the backbone of our electricity grid. Nickel, cobalt, and lithium go into the batteries that power our communications devices and back up critical infrastructure such as hospitals and data centers. Rare earth elements make possible the cutting-edge technologies that enable our economy to innovate and our military to keep us safe.

The global mineral race is not optional. Over the next 15 years, demand for copper and rare earth elements is expected to rise by 50 percent; cobalt, 150 percent; and lithium, up to 500 percent. Shortages of all the above could be upon us within a decade.

Yet these minerals are right here under our feet. We have the safest, most sophisticated, efficient, and environmentally friendly mining technology and workforce anywhere in the world. The United States should be the world's mineral supply chain. The only reason we are not is because of our outdated, shortsighted Federal policy that hinders domestic mining.

President Trump recognized the dangerous gap between America's mineral needs and mineral production. Upon returning to office a year ago, he signed three executive orders to help close that gap.

The first directed Federal agencies to correct or rescind regulations that unduly burden domestic mining and instructed the Secretary of the Interior to accelerate geologic mapping.

A second executive order required Federal agencies to prioritize mineral development on viable Federal lands.

The third directed Federal agencies to assess the economic costs and national security risks of our dependence on foreign minerals.

H.R. 4090, sponsored by the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber), would codify the natural resources-related provisions of these EOs and require additional reporting from the Department of the Interior.

The reports will, for the first time, reveal the true costs that mineral dependence imposes on the U.S. economy. They will clarify the scope and location of America's vast mineral deposits.

During markup, the Natural Resources Committee worked in a bipartisan manner to strengthen the bill, adopting two minority amendments that required DOI to report to Congress on barriers to byproduct mineral production on Federal lands and to examine projects with the potential to produce hard rock minerals from coal ash and coal byproducts.

Mr. Speaker, the alternative to American mineral dominance is buying foreign minerals from supply chains controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. That is where we are now: mineral dependence. Mineral dependence benefits no one except the CCP. Mineral dependence does not help the environment. It does not drive economic growth. It doesn't make us or our allies safer.

American mineral dominance will create thousands of new mining and mineral-related jobs. It will establish the United States as the hub of the world's mineral market. It will secure critical mineral access for the U.S. military and for our allies.

Mr. Speaker, we need these minerals to build a better future. Our choice is whether to lead the world in meeting that need as only we can or to cede that responsibility to corrupt regimes, systems, and foreign enemies we know will abuse it. The American people have made their choice. It is time for us to honor it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Stauber for his work on this legislation. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4090, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a lot of agreement on this issue. There is the fact that we need more critical minerals in the United States, and the demand for that is not going away. We need it for economic security. We need it for national security. The rub seems to be where these critical minerals and elements are going to come from. What we are promoting is that they come from America.

The other argument seems to be that we need them but not in our backyard. That has been the position of our country for far too long.

Mr. Speaker, instead of not in our backyard, it is much better in our backyard because we have better labor standards, better environmental standards, and better health and safety standards.

God has blessed our country with these deposits of minerals really from sea to shining sea. We just need to be getting them out of the ground here, creating American jobs while doing that, creating more American jobs and more wealth while we refine those ores into metals and then manufacturing from that.

That is what our vision is. We want to see Americans use American resources to promote American security and American economic growth. I wish we could all agree on that, but that is what this bill will help to promote.

Mr. Speaker, if you read the bill, there is absolutely nothing in the bill about allowing foreign mining companies to come into the U.S. and exploit our Federal lands, to bypass all Federal regulations, and create scenarios like may have happened in some other country. Those are just scare tactics to continue this idea of not in my backyard.

We all want these things. We all recognize that we need these things. We have to have these critical minerals. We have to have these rare earth elements, but the mindset is that we will just get them from somewhere else. We will ship off our environmental issues to some other country and let them deal with it instead of dealing with them here in America, where we, again, have the most stringent rules, have the highest expectations, protect human rights, protect the environment, and promote occupational health and safety.

Show me some place in the world that does that better than we do. It is certainly not Communist China, where all of these rare earths and critical minerals are coming from right now.

Mr. Speaker, in preparing for this floor debate, I should have asked my staff to bring posters of smoke and mirrors because it would be fitting for the arguments that we are hearing that seem to try to distract us from everything but the real issue. That issue is that we are not producing the minerals and elements here in our country that we need for our economy and our defense, and China is dominating those markets.

Now, I agree with the gentlewoman from New Mexico: We should be processing these mined materials here in the United States. We have to ask ourselves the question: Why aren't we processing more minerals in the United States? Number one is that we can't get new mines. Why do we need a processing facility if we can't get the material we need to go through the processing facility?

The other one is that we can't permit a new processing facility in a timely manner and build it in a cost-competitive manner because of our overburdensome permitting and regulatory processes and laws that we have here in the United States.

This is the argument why we need permitting reform, why we need to speed up the process, and why we need to give certainty to investors that we can build here in America again.

When we talk about refining metals, let's talk about copper. In 1995, we produced three times more copper than China. Today, they are producing 10 times more copper than we are. We have two copper smelters. They have 50. It is not because we don't know how to build copper smelters, don't have copper deposits, or don't want to produce copper in the U.S. It is the fact that there have been so many obstacles and barriers put in place that it has driven that industry overseas to other places.

It is time we bring it back here and do it in a more environmentally responsible manner--again, with human rights protections, health and safety protections, environmental protections, and the standards of the United States. It is time we start doing this in our backyard and not exporting our issues to other countries while we turn a blind eye to it.

Mr. Speaker, let's look at the issue at hand here. I want to address the policy issue and the weakness in the argument that we could restrict mining companies to 10 percent Chinese ownership. That is a bad policy decision.

It is a bad policy decision, Mr. Speaker, because if you are the Chinese Communist Party and see a mine is getting ready to happen in the United States, and it is going to be done by a company that is traded publicly, you could go buy 10.1 percent and stop the project. We don't need that kind of policy.

Plus, that policy doesn't apply to the jurisdiction of this bill. If a policy like that needs to be designed, then it needs to go through the Financial Services Committee.

Also, don't think, Mr. Speaker, that our opposition on this--being China, for the most part--will not play dirty. What they do is when they see any kind of mining project or processing facility considered in the United States, they dump product onto the global market, driving the price down to make the economics such that nobody would invest in that project.

Fortunately, that is being addressed. Just this week, the administration announced something called the vault, which will be a repository for critical minerals. It will be similar to our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We will have strategic critical mineral reserves.

We need to be able to produce those critical minerals here in the United States to put in that reserve, which will insulate against foreign bad actors dumping in our markets to drive the prices down to make projects not economically viable.

Again, the real issue here is that we need this material in America, sourced by American mining companies, processed in America, and going into American manufacturing. We can partner with our allies around the world to help make this happen, but when we look at where the deposits are, they are here in America. We have to produce oil and gas where the oil and gas deposits are. We have to mine copper where the copper deposits are.

Again, we are blessed to have all of those things here in our country, but we are not utilizing them. Because we are not utilizing them, we are allowing our adversaries to control the markets.

It is not just an economic issue. It is a national security issue. That is why we need legislation like this legislation. That is why we need permitting reform.

We talk about building processing facilities in America. We passed the bipartisan permitting reform bill, but, unfortunately, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted against that.

The Senate is considering that now. Hopefully, the Senate will pass that bill in a bipartisan manner, like we did in the House, but with a larger bipartisan group. We can get it to the President's desk so we can create certainty, so we can start building more processing and manufacturing here in our country, and so we can utilize these abundant resources that we have.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for speakers.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I will reiterate the fundamental fact of this debate. In the 21st century, America's economy, military, healthcare, communications systems, and transportation infrastructure depend on hardrock minerals.

There is no scenario where the United States and the rest of the world aren't competing to purchase these critical minerals. The only question is whether we are all competing for minerals mined here in the United States or in mines controlled by our foreign adversaries.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, in 2024, the United States was 100 percent net import reliant for 15 nonfuel mineral commodities. Additionally, of the 60 minerals identified as critical by USGS, the United States was 100 percent net import reliant for 12, and at least 50 percent net import reliant for an additional 30.

Mining them here is better for our economy, our national security, our allies, and the environment. H.R. 4090 will help close America's mineral production gap and begin to end our dependence on foreign minerals.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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