Securing America's Critical Minerals Supply Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALMER. Mr. Speaker, I want to address some of the things my Democratic colleagues have said. They are really high on China. They look at China as a model for America. Apparently, they like how they do their economy. They like their energy production.

I would just like to point out, Statistical Review of World Energy reports that coal accounted for 58 percent of China's energy. Oil was at 20 percent, and natural gas was at 10 percent. Some of my colleagues struggle with math. I will just add that up for them. That is 88 percent of their energy production comes from hydrocarbon sources. That means that the remaining 12 percent came from hydroelectric, solar, or wind.

What is interesting about this is they make it seem as though China is just dominating the world in renewable energy production. That is approximately the same amount of renewable energy production as the United States. It doesn't sound like the model.

I also wanted to point out--because they keep talking about higher energy costs--the increase in energy costs has occurred in the States with the most stringent requirements for renewable energy: California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut. That is where energy costs have gone up the most. That is where people are struggling the most to pay their energy bills.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak in support of H.R. 3617, introduced by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. James), my friend and colleague. If the United States hasn't learned anything else from the war in Ukraine, it should be this, this is a fundamental principle: No nation, let alone America, should be reliant on adversarial nations for energy and refined materials, critical minerals, rare earth elements that would threaten our economy and threaten our national security, but that is where we find ourselves and where we put ourselves in terms of access to critical minerals, processed and refined critical minerals.

H.R. 3617 addresses this. It is a crucial challenge facing the United States today, how to decouple and derisk ourselves from China and other foreign adversaries and build resilient, secure, domestic energy and critical mineral supply chains?

Our country is blessed with an abundance of energy and critical mineral resources that are a linchpin to our economy. They are a linchpin to our national security and a linchpin to the new and emerging energy technologies that we are trying to develop here.

Yet we are stuck under the thumb of Communist China, who exerts their dominance over energy supply chains, critical mineral supply chains to undermine U.S. interests. This is not a new issue, but one that has grown over the last several decades.

The United States used to be a leading producer and refiner of many critical minerals and rare earth elements. We developed the technology to refine rare earth elements, to produce magnets that are critical in our economy and to our national security.

By the late 1990s, most of that industry, especially refining, went overseas. This trend has led us to where we are today. The United States is now almost 100 percent import reliant on a dozen critical minerals and heavily reliant on imports for more than half of all critical minerals.

The challenge we face today is exacerbated by burdensome permitting processes and regulations, uncertainty in commodity pricing, and market manipulation by Communist China.

A few years ago, I launched the Western Hemisphere Prosperity and Security Alliance as a soft power alternative to China. The Western Hemisphere Prosperity and Security Alliance could help us shed our dependence on Communist China when it comes to these critical resources.

H.R. 3617 directs the Secretary of Energy to coordinate with industry and relevant stakeholders to identify ways to diversify domestic critical energy resources and supply chains.

As part of that assessment, the DOE Secretary will assess how Federal regulations may be affecting domestic production of critical energy resources and minerals and how adversarial nations seek to exploit those markets to undermine investment in the United States.

Solving this issue is paramount, and we must address it before we are too late. Critical minerals and their supply chains are vital. We cannot allow the prosperity of future generations to be dictated by adversarial nations.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to keep America at the forefront of the next generation's economy and support H.R. 3617.

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