Rare earths make strange bedfellows.
At the same time New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is denouncing President Donald Trump’s talk of the U.S. acquiring Greenland, she’s proposing legislation to address one of the main issues behind Trump’s efforts: America’s need for rare earth minerals.
Shaheen joined Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and other Republicans on Thursday to sponsor the Securing Essential and Critical U.S. Resources and Elements (SECURE) Minerals Act. It creates a new Strategic Resilience Reserve (SRR) for critical minerals.
“China’s global dominance of critical minerals supply chains gives it significant leverage and leaves the U.S. vulnerable to economic coercion. This bipartisan legislation is a historic investment in making the U.S. economy more resilient,” Shaheen said in a statement.
What she did not say is where the U.S. would get the critical minerals to store in the new reserve.
For Trump, one answer is Greenland.
Greenland is home to an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of these rare-earth reserves, including high concentrations of heavy rare-earth elements like dysprosium and terbium, which are rarer and more expensive than light rare-earth elements like lithium.
Those elements are essential to manufacturing computer chips and high-tech weaponry, and China currently controls 70 percent of the world’s rare-earth mining output.
According to Ian Lange, Coulter Chair of Mineral Economics for Colorado School of Mines, rare earth minerals are the “Porsche” of high-tech production: There is no substitute.
“Anything that has a motor is going to have a rare earth magnet inside,” Lange said. “Generally, the rare earth magnets hold their magnetism at high temperatures, which is why they use rare earth magnets and they don’t use some other magnets.”
The good news, the domestic mining industry says, is that many of the elements Trump and Shaheen are concerned about can be produced and/or processed here in the U.S., if the industry is allowed to do the job.
“We have these resources here at home, but years of complacency ceded America’s mining and industrial base to other nations,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said recently.
Why? In part because of regulations, often pushed by environmental activists, that make it cost-prohibitive for the U.S. to mine its own resources.
It’s not that the U.S. doesn’t have many of the minerals it needs. The Resolution Copper project in Superior, Ariz., holds an estimated 1.787 billion metric tons of total mineral resources and, if allowed to reach full production, could provide enough copper by itself to meet 25 percent of the total U.S. demand for 40 years. But mining approvals take far longer to get in America than in other countries.
The Essential Minerals Association reports that it takes seven to ten years on average to get the federal permits necessary to open a mine in the United States. In Canada, it takes just two to three years, and in Australia the timeline is even shorter — “nations with similarly high environmental standards but far more efficient permitting frameworks,” the association notes.
Blue-state lawmakers like Shaheen have contributed to America’s permitting problem by backing massive environmental regulatory expansion under Presidents Obama and Biden. And the blue-state problem isn’t just a federal one.
The world’s richest known hard-rock lithium deposit was recently discovered next door in Maine. But it all remains in the ground. According to the owners, the cost of state-mandated environmental testing outweighs the market value of the lithium they would extract.
This approach makes no sense, argues Conor Bernstein, vice president of communication with the National Mining Association.
“When you look at this entire framework of regulations, environmental standards, and in the commitment to do things the right way, the question is not whether we need more mining and mined materials, it is really ‘where are we going to get them from?’
“So, do you want to be dependent on Chinese mines and minerals and environmental standards, or do you want this done in the United States by American and Western companies who are doing things the right way?”
Wright says the days of leaving America’s vital resources in the ground — and the power over the global economy in the hands of its competitors — are over.
“We are reversing that trend, rebuilding America’s ability to mine, process, and manufacture the materials essential to our energy and economic security.”
Shaheen agrees. “Delivering much-needed stability to the market, providing targeted investments and stockpiling key inputs will help insulate the U.S. from foreign threats and will provide a significant, and cost-effective, boost to the U.S. economy.”
