Mr. President, We Need an America First Critical Minerals Strategy

President Trump just met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at this month’s APEC Summit in Seoul, South Korea. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also met with their counterparts. These will be some of the most important meetings of President Trump’s second term in office. The Trump Administration should give the President the strongest negotiating hand possible by arming him ahead of time with a whole-of-government National Critical Minerals Strategy.

We are retired two-star military leaders who dedicated our adult lives to defending our homeland. We can tell you without any doubt that critical minerals are not just an economic issue or an environmental issue–but a national security crisis.

Examples of critical minerals

For example, the critical mineral antimony is especially important to our warfighters. It is used in every bullet, every pair of night-vision goggles, and in the starter battery of everything that floats, flies, or drives, from every howitzer to every stealth bomber. Without it, our military would simply shut down. Yet right now, China controls nearly half of the world’s antimony supply and most of its processing.

Until a year ago, the United States and our allies depended on China for antimony. But after the President’s re-election, China cut America off and drove up our prices, sending us scrambling to find other overseas suppliers. It is only a matter of time before China runs the same playbook with other critical minerals too: through its imperialistic Belt and Road Initiative, China controls 70 percent of the world’s rare earth elements production. In the critical minerals category, they control two-thirds of the world’s lithium and three-quarters of the world’s cobalt.

But these numbers understate China’s dominance: China controls an even greater share of critical mineral processing and refining. Without processing ability, all the minerals in the world will be of no use. By cornering the market on mineral processing, China can hold the rest of the world hostage.

Trump understands, better than some media

Fortunately, the Trump Administration is aware of this problem and has been taking action to the point that CNN even suggested the President was “obsessed” with critical minerals earlier this year. In January, the Department of the Interior finally approved the application to reopen America’s only antimony mine in Central Idaho. This is excellent news, but it is not enough to ensure America’s antimony independence. 

Getting the mine up and running after 20 years of closure will take time. But even if the Idaho mine switched back on at full capacity tomorrow, we wouldn’t be able to process and purify the antimony it produces. As a result, American antimony would end up getting sent to China for processing and then sent back here at a higher price. As America begins to mine again, we also need to process again to take full control of the supply chain.

America needs a whole-of-government National Critical Minerals Strategy that includes fast-tracking of regulatory approvals for mining projects, such as construction permits and operating permits. The Administration has largely done this already through its National Energy Emergency, but it must also include the same regulatory relief for mineral processing facilities.

How to ensure a supply of critical minerals

The second Trump Administration has been the most aggressive Presidential administration on the issue of trade in decades, if not ever. The Administration should ensure strong anti-dumping rules to ensure that China does not bankrupt our mining companies or our mineral processors.

Securing America’s critical mineral independence will take time. But until then, if we cannot reshore a mineral, then we should friend-shore it. President Trump should coordinate an international antimony supply and processing capacity with our allies until we can become a net mineral exporter. We should never depend on an adversary for something so basic and necessary as antimony to make bullets. These minerals ensure our national security, thriving economy and with that our leadership on the world stage. 

Even when America does get back to mining and processing antimony as we did in World War II, there will still be the threat of China attempting to bankrupt our companies. China has run the same playbook over and over again in our country and in other countries around the world: subsidize their own products to drop prices below cost for their competitors and then dump their cheap commodities in our market. The result is that their competitors, our domestic manufacturers, go bankrupt and China is able to dominate the market completely. Any National Critical Minerals Strategy needs to prepare for this and ensure that China doesn’t do to our miners and manufacturers what they did to our steelworkers.

Actions the administration is taking now

Fortunately, Secretary Bessent said recently that the Administration will protect against Chinese dumping by instituting price floors to keep our most important institutions in business. As the Secretary put it with regard to rare earths, “either we have to be self-sufficient, or we have to be sufficient with our allies.”

The President’s meeting with President Xi is their first since 2019 and it could have implications for the next four years and beyond. We urge the President to continue his pressure campaign for fair trade while at the same time ensuring America and our allies can deliver the minerals we need for a modern economy and a lethal military. This is our moment to declare critical mineral independence.

This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.