OPINION:
In the global minerals race, the U.S. is critically outmatched. Our challenge is not geology; the U.S. has vast mineral resources. Rather, it is policy — namely, a duplicative and painfully obstructive permitting process.
Yet instead of reducing barriers to ramp up domestic mineral production and address our alarming reliance on mineral imports, the Biden administration is proposing to raise a host of new ones.
The administration’s recently released recommendations from its Interagency Working Group on mining — tasked with finding solutions to America’s mineral challenge — will only make a deeply concerning situation worse.
Rather than addressing the myriad U.S. mining projects that remain stalled in legal challenges or duplicative stages of permitting and environmental review, the working group has proposed upending the nation’s foundational mining law, overhauling how the nation governs mining, and potentially imposing an 8% royalty on miners along with a dirt tax that would cost miners hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
It’s impossible to see how such proposals move the ball forward in building the mineral supply chains the nation so dearly needs — and the Biden administration claims it wants — as mineral demand explodes.
This overdue report was an opportunity to find solutions to encourage responsible domestic mining already conducted under world-leading environmental, safety and labor laws. Instead, even if some of the most egregious proposals are stopped in Congress, where there is strong bipartisan opposition to what has been proposed, this report will further deter capital investment when we should be scrambling to encourage it.
The signal here is clear: The Biden administration is more interested in doubling down on our already outsized mineral import reliance from countries such as China, Russia, Mongolia and the Democratic Republic of Congo than it is about building secure, responsible mineral supply chains at home.
To the contrary, the administration is actively working to fund mining projects overseas, including in Congo, where labor, safety and environmental laws pale in comparison with our own and where the potential for supply disruption is constant. None of this makes sense.
The Biden administration has already warned that it fears mineral supply chains are at high risk of being used against the U.S. in the same way oil was in the 1970s and natural gas was after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago. This report and the administration’s unwillingness to embrace American mining is a gift to our geopolitical rivals and adversaries.
Canada, Australia, the U.K. and even the European Union have all released road maps to ramp up domestic mineral production, working with urgency to streamline mine permitting and reduce the regulatory burden on the mining industry while providing incentives to encourage the production of the minerals that will underpin the energy transition. What has just been proposed in the U.S. couldn’t be more different.
So much of what is in the working group’s report is backward-looking, aiming to address grievances and legacy problems that date back decades while ignoring the standards, practices and technology that are the foundation of modern mining. Most of the recommendations in the report reveal a fundamental lack of understanding of the mining industry and the laws that govern it.
The Biden administration claims it is serious about securing and de-risking the nation’s mineral supply chains. That can’t happen if the administration’s best effort at improving the regulatory regime for mining is to throw insurmountable obstacles in the way of responsible domestic projects and would-be investments.
The clock is ticking to get mining policy right as demand soars for the minerals that underpin our technology and energy futures as well as our national security. We’re being lapped in the minerals race, and the Biden administration is increasingly to blame.
• Rich Nolan is president and CEO of the National Mining Association.
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