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Essential minerals quietly power every aspect of modern American life. As you pour your morning coffee, you rely on copper wires and silicon chips running behind the scenes inside your coffee maker. When you take milk from a refrigerator, you depend on metal components, copper wires, and electronic controls to keep everything cold. Turn on the TV to another round of politicians bickering on cable news, and look at a screen made of rare earth indium, lithium, and phosphor.
Turn off the lights, jump in your car, connect your phone to Bluetooth, and turn on your favorite podcast for the drive. That daily process depends on copper, lithium, and a host of other essential minerals that power batteries, speakers, navigation systems, electric motors, and modern communications technology.
These appliances are so ingrained in our daily lives that most Americans wouldn’t think twice about them. But you should.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WORKS TO DESTROY CHINA’S EARTH MINERAL EXPLOSION IN AFRICA
Beijing certainly has. The Chinese Communist Party has spent decades and billions of dollars cornering the market on precious minerals, from mining to processing and refining. Today, China controls nearly 70 percent of the world’s rare earth mines and nearly 90 percent of rare earth refining capacity, controlling the supply chains that support America’s economic and national security.
This isn’t just about what goes into your coffee maker or your iPhone. Minerals are essential to America’s military, powering everything from advanced military jets and missile systems to radar, satellites, and communications technology. China knows this and has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to arm global chains to develop geopolitical leverage.
Last year, Beijing imposed massive export controls on the world’s rarest goods, disrupting global markets and sending shockwaves through the defense and manufacturing sectors. The results hit the American people directly. Supply disruptions drive up costs, slow productivity, threaten jobs, and make everything from cars to consumer electronics more expensive and harder to produce.
Our home state of California’s aerospace industry provides a clear example of what is at stake. The sector supports more than 350,000 jobs and generates tens of billions of dollars in economic output annually. It is also at the heart of America’s defense industry, producing advanced aircraft, satellites, and missile systems. Without reliable access to essential minerals, thousands of jobs and billions of economic activities are at risk.
President Trump and his administration understand the urgency of this challenge and are moving quickly to restore America’s power and mineral dominance. Recent efforts to strengthen domestic mining companies and support such as MP Materials and Lithium Americas are important steps in the right direction.
But America cannot solve this problem alone. Even with increasing domestic production, global demand for essential minerals is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. Some estimates show that the world will consume as much copper in the next 25 years as mankind has consumed in all of recorded history.
That is why we must work together with our most trusted partners and friends to build stronger, stronger chains, away from China.
This week, my Foreign Investment Promotion and New Integrated Energy Networks (DOMINANCE) Act came out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The DOMINANCE Act helps stop President Trump’s fossil fuel strategy and creates a systematic way to protect the wires that power our economy and protect the nation. This law strengthens America’s ability to work with allies, reduces dependence on China, and ensures the free world — not the Chinese Communist Party — controls the resources that will define the 21st century.
This is not just about energy or industrial policy. It is not about military power or national competitiveness, although that is part of the calculation. At its core, this challenge is about protecting the American Dream, and our way of life.
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The materials in our homes, the cars we drive, the technology we rely on every day, and the military systems that protect our nation all depend on secure critical mineral supply chains. America can meet this moment now, or risk regretting it for the next 100 years.
I am confident that, under this administration and our supporters, America can restore critical mineral supply chains and restore our energy future.
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