We’ve all heard about the chips shortage that led to price hikes and a supply chain crisis. Less talked about, though, is the critical minerals crisis. Simply put, America needs access to roughly 50 minerals from around the globe to maintain the machines that keep our economy running and our country safe, but that access is increasingly controlled by our greatest adversary: China.
Congress took a step to address the chips shortage with industrial policy, but it did so belatedly. Then the Biden-Harris administration allowed competing priorities to erode the effectiveness of the legislation.
We can’t afford to make the same mistakes again. We need a bipartisan plan to secure access to critical minerals, and we need it now.
Electromagnets, semiconductors, batteries: Each of these technologies plays an essential role in America’s defense, health care, energy and transportation sectors. Each depends on critical minerals for its production. Just as with other strategically valuable sectors, however, China has leveraged unfair economic practices to destroy America’s competitiveness and attain industrial domination, leaving us at its mercy.
China has accomplished this by subsidizing the mining, manufacturing and exportation of Chinese critical mineral products. It has also complemented its subsidies with a potent brew of corporate espionage, dumping, intellectual property theft, bribery and slave labor. The result? The vast majority of the world’s critical mineral infrastructure resides in China, allowing Beijing to control the price and volume of all critical mineral goods in the global market, as if with a funnel or chokepoint.
Today, no country on Earth can match China for importing raw critical mineral materials via maritime transportation, processing them into semi-finished and finished products, and putting them up for sale. Moreover, metallurgical infrastructure is expensive and time-consuming to build, so few Western companies have the confidence to invest in critical minerals outside of China. In short, it would take a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to challenge Beijing’s might in this industry.
Thankfully, securing access to critical minerals is a goal both Republicans and Democrats can agree on. As chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and I have introduced legislation to help America compete. Our Global Strategy for Securing Critical Minerals Act is a consensus package that would chart an aggressive course toward economic independence from China.
Specifically, our bill would (1) establish a program to invest in critical mineral manufacturing facilities in the U.S.; (2) task U.S. embassies to support American critical mineral firms operating across the globe; (3) require the Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank to prioritize critical mineral ventures; (4) enact a new assessment of duty rates on Chinese goods; and (5) ensure that all these efforts are complementary, rather than duplicative, by posting a special coordinator for critical minerals on the National Security Council.
Beyond this effort, I have introduced separate legislation, the Critical Mineral Supply Chain Realignment Act, to outline how additional duty rates should be applied to Chinese critical mineral products. My bill would impose 800 percent tariffs on such products manufactured in China, 150 percent tariffs on Chinese entities that attempt to circumvent duties by “country hopping,” and 25 percent tariffs on those products made by any country that isn’t a designated U.S. ally, Western Hemisphere free-trade partner, or current member of the Mineral Security Partnership.
These measures would boost private sector confidence and allow us, our allies, and our partners to develop a critical mineral supply chain impenetrable to Beijing. They are tough measures, to be sure, but that is precisely what we need. Unless we want a communist dictatorship to control our access to everything from cars to computers to warships, Congress must use all available tools to end China’s critical mineral monopoly.
This op-ed is part of The Hill’s “How to Fix America” series exploring solutions to some of America’s most pressing problems.
Marco Rubio is Florida’s senior U.S. senator. He is vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Committee on Foreign Relations.