Critical Minerals and U.S. Public Policy

Abstract

President Trump and various U.S. lawmakers have expressed concerns about U.S. reliance on critical mineral imports and potential disruption of supply chains that use critical minerals for various end uses, including defense and electronics applications. Chinese export quotas on a subset of critical minerals referred to as rare earth elements (REEs) and Chinas 2010 curtailment of REE shipments to Japan heightened U.S. vulnerability concern. In December 2017, Presidential Executive Order 13817, A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals, tasked the Department of the Interior to coordinate with other executive branch agencies to publish a list of critical minerals. The Department of the Interior published a final list of 35 critical minerals in May 2018. The concern among many in Congress has evolved from REEs and REE supply chains to include other minor minerals and metals that are used in small quantities for a variety of economically significant applications (e.g., laptops, cell phones, electric vehicles, and renewable energy technologies) and national defense applications. Also, as time passed, concerns increased about access to and the reliability of entire supply chains for rare earths and other minerals. Congressional action (e.g., National Defense Authorization Act for FY2014, P.L. 113-66) has led to the acquisition of REEs and other materials for the National Defense Stockpile. In 2017, the United States had no primary production of 22 minerals and was limited to byproduct production of 5 minerals on the critical minerals list. In contrast, the United States is a leading producer of beryllium and helium, and there is some U.S. primary production of 9 other critical minerals. China ranked as the lead global producer of 16 minerals and metals listed as critical.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 28, 2019
Accession Number
AD1172048

Entities

People

  • Marc Humphries

Organizations

  • Library of Congress

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Engineered Resilient Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Chemistry
  • Congress
  • Energy
  • Energy Storage
  • Environment
  • Environmental Protection
  • Lithium Ion Batteries
  • Materials Processing
  • Materials Science
  • Materials Testing
  • National Security
  • Public Policy
  • Rare Earth Elements
  • Recreation
  • Solar Cells
  • Solar Energy
  • Wind Energy
  • Wind Turbines

Readers

  • Government and Public Administration Law.
  • Industrial Economics
  • Materials Science and Engineering.

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics