HOUSE NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT & INVESTIGATIONS
For questions on the note below, please contact the Delta Strategy Group team.
On March 25, the House Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing entitled, “Unleashing America’s Mineral Potential: The Critical Mineral Commodity Supply Chain.” The hearing memo is available here and witnesses in the hearing were:
- Dr. Simon Jowitt, Director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, Nevada State Geologist, and the Arthur Brant Chair in Exploration Geology at the University of Nevada Reno
- Gracelin Baskaran, Director, CSIS Critical Minerals Security Program
- Abigail Hunter, Executive Director, Ambassador Alfred Hoffman Jr. Center for Critical Mineral Strategy at SAFE
- Faith Williams, Director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program, Project on Government Oversight
Below is a summary of the hearing prepared by Delta Strategy Group. It includes several high-level takeaways, followed by summaries of opening statements and discussion.
Key Takeaways
- Subcommittee Chairman Gosar (R-AZ) highlighted how the value of critical mineral supply chains continues to increase and reiterated how bolstering the U.S.’s steady supply of minerals is essential to national and economic security. He outlined how the U.S. is largely dependent on foreign nations by importing half the U.S. supply of critical minerals and being entirely reliant on thirteen of them. He cited how adversaries like China have surpassed the U.S. in mining and processing capacity, with China accounting for 85 percent of global mineral processing and refining. He criticized how past policy decisions have left the U.S. vulnerable to supply chain manipulations, referencing continued reliance on foreign nations and that China has used mineral supply to manipulate markets.
- Subcommittee Chairman Gosar highlighted Project Vault as a step in the right direction for ensuring emergency access to essential production inputs. He called for the U.S. to ensure as much mineral production and processing as possible, and quickly, alongside creating certainty for federal investment. He referenced Executive Orders 14154 and 14241 to increase investment and development across the critical mineral supply chain and to strengthen the industry, alongside Amendment 141 to the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), although not included, to require reporting of rare earth minerals and materials extracted, processed, and refined from secure sources.
- Baskaran reiterated the need to build resilient markets and highlighted Project Vault as a serious and well-designed mechanism, but noted that it lacks a statutory foundation, referencing how the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has endured because it was created with a statute, and highlighting that Project Vault deserves the same protection. She also recommended pooling allied demand and called for coordination with Australia, the EU, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and India, referencing frameworks such as the FORGE framework and Mineral Security Partnership.
- Committee Chairman Westerman (R-AR) emphasized that reliance on China is indisputably dangerous, raising how China controls sixty percent of global critical mineral production, ninety percent of processing, and 75 percent of manufacturing, as he called for action to secure domestic supply chains of these vital minerals. In describing how China has built dominant positions across mining, processing, and manufacturing, Hunter called processing the true choke point allowing it to influence global supply at will, citing export controls and how restrictions have led to reduced imports and shortages. Jowitt stated that there is a lack of security in only having pieces of the supply chain to support available deposits and processing. He asserted that there is no point in solely having mineral deposits without having the entirety of a supply chain, emphasizing that value increases when resources are processed, packaged, and sold domestically, as he called for more to be done to realize the U.S.’s mineral potential.
- Baskaran stated that the question is not whether China has weaponized minerals, but how the U.S. can respond by building a fully functional, economically viable market for critical minerals outside of China with sufficient speed and scale. She discussed how the U.S.’s vulnerability is a result of choices, noting historical use of industrial policy, including financing mines, establishing price supports, and trade arrangements. She flagged the need for an industry-agnostic sourcing mechanism and stated how China’s export controls do not discriminate by end use and that U.S. policy measures should not either.
- Subcommittee Chairman Gosar framed the Resolution Copper Project in Arizona as an example of building domestic production, noting how it is estimated to produce up to forty billion pounds of copper over twenty years. Baskaran stated how Resolution Copper would account for 25 percent of our copper demand, calling it a game changer, particularly for data centers and AI. She emphasized that the U.S. does not want to export 25 percent of copper out of the U.S. and how it needs to start building domestic smelting capacity.
- In response to the importance of domestic mining from an America First perspective, Jowitt outlined how it is far better to mine, process, refine, and feed into U.S. manufacturing rather than relying on external sources, particularly given China’s dominance in the market. Baskaran talked about how Arizona copper is going to be crucial, given how copper-intensive the U.S. economy is. She referenced a structural shortage of copper and a global cliff while noting challenges in bringing tier one deposits online and a shortage of copper smelting capacity. She stated how the U.S. is already a net copper exporter, and that building a mine-to-manufactured-good supply chain requires innovative financing solutions for copper smelting.
- On supply chain integration and limits of supply-side policy, Baskaran stated supply-side intervention alone will not be the solution as she called for a systematic approach to integrating the full supply chain from mine to manufactured good. She cited the CHIPS Act allocating $280 billion to semiconductor manufacturing, but how nothing was allocated to securing minerals and paired with China’s restrictions, the disruption is estimated to result in $602 billion in economic output loss. She emphasized that a mine without a refinery is a stranded asset and a refinery without a manufacturer is a stranded asset.
- Hunter stressed that policy must address mineral supply chains in their entirety, emphasizing the national security dimension and role of minerals as strategic advantages. She emphasized that strengthening supply from resource development to industrial capability must be a central priority for U.S. economic and national security. She explained how policy must enable commercial-scale investment and ensure manufacturers prioritize purchasing from domestic and secure sources, commenting that does not matter how many mines or processing facilities are built if no one is qualifying and buying the material.
- Regarding supply chain timelines and capacity constraints, Hunter noted that scaling supply chains develops over decades, not months, and that processing facilities require years of development and rigorous qualification testing and certification. She cautioned that the U.S. cannot wait until a crisis to act and must build capacity in advance. She called for policy to shift from reacting to disruptions to shaping supply chains in advance, including supporting commercial demand, reducing investment risk through tools like tax credits and financing, encouraging diversification through sourcing requirements and allied coordination, and permitting reform to provide clarity, predictability, and durability. She also raised how allied collaboration is essential to reduce dependence on adversaries and strengthen the broader industrial base.
- Committee Chairman Westerman outlined how U.S. mineral production significantly trails others due to poor permitting policies and legislative restrictions, citing how projects lose over one-third of their value due to delays and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) litigation lasting years. He highlighted the intent of the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act (SPEED Act) in restoring NEPA to its original purpose, alongside adding certainty to permitting processes and allowing for faster decisions made with more certainty. Representative Crane (R-AZ) raised how projects are delayed for years due to environmental litigation and activism and how such contributes to reliance on foreign adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran. Hunter outlined how permitting reform should focus on clarity of process, objectivity of process, ability to execute the process, and certainty of the process, so companies can trust that they can move forward. She noted that the U.S. maintains higher standards that should be seen as a competitive advantage, and that jurisdictions like Australian states and Canadian provinces maintain similar or higher standards but can move much faster.
- Jowitt discussed how the U.S. has a huge amount of unrealized mineral potential in different areas that are underexplored, emphasizing that mineral exploration is the foundation of any supply chain. He pointed to a lack of publicly available pre-competitive geoscientific data that enables companies to identify priority targets, de-risk exploration, and find new deposits. He noted how programs like the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI) are working to stimulate exploration but that there is more to be done. He emphasized strong return on investment from exploration and cited international examples where investment in geoscientific data generated significant exploration expenditure and job creation.
- Committee Ranking Member Huffman (D-CA) raised that when contracts are awarded not based on merit, more competitive and efficient companies are crowded out, innovation stalls, and the deals that do get made tend to collapse under the weight of litigation, controversy, community opposition, and operational failures. He characterized current actions as short-sighted Wall Street equity deals, contrasting it with the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act as transparent and competitive frameworks designed to last, in addition to requiring technical verification, competitive procurement, and congressional oversight.
- Subcommittee Ranking Member Dexter (D-MD) stated that removing competitive procurement and independent verification creates a system where connections matter more than merit and are susceptible to being steered toward politically connected interests. Williams raised concerns about recent actions involving federal funds invested directly into companies absent sufficient ethics, transparency, and oversight measures, emphasizing the need for additional guardrails to prevent harming competitive industry markets. She stated how government investments raise ethical concerns, including impartiality, disincentives to report fraud or abuse, and organizational conflicts of interest, as well as potentially limit investment, increase costs, and undermine public trust. She discussed how existing tools, such as the Defense Production Act and federal contracting procedures, provide more transparent means to secure critical minerals.