Posted on 08/26/2024 6:43:17 PM PDT by Red Badger
China is planning to restrict exports of a key mineral needed to make weapons while a U.S. company that could be reducing America’s reliance on foreign suppliers is languishing in red tape, energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Chinese government announced on August 15 that it will restrict exports of antimony, a critical mineral that dominates the production of weapons globally and is essential for producing equipment like munitions, night vision goggles and bullets that are essential to national security, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Perpetua Resources, an American mining company, has been navigating red tape for years to develop a mine in Valley County, Idaho, that could decrease reliance on the Chinese supply of antimony, but the slow permitting process is getting in the way, energy experts told the DCNF.
It can take years to secure all the necessary approvals and permits to develop a mine like the one Perpetua Resources is trying to operate. One of the key permitting laws in place is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which also applies to federal land management actions and the construction of certain public infrastructure projects like highways.
“After six years of planning and early engagement, we began the [NEPA] permitting process in 2016. We are now eight years into NEPA,” a Perpetua Resources spokesperson told the DCNF. The company is hoping to extract antimony from the largest known deposit in the U.S., and Perpetua Resources’ development could also produce millions of ounces of gold as well.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, argues that the Perpetua Resources mine poses real environmental considerations that should be addressed, but production in the U.S. is almost certainly cleaner than production that takes place in China. Moreover, depending on China for raw materials needed to produce key defense equipment poses a clear national security risk, Furchtgott-Roth said.
“The United States has the highest environmental standards in the world for its mines, as well as for some other things, too,” Furchtgott-Roth told the DCNF. “It’s a huge national security risk. Given what we’ve seen with Russia cutting off supplies of natural gas to Europe, we know that countries can cut off important supplies to other countries.”
“If the administration wants to pursue policies that push electric vehicles, green energy and other mineral-intensive technologies, it should look to streamline the permitting process across the board rather than selectively pursuing reform for some favored types of development and not for others,” Furchtgott-Roth added. (RELATED: ‘Make Their Lives Utterly Miserable’: Top US Commander Outlines ‘Hellscape’ Response If China Invades Taiwan)
Steve Coonen, a former Department of Defense (DOD) official who focused on technology exports to China, agreed that relying on China for raw materials needed to produce crucial technologies presents a clear national security risk.
“The United States has all the rare earth elements it needs, not too dissimilar from its energy requirements,” Coonen told the DCNF. “However, Democrats have enchained U.S. industry by prohibiting the extraction of these materials for misplaced and ill-informed ecological reasons at a significant risk to national security and the United States’ long-term economic health.”
China is responsible for just under 50% of the world’s antimony production, and it is also the source of 63% of the U.S.’ current antimony imports, according to CSIS. The U.S., meanwhile, did not mine any “marketable” antimony in 2023, according to CNBC.
China’s recently announced export restrictions for antimony will take effect on Sept. 15, according to CNBC. To many in the industry, China moving to curb antimony exports would have come as a surprise just a few months ago, so the country’s decision to take action comes across as “quite confrontational in that regard,” Lewis Black, CEO of Canadian mining company Almonty Industries, told the outlet.
In addition to antimony, China has also flexed its muscles by restricting exports of other critical minerals that it dominates globally, like germanium and gallium, since 2023.
“The United States has some of the highest permitting standards in the world, and that’s something to be proud of. But NEPA gets criticism for being inefficient, and much of that criticism is justified,” the Perpetua Resources spokesperson told the DCNF. “When we are talking about minerals we need for America’s national and economic security — not to mention our clean energy future — we need an efficient regulatory process that still maintains robust protections for communities and the environment.”
The company is anticipating that the process — from initial deposit identification to the beginning of mineral extraction from the mine site — will take 18 years, the Perpetua Resources spokesperson told the DCNF. However, the spokesperson added that NEPA has been beneficial for transparency with the public and allowing stakeholder communities to weigh in about the project.
Nevertheless, Perpetua Resources “absolutely supports a commonsense, bipartisan approach to permitting reform” because “good projects should not wither in red tape.”
The antimony curbs may be even more pressing given existing concerns about the strength of America’s defense-industrial base amid wars in the Middle East and Europe, as well as rising tensions with China over Taiwan. Many experts have cautioned that the U.S. is allowing itself to become too dependent on an adversarial China’s mineral supplies at a time when those minerals are playing a much larger role in the American economy, thanks in part to the Biden administration’s massive green energy agenda.
“In the mid-twentieth century, domestic mining accounted for 90% of the U.S.’s antimony consumption. Today, the U.S. no longer mines antimony; instead, it relies on China, its chief geopolitical rival, for over 60% of its antimony imports,” Quill Robinson, an associate fellow in CSIS’ Energy Security and Climate Change Program, told the DCNF. “Effective China de-risking requires reducing reliance up and down the value chain.” (RELATED: ‘Blinking Red’: US Is Scrambling To Prep For A China Invasion Of Taiwan, Defense Officials Say)
“Yet, increasing domestic resource extraction, such as critical mineral mining, has proven far more politically challenging than building new solar module factories,” Robinson added. “Addressing this issue will require specific policies, like permitting reform, but also a broader commitment from lawmakers to support the safe, environmentally responsible extraction of the U.S.’ natural resources.” Independent West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso teamed up to introduce a major permitting reform bill in July, designing the package to simplify the regulatory hurdles that major infrastructure and development projects must clear and expedite timelines without totally defanging regulators’ ability to ensure that environmental concerns and considerations are addressed. That bill has not yet come up for a vote in the Senate.
“There are legitimate environmental challenges that need to be mitigated for projects like this,” Arnab Datta, the Institute for Progress’ director of infrastructure policy, told the DCNF. However, government agencies are more strongly incentivized to avoid legal challenges of their reviews from third parties than they are to thoroughly review the more significant environmental concerns, meaning that regulators tend to chew up lots of time on those minor points and ultimately extend the timelines for permitting, Datta explained.
“The uncertainty from permitting and litigation compounds the challenge of reaching production in what’s often a volatile and uncertain market environment for these commodities,” Datta, who also works for Employ America as a managing director of policy implementation, continued. “These companies need a process with certainty and reasonable timelines and also support that helps mitigate the volatility that arises from China’s actions in the market.”
Per Wiki:
The most common applications for metallic antimony are in alloys with lead and tin, which have improved properties for solders, bullets, and plain bearings. It improves the rigidity of lead-alloy plates in lead–acid batteries. Antimony trioxide is a prominent additive for halogen-containing flame retardants.
Antimony is used as a dopant in semiconductor devices.
I say let them cut it off. Now. Before we are actually at war with them.
Do it you Communist Chinese scumbags.
Uh huh.
I think China is planning on going to war to regain Taiwan sooner than later.
If it looks like Trump is going to win, then they will have to attack before November or before January 20...............
Chinese Communist Party Boss Xie Jing Blofeld.
“As you know, gentlemen, I have taken control of the entire world’s supply of... antimony.”
We have aplenty, it’s just that all the environmental regulations make it damn near impossible to get at.
However, if a POTUS declares a national Security emergency, all those regulations are off the table for the duration............
Well, well...
How does it feel to be entangled in mountains of onerous and conflicting regulations that prevent you from doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done?
Welcome to the real world you (the Congress) have created piece by piece over the past 25 years.
Hopefully a lesson will be learned here (but I won’t hold my breath).
Unfortunately, if Trump wins there is a lot of inertia to overcome to repair what Democrats and RINO’s did for the past 25 years. At Trump’s best, there just may not be the time to undo what was done.
So, I’m expecting China to got to war. They’ve been prepping for it. But they have the benefit of time because the US is so far behind now. Perhaps, if the US can ally itself with the other Asian countries that China is bullying, that we might be able to go to war sooner than that.
Just like people will work damn near any job if they can’t get any food, when we are getting our ass kicked in combat because we can’t produce the equipment necessary to wage war and our commerce gets choked off resulting in people losing their jobs and not being able to eat, those environmental restrictions will evaporate.
There is no law of the universe that says all precious minerals are going to equally distributed around the world.
So when the US can’t produce any, that doesn’t mean government got in the way, and often, when that is the claim, it is made by some mineral company that gets paid to explore, regardless of what the find.
USGS says 80% of the Antimony supply of planet Earth is in China, Russia and Bolivia. That’s just the way it is. It doesn’t have to mean politics got involved. Geology doesn’t care about politics.
The United States Geological Survey has released a new list of 50 mineral commodities critical to the U.S. economy and national security after an extensive multi-agency assessment [2022].
<<>>
Critical minerals FAQs [4 page pdf]
It’s crazy. The Communist Chinese are the greatest threat in the world today, and gaslighting us as Biden did by saying they are not our enemy is exactly what the Communists want.
Only an absolute idiot would minimize how they have hollowed out our industrial base, methodically, patiently, and reaping great profits as they do so, would think that they wouldn’t cut off the supply of materials like antimony.
Of course they would, just as we would if we had the switch in our hand for some of the things they do and are going to do.
I would like to believe our reasons would be different, and we might have a higher moral plane to act from, but honestly, with this administration, it would be naive to take that stance. I don’t see this current administration as being all that different from the Communists.
China will subdue the Philippines before Taiwan. If they control the Philippines then Taiwan, Japan, and S. Korea will be unable to to be resupplied from the US.
At least we don’t have to pay our ex-wives anything, anymore!
Rely on your primary global opponent to supply you with critical elements needed for your defense - yeah, sounds like something leftists would do.
Yep. This what not supplying our own rare earth minerals gets us.
Trump can and will do this. And he’ll make China pay for it
Not if Trump is elected!
Red tape is just imagind depending on Who the President is!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.