Posted on 05/27/2017 5:47:15 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As recently as 1990, the United States was the world’s largest producer of minerals—a collection of nonfuel resources that are the building blocks of today’s technologies. In the ensuing decades, quite a different trend has emerged. Of 88 mineral commodities tracked by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the United States is more than 25 percent import-dependent for 62 of them.
That trend is growing worse. In its annual Mineral Commodity Summary, USGS notes:
Several U.S. metal mines and processing facilities were idled or closed permanently in 2016, including iron ore mines in Michigan and Minnesota; three primary aluminum smelters in Indiana, Missouri, and Washington; one secondary zinc smelter in North Carolina; a titanium sponge facility in Utah, the only such facility in the United States; and titanium mineral operations in Virginia.
Domestic trends aside, minerals are a fundamental building block to economic prosperity. The industries that rely on minerals, including construction and manufacturing, contributed $2.78 trillion to the domestic economy, nearly 15 percent of gross domestic product. On this basis alone, declining minerals production and processing should be concerning. But it is the types of manufactured goods that rely on minerals that make import-dependency of significant consequence.
The broad term “minerals” captures a variety of elemental metals and compounds with unique and varied properties. Collectively, minerals are essential to the manufacture of energy equipment, medical devices, electronics, agricultural products, household items and a range of goods essential to the national defense. Some minerals are so necessary to military operations that the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency maintains 37 mineral commodities as part of the U.S. National Defense Stockpile.
So why is the domestic minerals industry closing up shop? A 2016 study by the Government Accountability Office, “Strengthened Federal Approach Needed to Help Identify and Mitigate Supply Risks for Critical Raw Materials,” details the government’s approach to addressing critical materials-supply issues. It’s an overdue first step and concludes that government must do much more to stem foreign mineral imports, particularly by addressing waning domestic mineral mining.
This paper explores import trends for critical and strategic minerals in the context of public-resource policies and articulates that minerals import dependence is a willful product of policy that can and should be reversed.
PDF at link.
After the Union assault, environmentalist wacko assault and federal bureaucratic assault, it cheaper to get minerals from overseas.
I’m a mining engineer.
The cost of production in the U.S. Is too high due to excessive regulation, lawsuits of no merit by environmentalists, and dumping by China. Currently it takes over 10 years to get the necessary environmental permits for a mine and it’s just not cost effective to wait that long.
Don’t believe me? Do an Internet search for Rosemont copper mine or Resolution mine.
Three letters explain most of it:
E.P.A.
I once interviewed for an EPA job. I overheard the interviewer talking about a technical problem. As a recent grad school engineering graduate, I thought I could make points by telling them how to do it cheaper.
The response was a sneering “At the E.P.A., we are not concerned with costs.”
Taxes are another reason. A large copper project was in the planning stages in Wisconsin.
An AG-ECON socialist professor convinced the state that punitive extraction taxes were justified. He cited a flawed computer program that over stated profits and ignored inflation.
The legislature passed the taxes, and the mine was never developed.
On the Wisconsin Crandon project, Exxon lost millions in exploration and development costs.
Part of the problem was the project was opposed by radical element of the local Indian tribes. The land for the mine, which was to be an underground project, was not even on the reservation.
No primary or secondary lead smelters left in the U.S., either. I think the last one was shuttered a couple years ago in Missouri.
Some of the more valuable of the needed minerals are the rare earth elements. While the US does have a large rare earth mine in California, it has an enormous, untapped mine under an artificial lake in Texas.
Barringer Hill, underneath Lake Buchanan. Described by the United States Geological Survey as one of the greatest deposits of rare-earth minerals in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barringer_Hill
We have EPA’d ourselves into being dependent upon China for a lot of the rare earth materials that we must use to build our high-tech weaponry. It is just shameful and very very dangerous.
Or the Pebble Mine project in Alaska. What a sad and expensive story.
Pebble Mine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine
Yes. Insane.
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.