Reshoring Isn’t Enough | Opinion

To its credit, the Biden administration has been, from the very beginning, both consistent in its messaging and correct in its analysis of the importance of critical minerals. They are not only needed to meet ambitious climate action goals, but as one White House document recently put it, “the building blocks for many modern technologies are essential to our national security and economic prosperity.” The problem, however, is that the White House does not go far enough in its proposed fix, focusing almost exclusively on developing a “made in America” supply chain that will never be sufficient to meet the current demand for these strategic materials, much less the 400-600 percent growth in demand over the coming decades that the administration itself projects.

The Biden administration’s 100-day supply chain assessment revealed the threat to national and economic security that disruptions could wreak, singling out the market dominance over strategic commodity supply chains gained by China through “questionable environmental policies, price distortion through state-run enterprises to minimize competition, and large subsidies.”