Congress Must Address China’s Dominance in Critical Minerals

On the floor, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) called attention to China’s control over the supply chain for batteries, including critical minerals, and outlined the issues that Congress should address. Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.

“Working families are struggling to keep up with the cost of everything from gasoline, to groceries, to rent, and electricity.”

“Our Democratic colleagues responded by forcing every person in America to subsidize wealthy people’s purchase of an electric car.”

“The Biden administration says by 2032, we are going to mandate that two-thirds of new passenger vehicles be run on batteries.”

“The supply chain for electric vehicles is a vulnerable one.”

“Last year, China’s battery manufacturing capacity accounted for 77% of the global total. Its production capacity is greater than that of the rest of the world combined.”

“Despite the fact that China dominates the supply chain for the critical minerals used to produce batteries, most of those minerals are not actually mined in China.”

“They come from reserves around the world. The Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, is home to the world’s largest cobalt reserves. Indonesia is the largest producer of nickel. Three of the largest lithium reserves are concentrated in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. Critical minerals aren’t safe from Chinese influence just because they’re mined beyond China’s border.”

“China has made a huge investment in processing those critical minerals in China. In other words, they’re mined in these countries, exported to China for processing, where they control access to the critical minerals that are needed to build batteries, among other things.”

“Right now, we have a general sense of the problems that we are confronting, but we’re lacking some specifics when it comes to critical minerals particularly. We don’t know what reserves are under the control of foreign adversaries. We aren’t guaranteed to receive a heads up before major deals are made regarding mining rights and processing.”

“Indeed, China has shown itself to be expert at operating surreptitiously under the cover of companies that sound like they come from somewhere else, where, actually, the People’s Republic of China – the Chinese Communist Party – has controlling interest in those companies. We’re not able to identify the many risks to the global supply chain or critical opportunities for new trade partnerships.”

“We need to address the blind spots that are protecting China’s dominance in critical minerals and battery production, and we’re not going to be able to do it overnight.”

“A number of us are working to try to solve the problem.”

“I hope this is a topic where we can work together and that we’re in bipartisan support.”