From CFACT

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

In its tense geopolitical rivalry with the People’s Republic of China, the United States has been working at distinct, self-imposed disadvantage. Despite favorable geology and a resurgent industrial base, it is far behind the PRC when it comes to the extraction and processing of critical minerals.

Case in point: the Iron Range in northeastern Minnesota. The area is home to the world’s largest untapped deposits of copper and nickel, along with substantial reserves of cobalt. Yet these resources – with their wide array of commercial and military applications – are off-limits to American industry.

The riches are housed in what geologists call the Duluth Complex beneath the Superior National Forest near the federally designated Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In 2023, the Biden administration placed a 20-year moratorium on mining in 225,500 acres in the Superior National Forest, effectively locking up the resources, to the delight of the hardened men in Beijing.

China is a global leader in the processing and refining of nickel, copper, and cobalt. What it doesn’t mine domestically, it gets from mines in controls abroad, in places like South America and Central Africa. Its ever-tightening grip on the global supply chain for these and other critical minerals, such as rare earths, is part of Beijing’s larger strategy of supplanting the U.S. as the world’s dominant power.

But a ray of sunshine broke through on April 16, when the Senate – by a vote of 50-49 – lifted the moratorium. The move came after the House – by a 214-208 vote – had approved nixing the Biden moratorium earlier in the year. Congress’s action was made possible by the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows regulations implemented late in the previous administration to be overturned by a simple majority vote in both chambers. It also prohibits a future administration from reimposing the same regulation once it has been rescinded by the CRA. Thus, with President Trump’s expected signature on the legislation, the moratorium will be gone.

The importance of the minerals stored in the Iron Range cannot be understated.

• Nickel is used to produce stainless steel by enhancing resistance to corrosion. Nickel alloys are essential in aerospace and defense industries due to their exceptional strength and resistance to high temperatures. It is also a key component in electronics and batteries, where it improves storage capacity.
• Copper is the third-most used metal globally, where it is found in home appliances, transportation equipment, electronic products, electrical grids, building construction materials, among other applications.
• Cobalt is used in passenger and military aerospace high-performance jet engines, gas turbines, in the production of hard alloys for tools and cutting instruments, and in the manufacture of catalysts for petroleum refining and chemical processes.

The vote was good news for Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Chilean mining company Antofagasta, which now will push ahead with the project. But the company still faces formidable hurdles, including litigation by environmental groups and a daunting permitting process that includes obtaining permits from the not exactly Trump-friendly State of Minnesota. The company is braced for a permitting process that could take years.

In the United States, “it takes 80% longer to permit projects than elsewhere in the world,” Charles Crain, managing vice president for policy at the National Manufacturers Association, said at a Capitol Hill press conference earlier this year.

Two bills pending in Congress – the SPEED Act and the PERMIT Act – address permitting delays rooted in federal statutes. The SPEED Act codifies a recent Supreme Court ruling limiting the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), clarifying that the law is purely procedural in nature. The PERMIT Act addresses permitting roadblocks in a section of the Clean Water Act, which allows states to block projects for reasons that have nothing to do with water quality. Similar permitting delays are contained within provisions of the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act.

But reaching a bipartisan legislative fix has stalled over whether streamlining the permitting process should include high-voltage transmission lines connecting wind farms and solar arrays in far-flung rural areas over hundreds of miles to more densely populated, power-hungry urban areas. Democrats favor the bow to green energy, Republicans do not.

“Transmission reform shouldn’t be a way to connect unreliable electricity sources to the grid at the expense of consumers or the reliability and the resilience of the grid,” note Daren Bakst and Paige Lambermont of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

From mining for critical minerals to the construction of pipelines, roads, bridges, and tunnels, efforts to upgrade America’s infrastructure continue to be tied up in red tape. Until that changes, realizing the potential of Minnesota’s Iron Range will slide into a distant future.