The following content is sponsored by the Restoring Energy Dominance (RED) Coalition, a nonprofit organization that supports President Trump’s America First energy agenda, and written by the organization’s senior advisor, Dan Brouillette, who served as the 15th United States Secretary of Energy under President Donald Trump.
I ran the Department of Energy during President Trump’s first term. We unlocked the shale revolution, became a net energy exporter, and built the most dynamic energy economy on earth. Now President Trump is extending that transformation to the minerals that make energy systems run, fast-tracking permits, deploying federal capital, building strategic stockpiles, and investing directly in domestic production. He understands whoever controls the minerals controls the future.
The USGS 2026 Mineral Commodities Summary makes the challenge plain: the United States is 100 percent import-dependent on 16 minerals and more than 50 percent dependent on foreign sources for 54 of 90 tracked commodities. That is a long way from where we stood during the Cold War, when the U.S. held strategic surpluses across 63 of 75 critical material categories. Decades of bureaucratic overregulation and a regulatory regime that treated domestic mining as a liability rather than a strategic asset hollowed out those stockpiles while our adversaries filled theirs. These materials power our fighter jets, naval vessels, missile guidance systems, and electrical grid, and they increasingly determine what American families pay on their utility bills. When we cede control of these supply chains, we don’t just lose strategic leverage, we lose our ability to keep the lights on and hold prices down at home.
China knows this. Beijing controls the majority of global critical mineral refining, dominates 70 percent of lithium refining, produces 90 percent of battery-grade graphite, and processes 19 of the 20 most strategic minerals on earth. It has already used that dominance as a weapon, restricting exports of graphite and rare earth elements as geopolitical leverage against the United States and our allies. This is not a future threat. It is a present one.
We have the resources, the technology, and the regulatory framework to compete, and a new generation of American companies is already proving it.
In Nevada, Lithium Americas is advancing Thacker Pass, the largest confirmed lithium resource in North America. In the Black Hills of South Dakota, IRIS Metals is developing the only currently permitted U.S. project capable of producing lithium and rubidium simultaneously. Rubidium powers the atomic clocks and GPS systems every branch of our military relies on daily. In western Alaska, Graphite One is advancing Graphite Creek, the largest known natural graphite deposit in the United States. In North Carolina, Vulcan Elements is building the largest rare earth magnet factory in the world outside of China, the same country that cut off exports of rare earth magnets to U.S. defense end-users in 2025.
Every one of these projects operates under American environmental law, subject to American public and regulatory scrutiny, and accountable to American workers. Those standards do not exist in China, the Congo, or most of the countries currently filling our import orders. When we choose domestic production, we are delivering the America First agenda in its most direct form: good-paying American jobs and real wins for American energy workers.
The economic stakes are just as real. Copper is essential to every new home built in America, and with a 4-million-unit housing shortage, supply chain disruptions hit builders, buyers, and renters alike. A single EV requires three to four times more copper than a gas-powered vehicle. When critical mineral supply chains run through Beijing, every trade dispute and export restriction becomes a price shock at the kitchen table.
That is why the Senate must act on H.J. Res. 140. Passed by the House in January, the resolution is now racing toward its Congressional Review Act deadline. It would reverse a 20-year mining ban on a quarter-million acres in northern Minnesota. Geologists estimate that beneath those quarter-million acres sits roughly 95 percent of the nation’s nickel reserves, nearly nine-tenths of its cobalt, three-quarters of its platinum, and close to a third of its copper. The Biden administration put those resources off-limits at the bidding of special interests, leaning on Green New Deal priorities to justify the decision.
There is a second reason to act. The Biden administration locked up this land without ever notifying Congress, which the law requires. The Trump administration corrected that earlier this year, giving Congress its first real vote on the matter. And that vote has teeth: no future administration can bring it back without an explicit act of Congress. That is exactly the kind of durable, rule-of-law protection that gives investors and mining companies the regulatory certainty they need to commit capital and pursue federal and state permitting processes. Majority Leader John Thune and his Republican colleagues should not let this window close. Pass the resolution, let the regular permitting process work, and unleash these resources for American workers under American law.
President Trump has been clear: America will not cede its energy future to foreign adversaries, and critical minerals are no exception. His administration has backed that commitment with action, and the Senate has an immediate opportunity to reinforce it by passing H.J. Res. 140. After that, the work continues with more permits, more projects, and more American mineral production coming online. The President is leading. Congress must follow.
Dan Brouillette served as the 15th United States Secretary of Energy under President Donald Trump. He is a Senior Advisor for the Restoring Energy Dominance (RED) Coalition, a nonprofit organization that supports President Trump’s America First energy agenda.
