New CFR Report Outlines How the U.S. Can Leapfrog China’s Critical Minerals Dominance
By experts and staff
- Published
“The United States will not secure its critical mineral future through traditional mining and processing alone,” argues a new report—Leapfrogging China’s Critical Minerals Dominance: How Innovation Can Secure U.S. Supply Chains—from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Silverado Policy Accelerator. “The most promising way to leapfrog China’s entrenched position is for the U.S. government to maximize breakthrough materials engineering, advanced extraction and processing technologies, waste recovery, and recycling.”
The coauthors of the report—Heidi Crebo-Rediker, senior fellow for geoeconomics at CFR, and Mahnaz Khan, vice president of policy for critical supply chains at Silverado Policy Accelerator—assert that the United States can overcome China’s critical minerals dominance not by out-mining it but by out-innovating it. To do so, the United States needs to work with its allies to pursue pragmatic policies and deploy creative technologies.
“This report highlights the most promising technologies and practical steps the United States and its allies can take to secure the material foundations of economic and strategic strength,” said Shannon O’Neil, senior vice president of studies and Maurice R. Greenberg chair at CFR. “China’s mineral dominance is well known, but Heidi and Mahnaz provide practical policy recommendations for how the United States can secure critical minerals going forward.”
The report recommends that the United States
- “make innovation a centerpiece of U.S. critical minerals strategy;”
- “use materials engineering to bypass, not replicate, China’s chokepoints;”
- “scale waste-based recovery as a strategic supply source;”
- “close the scale-up financing gap for frontier mineral technologies;” and
- “embed innovation-led mineral security into allied frameworks.”
“Catching up to China is a daunting challenge. Even at warp speed and with significant government support, it will take the United States and its allies years to compensate for past neglect,” the report states. “It is hard to out-mine, out-process, or out-fund China. Rather, the United States should seek to leapfrog China’s dominance by unlocking and scaling disruptive innovation, recovery, and recycling.”
The authors conclude that “the United States needs a coordinated policy and financing architecture that treats innovation not as an afterthought but as the primary means by which it and its allies can leapfrog China in critical minerals—and secure the material foundations of economic and strategic strength.”
To read Leapfrogging China’s Critical Minerals Dominance: How Innovation Can Secure U.S. Supply Chains, visit www.cfr.org/report/leapfrogging-chinas-critical-minerals-dominance/.
To interview the authors, please email [email protected].