Vault Secured: Time to Dig Deep
When a geopolitical rival like China can restrict access to inputs that make American fighter jets, smartphones, and the AI boom possible, it becomes a national security crisis, not just a trade issue. The Trump administration’s new “Project Vault” deserves credit for recognizing this reality and treating critical minerals like strategic supplies to be secured before a crisis, not after.
The administration’s initiative, which will stockpile essential materials for high-tech batteries, advanced software, and cutting-edge sensors, is a first, defensive step to bandage a wound that Washington has allowed to fester for decades—our atrophied mining and refining capabilities. As President Trump and his team have long emphasized, a nation that cannot source the foundational materials for its own economy and defense is not truly sovereign. China currently supplies about 71% of our rare earth imports and dominates the global refining capacity, with a roughly 92% share. Over the past year, despite a temporary trade truce, China has tightened supplies even further.
To truly secure our prosperity and freedom, the next step is to unleash the power of American industry by mining and refining these minerals at home.
The best and most permanent solution to our unsustainable dependence on imports is to produce these minerals ourselves. Fortunately, we can; the U.S. is home to sizable reserves of the very minerals we currently import from China. The problem isn’t a lack of resources—it’s a bureaucracy that today extends far beyond its original purpose of protecting the environment, which now smothers our ability to build and create. Today, it can take seven to 10 years just to get a permit for a new mine in the U.S., far longer than in comparable nations like Australia or Canada, where it takes an average of roughly two years. This regulatory gridlock is a gift to our adversaries and is rooted in an outdated, anti-development mindset and legal framework from the 1960s and 1970s. That mindset views America’s natural environment as invariably pockmarked by pollution, when in fact, our lands, waters, and skies are much cleaner today than they were when laws such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were enacted.
We must shake this mindset and reconceive America as a nation of builders. Then, we should take meaningful, urgent steps to rebuild our industrial workforce, enact comprehensive permitting reform, and cut our dependency on CCP-controlled supply chains.
To their credit, our elected leaders have already taken a meaningful step to cut our dependence on China. In a long called for move, President Trump and Congress ended bloated federal subsidies (which largely went to high-income Americans) for mineral-hungry electric vehicles through the Working Families Tax Cut. Congress also expanded “foreign entity of concern”
restrictions across additional “green” energy credits in the tax cut, tightening guardrails intended to keep China-linked influence out of taxpayer-supported supply chains. Now, Congress must pass comprehensive permitting reform that treats mining and refining as the national security priorities they are. We need clear, efficient, and predictable timelines, paired with a fair judicial process that would allow American companies to compete on a level playing field.
Finally, we must rebuild our workforce by investing in the American worker. Nearly half of our skilled mining professionals are expected to retire within the decade, yet our universities are graduating a fraction of the engineers and geologists needed to replace them. We need a national effort to invest in vocational training and university programs that will create the next generation of American miners and innovators.
The choice before us is clear, and America has already taken a promising step in the right direction by electing leaders who want to build again. It’s time to unleash American workers and entrepreneurs who will restore the foundation of our strength—our industrial capacity. A future where China holds the keys to our security and economy does not have to be our reality.
Let’s make sure it isn’t.
Ted Ellis serves as director for the Power America campaign and deputy director for energy and environment at the America First Policy Institute.