Oversight Hearing titled “Unleashing America’s Mineral Potential

The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the subcommittee at any time. The subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on unleashing America's mineral potential, the critical mineral commodity supply chain. Under Committee 4(f), any oral opening statements at the hearing are limited to the chairman and the ranking member. I therefore ask unanimous consent that all other members' statements be made part of the hearing record if they are submitted in accordance with Committee Rule 3.0. Without objection, so ordered. I ask unanimous consent that the following members be allowed to sit and participate in today's hearing: the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Wittman; the gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Hageman; the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Stauber; the gentleman from Montana, Mr. Downing; the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Joyce; the gentleman from Utah, Mr. Owens; the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Crane; the gentlewoman from California, Mrs. Kim; the gentlewoman from Arizona, Ms. Grijalva; the gentlewoman from Washington, Ms. Randall; and the gentlewoman from New Mexico, Ms. Stansbury. Without objection, so ordered. I now recognize myself for my opening statement. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to thank all our witnesses for being here today. And the value of our nation's critical mineral supply chains from mapping to manufacturing continues to increase daily, and I truly believe we cannot emphasize this enough. In fact, the very security of our nation relies heavily on a steady input of these critical and valuable minerals. Copper, which was just added to the critical minerals list this year, makes the wiring which is used in nearly all electronic devices like the phones we all rely on for our communications. Rare earth elements like niobium and other essential compounds of magnets used in the fins for the precision-guided missiles and high-performance aircraft motors powering America's F-35 stealth fighter jets. Lithium, cobalt, manganese are fundamental to rechargeable batteries that energize our drones, radios, vehicles, and radar systems. Advanced semiconductors, critical to communications hardware and radar, infrared, and thermal imaging systems could not exist without gallium. Even our military's core munitions rely on minerals like antimony, not ant-imony, but antimony. Bismuth and arsenic to function. These are just a few of the countless examples of critical minerals enabling America's national defense. And though the strength of our nation's military hinges on critical minerals, poor policy decisions over the last few decades have left us vulnerable to the supply chain manipulations as our adversaries like China have sped past the U.S. in terms of mining and processing capacity. The U.S. is largely dependent on foreign nations to meet our critical mineral needs. We import half of our supply of 20 of the 60 minerals the USGS deemed critical on last year's critical mineral list, and we are entirely reliant on the importation of 13 of these 60. China, on the other hand, exports a majority of the world's critical minerals and accounts for 85 percent of the world's mineral processing and refining. China produces 72 percent of the global refined cobalt, 98 percent of global gallium, 85 percent of the global refined rare earth elements. National security risk implications of being so reliant on an adversarial nation like China for the building blocks of our nation's defense cannot be overemphasized. And let us not forget that our discussion so far has focused on technologies essential to our military strength. America's critical mineral needs in civilian sectors are even more dramatic. This is why the Department of War's National Defense Stockpile is so essential and why President Trump's recently announced Project Vault is a step in the right direction for preparing the United States for emergency access to these essential production inputs. But despite this, we are still reliant on foreign nations to fill our strategic needs. China has used its mineral supply to manipulate the markets, attempting to box U.S. out from establishing and securing our domestic supply chain. That is why I introduced amendment number 141 to the fiscal year 2026 NDAA requiring the Secretary of War and Secretary of Interior to report on the supply of our rare earth minerals, materials, and elements extracted, processed, and refined from secure sources of supply to develop and produce advanced technologies of the Department of War. It passed the House, but unfortunately it was cut out of the conference language. To truly ensure national security, the United States needs to onshore as much mineral production and processing as possible and quickly. The risks to national security, defense readiness, and economic prosperity are too high. The first steps to doing this are by showing the mining industry that the U.S. is open for business. We need permitting certainty, we need federal investment, but we also need a faster and better way than anyone else in the world to get this done. Through executive orders like Executive Order 14154, Unleashing American's Energy, and Executive Order 14241, Immediate Measures to Increase America's Mineral Production, President Trump has utilized investment and development across the critical mineral supply chain to make America's mineral industry stronger and more resilient. Just like last week, we had a great success in my home state of Arizona. After years of frustrating delays, 31 to be exact, the Forest Service signed off on the record of decision for the Resolution Copper project and also released an errata to the final EIS, which will allow the project to move forward. But this project, which truly took decades in the making, is estimated to supply over one-quarter of America's copper needs once it is fully online, with the potential to produce up to 40 billion pounds of copper over 20 years, making Arizona once again the Copper State. This is just one of the examples of the ways we can build out America's mineral production here at home. By bolstering America's mineral security, we will ensure our national and economic security. I look forward to our conversations here today with our great witnesses about how we can work towards securing America's mineral future. Thank you, and I now recognize ranking member Dexter for her opening statement.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being with us here today. Welcome to the latest in a long line of hearings in this committee during which we discuss the economics and national interest in securing critical minerals. Economics is about incentives, and the incentives this administration has built into its critical minerals program are clear. If you want a piece of America's mineral future, the most important qualification is a relationship with the President of the United States. To understand how this program operates, we have to start with Executive Order 14241, signed in March of 2025. That order directed federal agencies to stop requiring companies to prove their projects are financially viable before receiving public funds. It waived competitive bidding requirements and eliminated independent technical disclosures meant to verify whether a mineral project can produce what it promises. With one executive order, the administration dismantled the essential safeguards designed to force an honest answer to a basic question of public finance: is this a good use of taxpayer money? The answer, it turns out, was inconvenient, so the administration stopped asking it. The consequences were immediate and predictable. Shortly after Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024, Don Jr. announced he would join as partner at 1789 Capital. Three months after he invested in Vulcan Elements through that firm, his father's administration committed $670 million in federal loans and equity to that same 30-employee startup, making this one of the largest loans the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital has ever made. The disclosures that would have required an independent assessment of that investment have already been waived. Making matters worse, no conflict of interest has been made public, and no recusal determination exists in the record. And this is not an isolated incident. When you remove the rules that require competitive procurement and independent verification, you create a system where connections matter more than merit and where taxpayers are left holding the risk. The pattern with MP Materials demands the same accounting. The Pentagon invested $400 million and bypassed competitive bidding entirely, meaning there was no independent review of whether this deal was worth what the taxpayers are paying for it. I wish I could say these cases of highly suspicious equity investments using taxpayer money are the exception, but they are not. And this is exactly why the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee exists. It is our job to follow the money, to examine these deals, and to determine whether taxpayer dollars are being used responsibly or whether they are being steered toward politically connected interests. We have established this industry as being of critical national interest. The President agrees. And when processes are expedited and rules are waived, it is our job on this committee to make sure that it is done for the American people, not for Donald Trump and his inner circle. The American people deserve to trust that Congress will prioritize their interests above that of the rich and well-connected, even when that person of interest is the President's son. I implore my Republican colleagues to put aside ideology and do what's right here today and truly ask these witnesses about these deals that have been embarked upon and certainly need to be proven to be in the taxpayer's best interest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.

Gentlewoman, Ms. Dexter, and now go to the full committee chair, Mr. Westerman, for his opening statement.

Well, thank you, Chairman Gosar, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today. Understanding the entire supply chain of critical minerals is critical to both our economic and national security. From mapping availability to manufacturing end-use products, the necessity of these minerals literally cannot be overstated, as they are present in everything from phones and laptops to our national defense systems. Mining contributes significantly to America's GDP. In 2025, the total value of non-fuel mineral production in the United States was $112 billion, which was an increase from $106 billion in 2024 for fiscal year 2025. That, those non-fuel mineral production products went into our GDP and provided over $4 trillion of value, or 13 percent of our GDP can be traced back to these non-fuel minerals. Mining is also a significant domestic employer. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics noted last year that approximately 1.82 million people were employed in non-fuel mining or related sectors in the United States. According to the National Mining Association, these jobs average weekly earnings of around $1,900, which exceeds the U.S. average by nearly $700. These wages go to support families and communities where these workers live. Direct and indirect tax payments attributable to mining totaled $41 billion last year. Despite the vital importance of mining and related industries to our economy, we face major supply chain risk. Last November, the United States Geological Survey updated and published their final 2025 critical minerals list, which listed 60 total critical minerals with nine new additions: boron, copper, lead, metallurgical coal, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver, and uranium. According to the USGS's Earth Mapping Resource Initiative, the U.S. has reserves of almost every mineral listed on the critical minerals list. We have bountiful stores of hardrock minerals across our great nation. But not all of them are in hard rock. For example, in the Smackover Formation, which spans the Southern United States, including my district in Arkansas, it hosts some of America's best lithium reserves. According to the USGS survey, the mineral-rich brine deposits in Southwest Arkansas alone could hold up to 19 million metric tons of lithium. Arkansas is also the nation's leading producer of bromine and has world-class deposits of vanadium and quartz crystals, resources that are critical to everything from pharmaceuticals to semiconductors. Yet the United States' mineral production and processing capabilities significantly trail those of our adversaries due to decades of poor permitting policies and legislative restrictions. It is estimated that U.S.-based mining projects lose over one-third of their value due to permitting-related delays. Moreover, NEPA is the most frequently litigated environmental statute. Lawsuits contesting an EIS average 4.2 years. To combat these issues, in this committee, we championed the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, or the SPEED Act, which passed the House with a bipartisan vote in December of last year. Ultimately, this legislation would restore NEPA to its original purpose. The SPEED Act is a project-neutral act, and it will add certainty to permitting processes across sectors, including mining. The SPEED Act will ultimately modernize and streamline NEPA's processes, allowing decisions along the critical mineral supply chain to be made faster and with more certainty. This committee has repeatedly emphasized the importance of these minerals and of securing American mineral supply chains. The Mineral Commodity Summary makes our vulnerabilities clear, mineral by mineral. Our reliance on China for critical minerals is dangerous and indisputable. China currently controls approximately 60 percent of global critical mineral production, 90 percent of processing, and 75 percent of manufacturing. As a nation, we cannot allow ourselves to be held hostage to China's geopolitical ambitions. These minerals are essential to America's national security, to our economy, to our energy infrastructure, and nearly every other aspect of our daily lives. We must act to secure domestic supply chains of these vital minerals. Again, I thank the witnesses for being here, for your time and your expertise today. And Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Thank you, Chairman Westerman. I now recognize ranking member for the full committee, Mr. Jared Huffman, for his five minutes opening statement.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So we're here in this subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation. That is the title of this subcommittee, and the mandate is to follow the money and to ensure that the executive branch is working for the American people, not just the president's well-connected pals. But when you look at the majority's agenda today, you would never know that we are facing a culture of corruption that is poisoning the very supply chains that we say we value. We know we need to build them up in order to compete with China. The majority wants to talk about unleashing potential. That's a fine phrase. It sounds good. But they're refusing to talk about the blatant self-dealing that is being unleashed by this administration, which undermines our competitiveness and makes a mockery of this statement about unleashing our potential. The evidence shows a clear and consistent pattern here. Billions of taxpayer dollars are being steered to companies with direct ties to the president's political inner circle with minimum transparency, if any, no competitive bidding, and no meaningful congressional oversight. Absolute crickets from the Republican majority in Congress in the face of some of the worst executive branch corruption we have seen in the history of this nation. I want to give you an example. Vulcan Elements, the ranking member talked about this. This is a startup founded in 2023 with no commercial production record. Just one month before receiving a $620 million Pentagon loan, the company was producing just 10 metric tons of rare earth magnets a year. And the administration is now funding a thousand-fold scale-up for a two-year-old company that happens to count a very significant partner in its executive leadership, and that is, of course, Donald Trump Jr. And J.D. Vance has allies that are primary investors in this company. No public analysis, no competitive process, just a huge pile of taxpayer dollars out the door. Now let's be clear. Public corruption is bad for business. When contracts are awarded based on political relationships rather than merit, more competitive, efficient companies are crowded out, innovation stalls, and the deals that do get made tend to collapse under the weight of litigation, controversy, community opposition, operational failures. We cannot unleash our potential in this space by turning our nation's mineral policy into a windfall for the president's family and friends while sticking American taxpayers with the bill. Now fortunately, there's a better model, and we already built it. Through the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, the previous administration built a supply chain strategy that was transparent, that was competitive, that was designed to last and to have integrity. It required technical verification, preserved competitive procurement, kept congressional oversight intact. That's what serious industrial policy looks like. Now the Trump administration's corrupt crony capitalism is simply gambling Americans' hard-earned tax dollars on short-sighted Wall Street equity deals to benefit his pals. Mr. Chairman, let's finally do some real oversight as this subcommittee was intended to do. I yield back.

I thank the ranking member. I now am going to introduce our witnesses. First, we have Dr. Simon Jowitt, Director of Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, Nevada State Geologist, and the Arthur Brant Chair in Exploration Geology at the University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada. Dr. Gracelin Baskaran, Director, CSIS Critical Minerals Security Program, Washington, D.C. Ms. Faith Williams, Director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program, Project On Government Oversight, Washington, D.C. And Ms. Abigail Hunter, Executive Director, Ambassador Alfred Hoffman Jr. Center for Critical Mineral Strategy at SAFE, Washington, D.C. Just to remind the witnesses that you have five minutes to give your remarks. They will be fully printed in the in our minutes. And that you'll see our lights. When they're green, you're ready to go. When you see yellow, that gives you about a minute to wind down. And if they're red, you need to stop, okay? But your full testimony will be printed in the in the highlights. I now will recognize Dr. Jowitt for his five minutes.

Thank you. And thank you, Chairman Gosar. Thank you, Ranking Member Dexter. And thank you, members of the subcommittee, for this opportunity today. I am Simon Jowitt. I'm the Nevada State Geologist, the Director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, and the, as mentioned, the Arthur Brant Chair in Exploration Geology at the University of Nevada, Reno. And I'm here to testify on how we can work to unleash America's mineral potential. I mean, the especially critical minerals, but the fact is the U.S. has a huge amount of unrealized mineral potential in a huge number of different areas, and I'll go into that in a little detail shortly. But I would want to recognize how important the minerals industry is to the U.S. already. It has been mentioned, but certainly I have to mention it as the state geologist of Nevada. We are the number one non-fuel producer in the country. We produced $12.6 billion in metals and minerals last year, and we were recently ranked number one, the number one global jurisdiction for mineral exploration and mining by the Fraser Institute in their annual survey. So we are doing pretty well, but I think Nevada and the rest of the U.S. is essentially what you may say, to bring to come to my first point, is underexplored. I think the fact is we already have a fairly vibrant minerals industry, but there's so much more we could do, starting at the foundation of any supply chain, which is mineral exploration. Mineral exploration is active across the entirety of the country, but the fact is, if you speak to industry, especially industry who are aware of activities in other countries, there's a lack of publicly available pre-competitive or publicly available geoscientific data that enables companies to come in, identify priority targets, de-risk exploration, and actually move on to find new deposits which form the foundation of these supply chains that we're talking about today. The USGS's Earth MRI initiative, Earth MRI program, is actually working to to stimulate and to generate exploration, but there's much more we could do and we should do in order to ensure that companies have the data to go out there and find the mineral deposits we need to form these supply chains that we're all talking about. The the investment in this area is significant in terms of its return on investment. If you look at the geological mapping that's already been undertaken in the U.S. over the past 20 years, for every dollar you spend on that, you get $14 to $70 back in terms of support for the economy, support for engineering studies and so on. But if you look specifically at the minerals industry and you look at countries like Australia where they've made significant investments in this area, an Australian study from a couple of years ago where they spent $151 million on pre-competitive, freely available geoscientific data, the government invested $151 million back. That data alone generated $71 million and 400 jobs. Exploration expenditure directly linked to that data generated $5.5 billion of investments and 25,000 jobs. And importantly, even more money was generated and 55,000 jobs were derived from the extraction related to that sort of data. So if you're talking about any sort of supply chain development, programs like Earth MRI or expansion of these programs even has significant return on investment, and it's vital if we actually want to have that foundation of new mineral deposits coming on stream. There's also no point in just having mineral deposits without having an entirety of a supply chain. We need more mineral processing, refining, and so on so we can feed industries that support economic and national security. I often use the analogy of Starbucks. So if you basically if you grow coffee in a country, you can make a significant amount of money from that coffee. If you then grind that coffee, the value goes up, the jobs goes up. If you turn that coffee into a nice packet of coffee that you can sell at a supermarket, the same applies. And then if you put it in a cup of Starbucks, everybody in that country can have a cup of Starbucks and you actually get a significant amount of of value out of selling that material. But only if all of that happens in the same country. If you have bits of supply chain as already been noted elsewhere, then you lack that security for any metal you can think of, or for even coffee if you're talking about Starbucks in the case in my analogy. The final point I'd like to make is that it's great having mineral deposits, it's great having mineral processing, refining, smelting. It's great having all of those, but there's no point having them unless we have the people to actually do the work we need. The workforce side of things is challenging right now. We need more geologists, more mining engineers, more mineral processing people to actually ensure that we can unleash America's mineral potential by having the people in place to do that. There's much more I could say. I've written a whole load in my written testimony. But the final thing I'd like to say is that America has huge but unrealized potential and it's we all need to work together to actually take the steps to realize that potential and to continue this conversation, not just in this room but afterwards. So I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to testify today. And I would like to emphasize that if anybody in this room has questions after this hearing or even outside of this room, please contact me. As state geologist, it's my job to tell you to provide information in an impartial manner.

Thank you, Dr. Jowitt. Now we'll go to Dr. Baskaran for her five minutes.

Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Dexter, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Gracelin Baskaran. I'm a mining economist and the founding director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at CSIS. I have spent 13 years working on critical minerals globally. The question before this subcommittee today is not whether China has weaponized minerals because that has been settled and the evidence is now extensive. The question is what the United States does about it. Specifically, how do we build a fully functioning, economically viable market for critical minerals outside of China with sufficient speed and scale to protect American manufacturing, defense production, and long-term economic competitiveness? I want to make three arguments today. First, America's vulnerability is not inevitable, it was a result of choices. For the last 100 years, America has repeatedly used industrial policy and it has the tools, the authority, and the precedent to act decisively on mineral supply chains. We financed nickel mines in Latin America when private markets didn't function. We established price floors for uranium in the 1940s that actually became the bedrock to America becoming a nuclear energy power. We traded surplus dairy products to Jamaica to get bauxite back in the 1960s. We have done bold and creative things when the political will existed. And I think it's incredibly important to look at the issue of some of the transactions in a more granular manner because the reality is for some of the deals like MP Materials and Lithium Americas, they have received bipartisan support. They received support from the Biden administration and they received support from the Trump administration, which shows that we can't make a one-size-fits-all approach here. But what we've also done over history, if you look at industrial policy repeatedly, is dismantle those mechanisms when the crisis passed. And we paid the price the next time. Between 1990 and 2024, the inflation-adjusted value of our national defense stockpile dropped from $25 billion to $900 million because we got a little bit too comfortable after the Cold War. The second thing I want to point out is that supply-side intervention alone will not solve this. Permitting reform is incredibly important. But a mine that doesn't have a buyer at a viable price will not stay open regardless of how quickly it receives its permit. We need a more systematic approach, integrating the full supply chain from mine to manufactured good. The CHIPS Act, an incredibly important piece of legislation, is a clearest example of what happens when we don't take a systems approach. Despite allocating $280 billion to semiconductor manufacturing, there wasn't a dollar allocated to securing the minerals we need to manufacture those semiconductors. Within a year, China imposed restrictions on gallium and germanium, and the USGS has estimated that a 30 percent gallium disruption could set us back $602 billion in economic output. We funded the factory; we forgot the feedstock. And the human cost is real. I'm originally from Metro Detroit, and in May 2025, we saw that Ford actually stopped manufacturing the explorer model owing to the rare earth export restrictions. The reality is that the 15 major automakers operating in the U.S. employ 388,000 Americans. Every one of them exposed to these supply chain disruptions, reinforcing that a mine without a refinery is a stranded asset and a refinery without a manufacturer is a stranded asset. We have to take the whole supply chain. And third, we need resilient—we need to build resilient markets, but these take time. China can impose restrictions in days. Project Vault, the new strategic minerals reserve announced in February, is a serious and well-designed mechanism to close that gap. But it was created by executive action and it needs statutory foundation. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has survived 50 years and 12 presidents precisely because it was created with a statute. Project Vault deserves the same protection. So let me close quickly with three recommendations. First, we need to pool allied demand. The United States is a consumer of these minerals. We consume between one and five percent of the world's rare earths, nickel, cobalt, gallium. We need to work with our allies: Australia, EU, Japan, South Korea, UK, India. We can create a market of 2.6 billion consumers, and we have frameworks, the Forge framework, for example, once the Mineral Security Partnership, to do that. Second, we need to create an industry-agnostic sourcing mechanism. The Inflation Reduction Act was a really strong foundation, but it only was eligible for clean energy technologies. At the end of the day, whether you are a semiconductor company securing gallium, whether you are a defense company securing tungsten, whether you are an automaker getting rare earths, you should be eligible for the same incentives because we need to pool that demand. China's export controls don't discriminate by end use; our policy measures shouldn't either. And finally, we need to give Project Vault statutory authorization. Executive action is not a sufficient foundation for economic security. Congress should codify it just as it did the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975, because it offers a real avenue to our economic security at a time when minerals weaponization threatens that. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you, Dr. Baskaran. Now I'm going to introduce Ms. Williams, and you're acknowledged for five minutes.

Good afternoon, Chairman Gosar, Chairman Westerman, Ranking Member Huffman, Ranking Member Dexter, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me today to testify. My name is Faith Williams, and I'm the director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the Project On Government Oversight. POGO is a nonpartisan, independent watchdog that investigates, exposes, and champions reforms on systemic corruption, abuse of power, and waste. For decades, POGO has investigated oversight into the oil, gas, and mining industries, exposing corruption and ethics violations. Danielle Brian, our president and executive director, served as the civil society co-chair on the Federal Advisory Committee tasked with implementing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in the United States. Securing the nation's access to critical minerals has been a priority for recent administrations of both political parties. And President Donald Trump has recently expanded the scope of the government's involvement in this industry by investing federal funds directly into companies that mine critical minerals. Absent sufficient ethics, transparency, and oversight measures, however, POGO is concerned about the implications raised by this shift. We believe that additional guardrails must be implemented to ensure those equity stakes don't raise costs to taxpayers, increase the likelihood of corruption, or harm competitive industry markets. First, when it comes to critical minerals, taxpayers already get an unfair deal. Under the 1872 General Mining Law, taxpayers receive no royalties from the extraction of hardrock minerals on publicly owned lands. Second, an executive order from March 2025 largely shielded critical mineral deals from congressional scrutiny. It also ordered federal agencies, to the extent permitted by law, to rescind policies that required applicants for loans, grants, or equity investments to disclose information to agencies about the economic viability of their mines. Third, several agencies involved in deals to secure critical minerals, including the Departments of Defense, Commerce, and Energy, and the U.S. Export-Import Bank, have seen their inspectors general fired. Equity deals raise a number of concerns. What measures are in place to prevent risky investments? Who monitors these investments? How will the government report on these equity stakes going forward? What is the exit strategy, if any, for these deals? Or, if these investments succeed, how will taxpayers realize monetary gains? Government investments necessarily create a myriad of ethics concerns, including questions of impartiality, the danger of government officials steering business to a company for their personal or private gain, potential disincentives to report fraud, waste, or abuse, and potential organizational conflicts of interest. Here's a recent example. In January, the Department of Commerce sent a letter of intent with USA Rare Earth that would give the government shares in the company in return for direct funding and loans. The deal required USA Rare Earth to secure private funding, and it hired the financial services firm Cantor to lead fundraising. But the chairman and executive vice chairman of Cantor are the sons of Commerce Secretary Lutnick. Before joining the administration, Secretary Lutnick himself was Cantor chairman and CEO, and when he resigned, he transferred his stake in the company to his children. It's certainly possible there is no corruption here, but the administration has not operated so transparently as to rule out a conflict or, at minimum, the appearance of one. It has not made clear how companies were selected for investment, for example. It has not specified what, if any, procedures are in place to prevent conflicts of interest when agencies issue permits, set regulations, or make contracting or procurement decisions involving companies in which the government has a stake. Corruption or the appearance thereof is bad for business. It can limit investment, increase costs, and undermine public trust. But the potential harms don't end there. Absent clear transparency and ethics regulations, it would be easy for officials to provide sweetheart deals and a competitive advantage to companies in which the government has a stake. The government favoring a single company as a national producer in a specific sector runs the risk of stifling competition and innovation. And agencies could interfere in corporate decision-making. There are strong arguments for protecting the United States' supply of critical minerals. But before the administration started buying up stakes in critical mineral mining companies with limited transparency, ethics guardrails, or oversight, it already had a multitude of tools to help secure these commodities via long-established and more transparent means, including the Defense Production Act and federal contracting procedures. If the administration wants to be more bold or creative, it should work to request authority from Congress to do so. In the meantime, we appreciate opportunities like this to raise our concerns. We urge Congress to engage in robust oversight over these deals. And we are glad to work with any member of Congress on both sides of the aisle on improving transparency and reducing waste, fraud, and abuse.

Thank you very much, Ms. Williams. I now recognize Ms. Hunter for her five minutes.

Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Dexter, Ranking Member Huffman, and Chairman Westerman, and all the members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. To truly unleash American mineral potential, we must think about mineral supply chains in their entirety. To complement my co-witnesses' testimonies, I will focus on the national security dimension of these supply chains and what they mean for the defense industrial base. Minerals become strategic advantages when transformed into aircraft, satellites, semiconductors, batteries, and advanced weapon systems. Strengthening that supply, from resource development to industrial capability, must be a central priority for U.S. economic and national security. Three structural realities should guide that effort. First, the defense industrial base depends on mineral supply chains that are sustained by commercial demand. Second, as the United States moves to expand domestic mineral production, scaling supply chains takes time. Third, China's influence over mineral supply chains shapes how global markets operate today. It does not matter whether we're talking about a relatively small and concentrated market like that of rare earth elements, which are essential for communications, sensors, computing, and military systems, or a large diversified market like copper that underpins everything from power systems to munitions and military wiring, or even an emerging market like lithium that's used in batteries to support drones and backup energy across defense systems. These materials are all unique and critical to national defense. But their demand alone for defense is often only a small driver of their market. At the end of the day, these markets rise or fall with commercial demand. That means policy must enable commercial scale investment and ensure manufacturers and global companies prioritize purchasing from domestic and secure sources. Because it does not matter how many mines or processing facilities we build if no one is qualifying and buying the material for the industrial base on which defense needs must scale in a crisis. Even if we get the demand side right, the second reality is that scaling mineral supply chains across extraction, processing, and manufacturing develops over decades. Not years, not months. Developing a new mine can take 10 to 15 years; some studies even find that it can be closer to 29 in the United States. Processing facilities require years of engineering, construction, and commissioning, and then materials need to go through rigorous qualification, testing, and certification to meet the performance and safety requirements before they can be used in advanced technologies like aircraft engines or fighter jets. This timeline, lengthy timeline, matters because the geopolitical risks are moving much faster. Recent conflicts have shown how quickly advanced weapons inventories can be depleted. But replenishing them is not just a matter of funding production lines. It depends on underlying material and processing capabilities that take years to build out. This means the U.S. cannot wait until a crisis to act; capacity must be built in advance. The timing challenge becomes more acute as these supply chains scale within markets that China has already shaped to their advantage. Over the past several decades, China has built dominant positions not just in mining, not just in manufacturing, but in processing, the true choke point of these supply chains. This allows China to influence global supply at will. Export controls on materials like gallium, germanium, and rare earth elements demonstrate how access can shift overnight. Yttrium is the most painful and somewhat recent example. It is used in thermal barrier coatings that allow turbine engines to operate at high temperatures required for modern aircraft, gas turbines, and missile systems. There is no practical substitute. When China restricted exports, U.S. imports dropped sharply, and manufacturers are facing shortages despite growing demand in both the defense and commercial sectors. This illustrates the broader challenge. Supply chains take years to build, but concentrations and control mean disruptions can happen instantly. Policy must therefore shift from reacting to disruptions to shaping the supply chains in advance. That means supporting commercial demand, reducing investment risk through tools like tax credits and financing, encouraging diversification through sourcing requirements and allied coordination. It also means permitting reform, not just to speed up projects but to provide clarity, predictability, and durability for long-term investment. Finally, allied collaboration is essential. The fastest way to reduce dependence on adversaries is to partner with friendly countries that already have mining and processing capacity while simultaneously building our own. Strengthening mineral supply chains for national security requires strengthening the broader industrial base that sustains them. Thank you, and I sincerely look forward to your questions.

I thank the gentlewoman, Ms. Hunter, for testifying. They've called votes, so we're going to defer the questions from the dais. So we're going to do one and then we'll take a recess and we'll be back at 3:30. So we'll start with the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Crane, for five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to waive on today. I want to say thank you to our panelists for attending. Copper has long been a backbone of America's economic strength, but today, it is also a pillar of national security. From advanced defense systems to electrical grids and next-generation technologies, the demand for reliable copper supplies continues to grow. With the recent approval of the land exchange for the Resolution Copper project in Arizona, the United States has an opportunity to strengthen domestic mining and build a more secure and resilient internal supply chain for one of the most critical materials in our country. It is truly a privilege to serve as the representative for some of the most consequential copper mines in the entire country, right in the heart of Arizona's Second Congressional District. This is a question for you, Ms. Hunter. Many Americans don't realize that the United States has vast mineral resources here at home, yet projects are often delayed for years or even decades due to the environmental litigation and activism. How do far-left environmental activists help mineral-rich adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran maintain mineral dominance and slow down our own mining projects that ultimately force the United States into greater reliance on foreign countries for critical minerals?

Thank you for the question, Congressman Crane. First, it is very important to recognize the committee's work to reform our permitting systems, which are absolutely necessary for unlocking the resources in your states and others across the country. The biggest recommendation I get from companies, investors, project proponents that work in this space when it comes to pragmatic permitting reform is to increase the clarity of process, objectivity of a process, ability to execute the process, and certainty of the process. So when people receive their permits, they can trust that they can move forward with the project. We also have higher standards in these countries that need to be adhered to and should be seen as a competitive advantage when developing the sector. Other jurisdictions maintain high standards and sometimes even higher standards, places like Australian states and Canadian provinces, and yet they can move much faster than the United States in ensuring permits are given and, again, respected. These are some of the recommendations we hear from the private sector that would be quite crucial for the committee to consider as they continue on their legislative process.

Thank you. My next question is for Dr. Baskaran. For anyone unaware, Arizona is called the Copper State. With that legacy in mind, how important is Arizona's mining sector to maintaining America's leadership in copper production?

Thank you so much for your question, Congressman. You know, Arizona's copper is going to be crucial. When you look at the future of the U.S. economy, it is so deeply linked to copper. When you think about the amount of energy we need to build out, the transmission lines, that's copper-intensive. When you look at the fact that copper is the second most used mineral by weight in defense technologies, you realize that the future of demand is really hinging on Arizona. We have had a structural shortage of copper and we are going towards a global cliff. It is really difficult now to uncover a tier-one deposit and get it online. So when you consider that, Arizona is crucial. But we also have to remember that we have a shortage of copper smelting capacity in the midstream. We are already a net copper exporter here in the United States. So if we are to get serious about building that mine-to-manufactured-good supply chain and mobilize as many of the benefits here at home, we're also going to have to think about innovative financing solutions for copper smelting, which isn't currently a profitable endeavor.

Thank you. Would you agree that Resolution Copper has the ability to produce about 25 percent of the nation's copper?

That's right. It'll meet 25 percent of our copper demand, which is going to be a game changer when we think about how much we're going to be building, especially for the sectors of the future like data centers and AI. However, again, we don't want to send that 25 percent of copper out of the United States. We need to start building smelting capacity here now.

Thank you. The conversation around critical minerals ultimately comes back to a simple question: whether the United States will produce the resources it needs here at home or continue to depend on foreign supply chains. From an America First perspective, why is it so important that the United States prioritize domestic mining for critical minerals like copper? And I'll let Dr. Jowitt, if you want to handle that. Jowitt, sorry.

Jowitt, yeah. So I think that, you know, any the development of domestic supply chains is vital for a number of reasons. Obviously, there's national economic security, but, you know, every supply chain you develop here for critical metals of any type, you're going to have added jobs, added employment, added tax revenue, added knowledge base on how to do everything along that supply chain. And I think, you know, it's beholden on us to think about these things and think about them as one of the other witnesses mentioned now, rather than before, you know, we need to think in advance and develop these things for those national and economic security reasons. It's it's crucial for a number of reasons that I, you know, I don't have time to go into here, but the bottom line is, if you can't grow it, you have to mine it, and it's far better mining it here, processing it here, refining it here, then feeding it into U.S. manufacturing here, rather than relying on people outside. I mean, friendly countries, friendly sources is one thing, but the fact is that at the moment China is dominating the market and that is not good for any sort of national or an economic security or any sort of supply chain security either.

Thank you, Doctor. I yield back.

We're out of our recess and we're back into to our action on the subcommittee. And the ranking member will now be acknowledged for his five minutes, Mr. Huffman for five minutes for his questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks everyone for your patience. Ms. Williams, I want to turn to you. In your written testimony, you made a point that before the Trump administration started buying equity stakes in mining companies, there was a well-established transparent tool available to secure critical minerals, multiple tools. They chose not to use them and instead, as you note, they pursued this direct ownership strategy in private companies without specifying how those companies were even selected, without putting clear conflict of interest procedures in place, and against a backdrop of having fired the inspectors general at every agency involved in these deals. So I want to ask you to expand on that point. In your professional opinion, what are the risks to American taxpayers when the federal government does things like this, when it stops being a neutral regulator and becomes a direct financial partner with companies that it is supposed to oversee? How as well does risk sharing between the government and private industry affect the likelihood of corruption and the integrity of competitive markets?

Thank you for that question. In order to make determinations about conflicts of interest, the appearance of conflicts of interest, possible corruption, we need transparency, and that's what's really lacking in many of these deals. To your point, when it buys an equity stake, the government simultaneously occupies multiple roles with respect to the same company. So it is a regulator, it's a customer, a shareholder, it's possibly also providing a grant or a contract or a loan. That's a lot of hats for one agency to wear with regard to the same company. And it creates risks for taxpayers and it also creates risks for the business, the business or businesses themselves. I will just say that we need more transparency in these with these deals at these times versus less.

Yeah. Thank you. I want to ask you about Trilogy Metals specifically. The administration recently finalized a $35.6 million federal investment in Trilogy Metals to support exploration in Alaska while simultaneously fast-tracking a $1.4 billion road project to the same site. Now records indicate that a senior White House economic advisor who held a significant equity position in the company saw the value of his shares increase by about $70 million before he ultimately divested. So from an ethics and oversight perspective, how do personal financial windfalls of this magnitude for sitting administration officials affect public confidence in the integrity of our federal industrial policy?

There's a... I'm sorry, I kept my mic on. Apologies. There's a reason why our current ecosystem of ethics laws that exist in a number of different spaces talk about not just conflicts of interest, but the appearance of conflicts of interest. It is really important that taxpayers have faith and trust that their government is spending their money wisely.

I want to also ask about Vulcan. Donald Trump Jr., name partner in 1789 Capital, in August of 2025, they took an equity stake in Vulcan. Three months later, the administration commits $620 million, the largest loan that the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital has ever made. And it went out without competitive bids, with the technical without the technical disclosures that are used to verify whether a project is even viable before public money goes in, that was waived. So Ms. Williams, should the American people be concerned that the president's son has a financial stake in a company that just received this huge windfall from the Pentagon?

Yes, I think there's cause for concern when any close family member or close political ally to whoever is the president appears to have benefited from a decision that the government makes. And I will also add that Altimeter Capital, whose CEO is a political ally of President Trump, led the funding round shortly before the deal in which 1789 Capital invested. And then a later fundraising deal was led by 1789 Capital. So there's a lot of overlapping, a lot of the same names that that seem to pop up here.

Thank you very much. I yield back.

I thank the ranking member and I now look to the gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Hageman.

Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Hunter, I'm going to go to you first. You have mentioned how quote, "the defense industrial base depends on commercial markets to justify large-scale investment in mining, refining, and advanced material production," end quote. In your written testimony, you also talk about the importance of policy tools that encourage the private sector to diversify from adversarial sourcing for critical minerals. As we know, American mineral and energy dominance is necessary to sustain our modern economy and national security, and that starts with mineral exploration and timely processing of permits and federal requirements to develop and explore mineral resources. I have appreciated the testimony that you have provided today talking about the importance of things such as the SPEED Act and being able to permit or permit things more quickly. Permitting and NEPA delays on even a small mineral exploration effort with minimal impact slows down projects by upwards of two years before the projects even get into full development. And these delays cost developers well before they start mining operations. My bill, H.R. 7458, the Domestic Ore Act, works to ensure regular requirements across agencies for mineral exploration, which would help us to speed up our domestic ore development and exploration. How would you, Ms. Hunter, suggest the U.S. government expand its commercial base for critical minerals and execute a deterrent strategy against China?

Thank you for the question, Congresswoman. I think both Ms. Baskaran and Dr. Baskaran and I have talked about a couple of different recommendations and in my written testimony, specifically we talk about sourcing provisions requirements around provenance of minerals for the defense industrial base, which you alluded to. These types of provisions are absolutely crucial because as we've heard many times in this hearing, unless you have manufacturers who are the backbone of this country purchasing the materials from the secure secure sources, the most secure of which is the United States, we're not going to be able to justify these very intensive upfront capital investments for exploration, mining, processing, refining, smelting. So making sure that you are lassoing the end user of these supply chains to these positively produced responsibly produced sources in the U.S. and allied jurisdictions is always a number one recommendation of mine. When it comes to getting investment into these projects, money obviously always flows to the easiest path. And so making sure that the permitting reforms are done in a pragmatic way that provide that certainty, you will see increased capital intensity towards the projects, again, the responsible projects that we would like to see produced.

Well, I sure hope that the folks in the Senate are watching this hearing today and listening to your testimony in that regard. What are some of the other policy tools we can use here in Congress to accelerate mineral exploration and development?

The Earth MRI initiative, which received robust funding thanks to Congress, I think in 2021 with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, that we heard earlier in Simon's testimony is an incredibly and in many of the members' testimony, incredibly important program to make sure that we understand what's within our subsoil and also in our waste streams, our slag, our tailings. We're never going to be unleashed and able to unleash critical mineral resources at home if we don't know what we have. So making sure we continue to focus on programs like that so that we can understand our reserves that are economically, technically, and legally available is a really, really crucial first step. And there's been great progress, 10 percent of geospatial mapping from 2021 to 25 percent, I believe, in 2024 thanks to this program.

Okay. Dr. Baskaran, I would like to ask you a few questions. In your written testimony, you talked about aggregating critical mineral demand across the U.S. and its allies to compete with China. Can you talk more about how the new multilateral forum on resource geostrategeic engagement, or FORGE, could be used to formally coordinate such demand?

Thank you so much, Congresswoman. You know, right now we are not facing a geopolitical problem. We know what our geopolitical landscape is. We are facing an economic problem. Mineral prices are low, and so the investments are not flowing at scale. 2025 was really the year of mineral supply interventions. We talked about more minerals from more places. But if I increase supply without increasing demand, that continues a market disequilibrium where prices are low and we can't compete with China. So we do need to think of it how to increase demand. And there's really two avenues that you could see that. The first is thinking about almost like a buyers' club, right? In traditional capitalism, you buy from the cheapest source of minerals. Unfortunately, the cheapest source of minerals is often China. So you need to create an incentive to source within FORGE countries. And this is where things like tariff relief for our allies is really important. We are sitting on a surplus of copper here in the United States. Japan has over a million tons of excess copper smelting capacity whereby our copper could go there and then it could come back for manufacturing. So addressing the tariff and non-tariff barriers between FORGE is really crucial, number one. The second thing was aggregating different industries. Defense may be the most important industry, but it often uses less than a half a percent of these commodities. So ensuring that we are working with industries across from our automakers to our defense companies to our chips manufacturers is going to be crucial to, again, economies of scale. So we need to make sure we're addressing the trade barriers that exist within FORGE countries so that it's not just a form of handshake diplomacy, but that it actually can do something.

Well, and all of that sounds very good. I am out of time. I am hoping that you all have perhaps some ideas of legislation that we can be pursuing to do exactly what you're describing. With that, I yield back. Thank you.

I thank the gentlelady from Wyoming. The ranking member, the gentlelady from Oregon, Ms. Dexter, is recognized for five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ms. Williams, thank you for being here. The Department of Commerce committed over a billion dollars to USA Rare Earth before the company even completed its foundational feasibility study. To raise the private funding the deal required, USA Rare Earth hired Cantor Fitzgerald, a firm now run by Commerce Secretary Lutnick's own son. In other words, Secretary Lutnick approved federal investment in a company that was simultaneously paying his son's firm to raise money for that same deal. In your professional opinion, does a cabinet secretary who approves a federal investment in a company that then hires his son's firm to raise capital have a conflict of interest that should have disqualified him from that decision?

Thank you for the question. It certainly raises the appearance of a conflict of interest and points to a lack of transparency around the deal. We don't, I believe in this instance, that we don't know if there was a disclosure or not. And that's true for some other deals that I've heard discussed as well. Without even knowing the terms and specifics of the agreements, it's hard to even answer that next question, but it certainly creates an appearance.

And that appearance is something that I raised in my opening statement. So let's talk about Donald Trump Jr. He is a named partner at 1789 Capital. He told reporters he is personally involved in deciding where that firm invests. In August 2025, 1789 Capital took an equity stake in Vulcan Elements. Three months later, the administration committed $620 million to that same company, the largest Pentagon loan of its kind, with no competitive process and no independent verification. And no conflict of interest review anywhere to be found, similar to Lutnick's. Despite the silence from my Republican colleagues, Democrats are committed to conducting oversight. And last month, Ranking Member Huffman led committee Democrats in a letter demanding documents and briefings on the Vulcan deal. So far, the administration has failed to cooperate. Yet not long ago, House Republicans spent two years and millions of dollars investigating Hunter Biden on the theory that a president's son profiting from his father's office requires congressional investigation. Ms. Williams, given everything we've discussed, do you think this committee should investigate Donald Trump Jr. and the Vulcan deal?

POGO is concerned with all levels of conflicts of interest when it comes to family relationships and actions by the government, especially when those family members are in positions of power. We've long called for stronger ethics rules and more transparency. We would support investigating any and all conflicts of interest or potential conflicts of interest.

Thank you for that. And I agree. And we've run out of other options. We are done waiting for Republicans to fulfill their responsibility to conduct oversight. Donald Trump Jr. must be made to answer whether the president's son illegally profited from his father's presidency. Mr. Chairman, pursuant to clause 2(k)(6) of rule 11, I move the committee subpoena Donald Trump Jr., Acting Director of the DOD Office of Strategic Capital Patrick Witt, and Vulcan CEO Ronnie Pruitt to provide hearing testimony as soon as possible, but no later than April 22, 2026.

We're going to take a quick recess for just a minute, please.

Yes.

Oh, no. The committee will come to order. Seeing the evidence of a quorum, we will now return to the gentlelady's motion to subpoena in accordance with Rule 11, Clause 2(k)(6) of the Rules of the House of Representatives. I move to table this motion. The question is on the motion to table. All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Mr. Chairman, my parliamentary inquiry is what are you afraid of?

There can't be a question. We're not entertaining...

It's a parliamentary inquiry. What are you afraid of taking this extraordinary move to shut down debate and prevent a vote on this motion that is so squarely within the purpose of this committee?

The committee will come to order. All those in favor of tabling this motion say aye. Aye. Those opposed?

No.

The ayes have it.

I request a recorded vote.

A recorded vote has been requested. The clerk will now call the vote.

Mr. Gosar.

Aye.

Mr. Gosar votes aye. Ms. Dexter.

No.

Ms. Dexter votes no. Ms. Boebert.

Aye.

Ms. Boebert votes aye. Ms. Ansari.

No.

Ms. Ansari votes no. Mr. Collins.

Aye.

Mr. Collins votes aye. Mr. Hernandez. Mr. Hernandez. Mr. Amodei.

Yes.

Mr. Amodei votes yes. Have all members voted? Mr. Begich.

Aye.

Mr. Begich votes aye. Have all members voted? Does any member wish to change their vote? Hearing none, the clerk will close the vote and report the tally. Mr. Chairman, on this vote, the ayes are five and the nays are two.

The motion to table is agreed to. The motion to subpoena is dispensed with, and with that...

I move the subcommittee adjourn.

With that, the motion to adjourn is a privileged motion, is not debatable, and cannot be tabled. The question is on the motion to adjourn. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed say no.

No.

In the opinion of the chair, the motion to adjourn is agreed to.

Mr. Chairman, this is not going away. You can do these moves, but you cannot hide. You cannot dodge accountability.

The committee will come to order. A roll call vote has been requested. The clerk will now call the roll.

Mr. Gosar.

Aye.

Mr. Gosar votes aye. Ms. Dexter.

No.

Ms. Dexter votes no. Ms. Boebert.

Aye.

Ms. Boebert votes aye. Ms. Ansari.

No.

Ms. Ansari votes no. Mr. Collins.

Aye.

Mr. Collins votes aye. Mr. Hernandez. Mr. Hernandez. Mr. Amodei.

Aye.

Mr. Amodei votes aye. Mr. Begich.

Aye.

Mr. Begich votes aye. Have all members voted? Does any member wish to change their vote? Hearing none, the motion to adjourn is agreed to and we stand adjourned.