Key Takeaways
Stockpiling is the only fast path to resilience.
Every other policy tool examined takes years to significantly strengthen the U.S. critical mineral supply chain. Stockpiling can deliver results within months, depending on design.
Most policies undercut investment in substitutes.
Policies that boost domestic production tend to lower prices, which reduces the economic incentive to develop alternative materials or technologies that could reduce U.S. dependence in the long term.
Policy design and implementation both matter.
Uncertainty, lack of transparency, and slow timelines make otherwise sound policy tools less effective. Industry representatives cited these process failures as major deterrents to investment.
Needs differ sharply across the value chain.
For example, miners need permitting certainty before capital support, but smelters and refiners need multiple forms of stacked support to overcome structurally thin margins.
Recommendations
For federal interagency bodies coordinating the critical mineral policy effort:
- Make all critical mineral programs competitive and open to qualified applicants, using objective and transparent eligibility criteria.
- Improve the accessibility and transparency of capital support programs.
- Stop making equity investments in critical mineral producers; low-cost debt achieves similar goals without the governance complications and ownership dilution.
- Extend production tax credits indefinitely; their value depends on durability, and industry will not plan around credits that may disappear before projects reach production.
- Streamline permitting pathways and reduce litigation risk.
- Limit import tariffs to materials with at least some existing domestic production capacity to avoid raising costs for downstream manufacturers.
- Include producer countries in plurilateral trade agreements to secure affordable feedstock access for U.S. refiners until domestic mining capacity expands.
- Match policy tools to the specific market segment and commodity.
– Tom LaTourrette, Omar Aboulezz, Scott Behmer, Tom Blaubach, Published courtesy of RAND.