At Monday's House Rules Committee hearing, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) questioned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) about mining policy and EVs.
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00:00Chairwoman, my friend Mr. Westerman, just a couple quick questions.
00:06The ranking members talked about somehow this is good for, you know, individuals who are
00:13quote polluters.
00:14I know at least one of the bills we're talking about is important with respect to the Duluth
00:20complex, right?
00:23And that that would, it could constitute a sizable portion.
00:28I've got 88% down in my notes, but I know it's a very large percent of the cobalt reserves
00:33in the United States.
00:35Currently we're highly dependent on China for cobalt, correct?
00:42Very dependent on China for cobalt and many other minerals and rare earth elements.
00:49And is it not true that the Biden administration with its senseless job killing, hardworking
00:58American life-destroying tailpipe rule that will stack up more mandates on electric vehicle
01:08production to the tune of something like two-thirds of the production by 2030?
01:15That while meanwhile EVs are piling up on the lots of automobile dealerships across
01:21the country, that in light of that, that even if one were to say that we should be moving
01:27towards electric vehicles, which I think is a reasonable question to debate in and
01:31of itself, would it not be foolish to do that on the back of Chinese production and Chinese
01:37cobalt mining?
01:40I believe so.
01:41And I think you've done a great job of outlining what I would call Democrat utopia.
01:46We're going to have our cake and eat it too.
01:48We're going to get rid of fossil fuel.
01:50We're going to get rid of internal combustion engine vehicles.
01:55Everybody's going to drive an EV and we're not going to mine anything to create the components
02:01that go into that EV or to strengthening the grid or to building wind and solar and more
02:08distributed electrical systems.
02:11And it just doesn't work that way.
02:13It's a not-in-my-backyard mentality that is forcing our supply chains more and more to
02:18China, who has gone out and hoarded resources from around the world.
02:23Cobalt is one you mentioned that comes from the Congo, where they use child slave labor.
02:30They haul it back to China, where they refine it.
02:32And by the way, China built 50 gigawatts of coal-powered plants last year.
02:37That's one every five days.
02:39So they can process the minerals and manufacture the stuff to sell to us so that we can save
02:43the planet.
02:44It makes absolutely no sense.
02:49Representative Ocasio-Cortez, what do you say to that point?
02:52And we've got a significant amount of evidence that China owns the vast majority, if not
03:00all, 80 percent plus of the cobalt mine production coming out of Congo, et cetera.
03:07And we know, I think it's irrefuted, that there's child labor exploited to get those
03:14minerals.
03:16Those minerals are central, if not fully necessary, for the production of EVs, which even objectively
03:23we have to acknowledge are not fully able to power the ability of the American public
03:29to get to their jobs and their work and so forth.
03:31And yet we're mandating that we have two-thirds of the production be EVs by 2030.
03:36So if we follow those mandates by the Biden administration, that debate aside, right,
03:42debate for a different day.
03:44If you follow those mandates, you've got to have a massive, massive amount of battery
03:48production.
03:49And by all indication, the vast majority of that Congo production is controlled by China.
03:57A huge amount of that has child labor and other issues that we've talked about.
04:00You've got trafficked child slaves that are reported in the production of it.
04:05Why on earth would we want to limit the ability of Americans to go mine cobalt?
04:11Now I might say, well, that's kind of great because I actually still want the internal
04:15combustion engine.
04:16I actually think it's affordable, more affordable and better for the American worker who wants
04:19the plumber in San Marcos, Texas to be able to go to work and afford the car.
04:23But if you buy into the motion of having, you know, EVs that you can drive all over
04:27creation, even if you're from Texas and you had to do like I did, I appreciate the chairman
04:31pointing out in passing of my grandma, I had to drive six hours, like 300 miles to go see
04:35my grandma on Thursday before she passed away and three, you know, six hours back.
04:40I couldn't do that in EV.
04:42I wouldn't be able to make the round trip in time.
04:44But okay, assume we were able to ever produce batteries that last long enough, the charging
04:48stations, all the stuff.
04:51Why would we get rid of the American production of it?
04:55Thank you.
04:56There are several different components to your question.
04:58I want to make sure that I address them first and foremost on the issue of child exploitation,
05:03child labor.
05:04I think it is the role of the United States for us to push back forcefully on this production
05:09and not just in the production of energy, but across the board.
05:12We see this in textile production, energy production, cobalt mining, it is horrific.
05:17And we need to make sure that our sources do not include child labor.
05:23But to get to the core of the question too on the China front is that I find it interesting
05:29that there is this concern about Chinese ownership of minerals and it is legitimate.
05:37However, the response to that seems to be deregulation specifically for companies that
05:45are largely Chinese owned here in the United States.
05:48These companies are subsidiaries where the benefit of what we are deregulating here,
05:53and I'll give you a specific example, I would be remiss not to mention that the minerals
05:59produced specifically at the proposed twin metals mine that is implicated in this legislation
06:05would most likely be shipped to China for refining and smelting to be sold on the global market.
06:10These are not American owned companies that American mined minerals would be going to.
06:17And so if your concern is the Chinese predominance of ownership in the mining market, I would
06:24be very concerned about passing this legislation.
06:28So that I think on the China piece there.
06:30And lastly, on the meeting our targets and mining cobalt.
06:35I think it's a false choice to say that in order for us to mine cobalt, we either have
06:40to destroy some of the most sacred lands in the United States or rely on child labor.
06:46There's responsible mining in the United States that is available to us.
06:50But secondly, I also find it interesting that the majority presently pushes back against
06:57battery recycling, which would allow us to open the path to reducing our reliance on
07:03mining in general.
07:05There is enormous potential in recycling many of these EV batteries, but we have not made
07:11the investments or the shifts necessary in order to unlock that so that we can reduce
07:16our reliance on solely mining as the only source of battery.
07:20Thank you.
07:21Well, I appreciate that.
07:22I'm going to give my colleague a chance to respond, as I think he probably wishes to.
07:28I would only note that I'm happy to have a conversation about restricting Chinese ownership
07:34of any number of corporate activities in the United States or ownership of farmland or
07:38ownership of land near military bases or, frankly, ownership of meatpacking production,
07:44including mineral production and so forth.
07:46A significant reason why it would be mined here and shipped back is because they've got
07:49all the production facilities, because they've been building and mining these, because they've
07:52got the resources to do that.
07:54And here we've got the God-given benefit in America of being able to produce very clean
08:00burning, natural gas, very efficient ability to have automobiles that have an internal
08:05combustion engine, which are basically fractionally about 1.5 percent of the CO2 production when
08:09you compare it to what we're producing in China, as the gentleman noted, where they've
08:13got 1,100 coal-fired plants burning in China and we have 250, and they're building two
08:16a week and we're building none.
08:18And yet we're building no nuclear plants except for the Georgia plant that was finally
08:22put online 45 years after it was permitted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
08:27So I think if we're going to be serious about it, we can't say – I just don't accept
08:33the premise, the sort of general notion of, well, we've got to push back on the child
08:36labor.
08:37Well, I mean, we're going to use that child labor unless we find a supply right now, because
08:42the Biden administration has put their foot on the gas to say we must have EVs in 2030
08:48at the extent of two-thirds of our entire production line.
08:52So Toyota's not a Chinese-owned company, but Toyota has a massive production facility
08:59in San Antonio, tells me that they will largely have to put their entire assembly line starting
09:05next year into EVs pretty much only because they can't financially afford to do otherwise
09:09with these mandates on the tailpipe rule, which will be shutting down the internal combustion
09:14engine production of the Toyota vehicles.
09:17No Chinese ownership there, because that's where they are, which will then mandate the
09:20EVs driving up the price of those vehicles, and then they've got to go figure out how
09:24to get the batteries and get the production.
09:26I know the gentleman seemed like he wanted to jump in on that, and so I'd like to give
09:30him a chance to respond.
09:31I appreciate the opportunity to respond.
09:34So many things to talk about here, and I agree with the assertion that we don't have the
09:39refining and the smelting capacity in the U.S., but that's self-imposed.
09:44You go back to 1995, we produced three times the copper of China, and today they produce
09:5211 times more copper than us.
09:54They have 50 smelters, and we have two.
09:57That's another area of regulation that's forced business like that out of our country to China,
10:04and they're making the things that we need.
10:08They're exporting wealth to China to build these projects, and we have the resources
10:15that have made this country strong, and they're still here to make us strong in the future
10:19if we will just use them.
10:20Well, I appreciate the gentleman.
10:23I will, in the interest of time, yield back.
10:26I know there's other issues here.
10:27I would just push back on the general notion that these aren't important pieces of legislation
10:32in dealing with figuring out how we're going to protect our federal lands and the wildlife
10:39and the ability for hunters and anglers to use them and all that stuff are all part of
10:42this legislation, and we all share an interest in conservation in that respect.
10:47You know, look, Texas, we have very little federal ownership of the land, happily so,
10:52but where we have federal lands, we ought to try to manage it appropriately for good
10:56stewardship for multiple generations, including production in Amwar, which is a tiny, tiny
11:00fraction of the footprint of the entire state of Alaska, lots of studies about wildlife
11:05benefits and so forth, but we'll put that aside for a different day, and I'll yield
11:08back my time.
11:10Thank you, Mr. Roy.
11:11Ms. Scanlon?
11:13Thank you, Madam Chair.
11:15I am very concerned that these bills are a huge step back for our environment and our
11:20endangered species.
11:21They seem to be predicated on a false kind of a binary choice, and I don't think it's
11:28true that President Biden or Democrats or the American people have any interest in having
11:32a blanket prohibition on development, but we do want a system that fairly takes into
11:38account public safety, conservation, and the damage to our environment and our children's
11:43future, if we aren't taking those into consideration.
11:47So can you comment on that?
11:49Absolutely.
11:50Representative Scanlon, as you noted, particularly in the public land rule specifically, this
11:57shift in the rule is not even to put conservation and restoration above energy production, recreation,
12:06or any other considerations.
12:07It's simply to allow the consideration to be on equal footing, and I would emphatically
12:15push back on the notion that conservation is just simply cordoning off, that this rule
12:20is just about conservation and cordoning off several acres of land and saying there's nothing
12:25to be done here.
12:26But this is also about land restoration, and there are so many acres of land, federal lands,
12:32public land.
12:33This is land that belongs to the people of the United States of America, that has been
12:38dumped on, that has been allowed to be overridden with toxic waste, that people are getting
12:45sick from, that species are becoming endangered from, and to allow that to simply be in equal
12:52consideration as the federal government and the Bureau of Land Management doles out and
12:57makes decisions, oftentimes affirmatively about energy production, I think is eminently
13:02reasonable.
13:04I think that makes a lot of sense, that we're trying to balance some competing concerns,
13:08but that we really do need to take into account these conservation concerns, so I would yield
13:13back.
13:14Thank you.
13:15Thank you, Ms. Scanlon.
13:17Mr. Scott?
13:18Thank you, Madam Chair.
13:19I'll just be quick.
13:22I'm thankful for the legislation that supports hunters and fishermen.
13:28I think the more time a child spends...