During remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) spoke about control over critical mineral supply chains.
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00:00Mr. President, I want to start my remarks today by thanking President Trump,
00:06Secretary Rollins, Secretary Rubio, and Deputy Secretary of State Landau
00:11for their efforts in securing a new agreement with the country of Mexico
00:16to send much-needed water to South Texas.
00:20Now, this has been a long-standing problem.
00:23I remember years ago being in Mexico City when I was Attorney General of Texas
00:28talking about getting the Mexican government to live up to their responsibilities under this treaty,
00:35which requires them to deliver water to the United States on a regular basis.
00:42But their habit has been to delay the delivery of that water
00:46until the end of the five-year period of the treaty.
00:51And obviously, in the interim, Mexican farmers have the water they need
00:57to grow the crops they need to grow and leave Texas agriculture high and dry.
01:04But it's important that we get this water flowing again
01:09because Mexico has repeatedly refused to comply with the terms of the treaty in a timely manner.
01:17We worked with the Biden administration.
01:19I remember talking to Secretary Blinken and introducing legislation,
01:24talking to my colleagues across the aisle about coming up with some carrots and sticks
01:30that we might be able to use to get Mexico to live up to its responsibilities,
01:34but the Biden administration really wasn't particularly interested in solving the problem.
01:40I've been working here in the Congress, as have my colleagues both in the Senate and the House,
01:46particularly our Texas delegation in the House of Representatives,
01:50to get them to live up to their responsibilities.
01:55And I think we've come to realize that the current treaty, which was signed back in 1944,
02:01has become obsolete, that we need some interim measures and metrics to ensure that there are regular,
02:11annual water deliveries for Texas and our agricultural industry.
02:16But yesterday's announcement was an important step forward to doing just that.
02:22And again, I thank the President, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Deputy Secretary of State,
02:29and the Secretary of State for their efforts to secure this important and long overdue payment of water to South Texas.
02:39Mr. President, we were all back home in our states during these last two weeks,
02:46and one visit I made during this trip back home was to visit a Fort Worth site of a company called MP Materials,
02:55a facility that's aptly been nicknamed Independence.
03:00This impressive plant is the nation's first fully integrated rare earth metal alloy and magnet manufacturing facility.
03:11Not only is this the first of its kind in America,
03:14it's the largest producer of rare earth minerals in the Western Hemisphere.
03:19Their mine is in California, but they actually process them in Texas and turn them into magnets.
03:26And you may wonder, what's the big deal? Why are magnets so important?
03:30Well, if you think about it, magnets are involved in almost every type of electric motor,
03:36whether it's for commercial applications or national security applications.
03:41And in particular, MP Materials produces these magnets for general motors as well as essential components for various vehicles,
03:53drones, robotics, electronics, aerospace, and defense systems.
03:58Now, when we talk about critical minerals, there's a lot of confusion because it sounds pretty technical,
04:04but it has real-world impact on everyday Americans, on our economy and on our national security.
04:13From our iPhones to the cars we drive, even our washing machines,
04:18without these magnets that these minerals produce, society would come to a screeching halt,
04:25as dependent as we are on electricity and everything driven by electricity.
04:30Naturally, the work of this company, MP Materials, has implications not only for the Texas economy,
04:37but for our entire nation's national security.
04:42It reminds me a little bit of the epiphany we had post-COVID that we were almost completely dependent on Asia for advanced semiconductors.
04:55And the fact that America that had once held a leading role in manufacturing these advanced semiconductors that basically run everything with an off-and-on switch,
05:06that we'd become almost entirely dependent on Taiwan and South Korea to produce these advanced semiconductors.
05:14Again, COVID woke up a lot of us with regard to the vulnerability of our supply chains, and certainly advanced semiconductors was one of those.
05:25The rare earth mineral processing is another.
05:32The ability to produce critical minerals and process them here at home is a critical step to safeguarding our supply chains from the Chinese Communist Party.
05:42There are risks from relying substantially on our greatest strategic adversary, China, for the production and manufacturing of these resources.
05:51America used to have dominance in this area, but not unlike semiconductors and quantum computing.
05:58In fact, we were, at one point, the largest producer of rare earth elements in the world, from the 1960s until about 1985.
06:09That was when China entered the picture and began ramping up their rare earth mining and processing capabilities.
06:18As a result of a 40-year strategy that included both domestic investment and trade barriers,
06:24China has usurped our place as the global leader in producing rare earth elements.
06:32But they didn't stop with domestic manufacturing.
06:36China has also been aggressively buying up critical mineral facilities in countries around the world in order to increase their dominance in the market.
06:46By 2010, they'd become the source of 85 percent of the global rare earth element supply and the source of 95 percent of the processed rare earth elements.
06:59This is a storyline that's become all too familiar regarding a plethora of American industries that have been offshore to China and done nothing to make us safer and more prosperous.
07:14In fact, the opposite is true.
07:17It's made us less safe and threatened our economy as well as our national security.
07:22At this time, China is involved in what some might call old-fashioned mercantilism when it comes to these critical minerals.
07:31They will do anything to preserve their near monopoly on processing these rare earth minerals that are vital to everything in modern life.
07:42By tour of the MP Materials factory, I learned that basically China will give away their product rather than have to compete on a level playing field,
07:57mainly to undermine any effort for us to establish an alternative processing operation here in the United States.
08:06But the good news is that this rather grim picture does not have to be where the story ends.
08:13The Trump administration has made securing our supply chains for critical minerals a top priority,
08:19and I'm one of their strongest partners in this effort.
08:23American companies with Texas presences like MP Materials have been a critical part of that strategy,
08:30and it is a step in establishing a stable and secure alternative to China to supply these minerals to industries and manufacturers across our nation.
08:43In fact, MP Materials has recently halted exports of rare earth concentrate to China and accelerated their production in the United States.
08:53But here's where I think most people miss the real story.
08:58Yes, there's been a lot written about critical minerals, including rare earth elements,
09:04but the focus is not so much on mining these essential elements or materials,
09:11it's actual processing them that's turning them into functional units.
09:16And China does about 90% of that in the world.
09:21So I'm grateful to the President for recognizing the importance of this issue.
09:27Last week, he signed an executive order on unleashing America's offshore critical minerals and resources,
09:34which directs the Secretary of Commerce to expedite the reviewing and permitting processes to mine in deep sea beds.
09:43In addition, the order directs the Interior Secretary and the Energy Secretary to work together to identify new partnership opportunities
09:52with the private sector and allied nations to continue developing these critical mineral capabilities.
09:59This executive order will dovetail with legislative efforts that we're working on here in the Senate.
10:06I've introduced legislation that would address this issue called, unsurprisingly, the Critical Minerals Security Act.
10:13This legislation would require the administration and subsequent administrations to create a process to assist U.S. companies wishing to divest from critical mineral operations in a foreign country,
10:29to identify a purchaser who is not an adversary.
10:34With China as eager as ever to buy up all the critical mineral operations in neighboring countries,
10:40if an American investor is looking to sell their interests in critical minerals,
10:45my legislation would help them avoid selling their assets to a foreign adversary, particularly to China.
10:53This legislation also directs the Secretary of the Interior to create a strategy to collaborate with our allies and partners
11:00to advance mining refining, separation, and processing technologies, as well as sharing our intellectual property.
11:09We know there's one thing that China hates to do. It's to play by the rules. They refuse to do so.
11:16They are absolutely ruthless in stealing American ideas and technology whenever they can.
11:23This legislation will help direct our allies and partners to get ahead of them by working together to share resources
11:30and intellectual property to develop and process these critical minerals.
11:35It's no secret, Mr. President, that China poses the greatest strategic threat to the United States and, indeed, to world peace.
11:45They're working in concert with other adversaries of the United States today to try to undermine the West, including the United States.
11:54It's imperative for the United States to ensure that our supply chains for rare-earth minerals are secure.
12:02From iPhones that allow us to send and receive emails and text messages, to cars that we drive to work or taking our children to school,
12:11even the drones that now increasingly deliver our snail mail, rare-earth minerals are critical to modern life.
12:20Again, very analogous to what advanced semiconductors were proved to be in recent years.
12:29President Trump has brought this issue to the forefront of our national conversation, and I'm eager to take up that conversation
12:38and to work with my colleagues here on both sides of the Capitol, on both sides of the aisle, to deal with this critical vulnerability.
12:46And I look forward to working with him and all of our colleagues to help make America great again by ensuring that America once again leads the world
12:56in not just the mining, but the refining and processing of these critical minerals.
13:02Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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