[House Hearing, 119 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] SECURING AMERICA'S MINERAL FUTURE: UNLOCKING THE ECONOMIC VALUE BENEATH OUR FEET ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ HEARING HELD JUNE 24, 2025 __________ [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Small Business Committee Document Number 119-015 Available via the GPO Website: www.govinfo.gov __________ U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 60-853 WASHINGTON : 2025 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas, Chairman PETE STAUBER, Minnesota DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas JAKE ELLZEY, Texas MARK ALFORD, Missouri NICK LALOTA, New York BRAD FINSTAD, Minnesota TONY WIED, Wisconsin ROB BRESNAHAN, Pennsylvania BRIAN JACK, Georgia TROY DOWNING, Montana KIMBERLYN KING-HINDS, Northern Marina Islands DEREK SCHMIDT, Kansas JIMMY PATRONIS, Florida NYDIA VELAZQUEZ, New York, Ranking Member MORGAN MCGARVEY, Kentucky HILLARY SCHOLTEN, Michigan LAMONICA MCIVER, New Jersey GIL CISNEROS, California KELLY MORRISON, Minnesota GEORGE LATIMER, New York DEREK TRAN, California LATEEFAH SIMON, California JOHNNY OLSZEWSKI, Maryland HERB CONAWAY, New Jersey MAGGIE GOODLANDER, New Hampshire Lauren Holmes, Majority Staff Director Melissa Jung, Minority Staff Director C O N T E N T S OPENING STATEMENTS Page Hon. Roger Williams.............................................. 1 Hon. Hillary Scholten............................................ 2 WITNESSES Mr. Aaron T Dowd, Chief Executive Officer, Rare Earth Salts, Beatrice, NE................................................... 5 Mr. Harvey Kaye, Executive Director, U.S. Critical Materials..... 6 Mr. Ken Mushinski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rare Element Resources, Littleton, CO............................... 8 Dr. Laura Stoy, PhD., Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Rivalia Chemical, Lemont, IL................................... 9 APPENDIX Prepared Statements: Mr. Aaron T. Dowd, Chief Executive Officer, Rare Earth Salts, Beatrice, NE............................................... 35 Mr. Harvey Kaye, Executive Director, U.S. Critical Materials. 38 Mr. Ken Mushinski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rare Element Resources, Littleton, CO...................... 41 Dr. Laura Stoy, PhD., Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Rivalia Chemical, Lemont, IL............................... 47 Questions for the Record: None. Answers for the Record: None. Additional Material for the Record: Alliance for Mineral Security Letter......................... 51 Ecological Economics Letter.................................. 57 National Science Foundation (NSF) Letter..................... 66 Outdoor Alliance Letter...................................... 73 ReElement Technologies Letter................................ 77 Robert Anderson Letter....................................... 79 SECURING AMERICA'S MINERAL FUTURE: UNLOCKING THE ECONOMIC VALUE BENEATH OUR FEET ---------- TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2025 House of Representatives, Committee on Small Business, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:08 a.m., in Room 2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Roger Williams [chairman of the Committee] presiding. Present: Representatives Williams, Stauber, Meuser, Alford, Finstad, Bresnahan, Downing, Patronis, Scholten, McIver, Cisneros, Morrison, Tran, Simon, Olszewski, and Goodlander. Chairman WILLIAMS. Good morning, everyone. I now call the Committee on Small Business to order. And without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recess of the committee at any time. I recognize myself for my opening statement. Welcome to today's hearing entitled Securing America's Mineral Future: Unlocking the Economic Value Beneath Our Feet. Thank you to all our witnesses for joining us today. We appreciate you taking time away from your busy businesses to participate in today's conversation. So today, we will examine how to secure our mineral supply chains against hostile foreign adversaries such as the Chinese Communist Party and how America's small businesses, national security, and ability to create new, innovative technologies rely on these essential materials. Rare earth minerals and the broader category of critical minerals used in the manufacturing process of batteries, magnets, computers, and medical devices, to name a few, are vital to the functioning of the American economy. Unfortunately, far too long, burdensome regulations have made the production and refining of rare earth and critical minerals difficult in America, contributing to China's dominance in this market. Now, to combat the CCP's monopoly, President Trump issued several executive orders aimed at bolstering domestic mineral production and reducing our reliance on foreign adversaries. Currently, the Mountain Pass Mine in California is the only active mine in the United States that extracts rare earth minerals. As a result, approximately 80 percent of the critical minerals used in America are supplied from foreign sources. The lack of domestic production undermines our national security and hinders small business innovation. Thankfully, the Trump administration is working to unleash American energy production, safeguarding national security and allowing American small businesses to compete on a global stage. Small businesses are at the forefront of American innovation. The enhancement of the defense industry that provides our homeland relies on groundbreaking technology often developed by small businesses that need rare earth minerals to produce. I want to thank our witnesses again for their contributions to end U.S. reliance on foreign rare earth elements and critical minerals. We look forward to your testimony. With that, I will yield to the distinguished Ranking Member today from the great state of Michigan, Ms. Scholten, for her opening remarks. Ms. SCHOLTEN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our incredible witnesses and thank you for your patience. We had a very important caucus meeting this morning. It kept me tied up. I am so grateful, Mr. Chairman, that we are holding this hearing this morning. Critical minerals are pivotal to our nation's clean energy transition and national security. On this, we agree there is a lot of common ground. That is why I am so grateful that we are having this hearing. These minerals are an essential component of our smartphones, electric vehicles, and, importantly, military hardware. Yet the supply chains for these 50 materials often run offshore and through the influence of our adversaries, most notably China, as you mentioned. That is why federal policy should redirect our critical mineral supply chains through our shores and the shores of our allies, not our enemies. Every critical mineral is unique. Some, like aluminum, are relatively easy to extract and process into usable material. Others, like certain rare earth elements, are less concentrated in ore. Therefore, they require advanced, complex refinement methods that are developed by and accessible to only a handful of countries and companies. And crucially, some critical minerals just aren't deposited within U.S. territory, meaning they can't be mined here. The diversity of these materials, their properties, and extraction and refinement techniques means that the avenues to onshoring them must be equally diverse. It is a complex problem, and we need a complex solution to make these minerals accessible. In other words, Mr. Chairman, we can't only mine our way out of our critical mineral needs. The federal government must prioritize and maintain investments in recycling, waste recovery, friend shoring, and industrial policy if our nation is to reclaim control over our critical mineral supplies. In particular, I want to mention the invaluable boosts to domestic critical mineral sourcing, processing, and component manufacturing found in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, two landmark pieces of legislation signed under the previous administration. Democrats stand ready to defend and expand upon the massive long-term investments the federal government has already made in this space. We want to make it better. I would also be remiss if I didn't highlight the downsides of mining when not done properly. When a new mine is opened, America gains another source of minerals, yes, but it often loses unique pristine land that would have yielded far more economic activity and value through tourism, hunting, fishing, and other outdoor recreation business. In my family, we are avid outdoorsmen and women, year-round anglers. This matters deeply to us. Communities near mine often have to contend with new large competitors for wastewater resources and pollution of what remains with mining waste and byproducts. Sometimes, new mines even run roughshod over long-standing treaties and agreements with neighboring tribes. It is vital that we, as federal policymakers, consider the tradeoffs of expanding mining and the harm it can pose to nearby towns, tribes, and small businesses. It is also important to remember that hard rock mining in America is not governed by an outdated law from the 1870s. You heard me right. Not the 1970s, but the 1870s. Nearly 150 years ago. Long before the concepts of land preservation and environmental protection and even consumer automobiles entered the mainstream. Before we consider any changes to mining regulation, we have to reform the underpinning mining law to further balance the interests of miners and other industries and make mining activities more sustainable for the environment. To ensure that we can all continue to use these vital resources on shoring our critical mineral supply chain is a complicated issue intertwined with many other topics and policy areas. But I have trust in this committee, our witnesses here today, and our shared commitment to making sure that the vast majority of these critical earth minerals are not sourced only through our competitor. I look forward to the hearing, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. Chairman WILLIAMS. Gentlelady yields back. And I will now introduce our witnesses. Our first witness here with us today is Aaron Dowd. Mr. Dowd is the chief executive officer of Rare Earth Salts in Beatrice, Nebraska. Mr. Dowd has more than two decades of experience leading efforts at the intersection of global business strategy, government affairs, and national security. Mr. Dowd previously served as chief of staff in the U.S. Senate and supported high-level policy work at the Atlantic Council and Department of Energy. Mr. Dowd earned a Master's degree in Business Administration from Duke, Home of the Blue Devils, right, University, and Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Marquette University. Thank you for being with us today, and we look forward to our conversation. Our next witness here with us today is Mr. Harvey Kaye. Mr. Kaye is the executive director of U.S. Critical Materials in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mr. Kaye has over 45 years experience in finance, strategic planning, and executive leadership across both public and private companies. Mr. Kaye has served as Founder, Chairman, and now Director of Zero Gravity Solutions, an agricultural biotechnology firm. Mr. Kaye also held various leadership roles at Latitude Solutions, a company specializing in water remediation and treatment. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Temple University. So we are glad you are here today and look forward to your testimony. Our next witness is Mr. Ken Mushinski. Mr. Mushinski is the President and chief executive officer of Rare Element Resources in Sundance, Wyoming. Mr. Mushinski has over 30 years experience in corporate development, mergers and acquisitions, and regulatory navigation across the mining and nuclear energy sectors. Mr. Mushinski previously served as vice president of corporate planning and acquisitions for General Atomics Technologies Corporation. Mr. Mushinski earned a Master's degree in Business Administration and Bachelor's of science in Mechanical Engineering from San Diego State University, where the Aztecs are. And we appreciate you being here today. And I now recognize the Ranking Member Ms. Scholten from Michigan to briefly introduce our last witness. Ms. SCHOLTEN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Laura Stoy is an environmental engineer and the founder and CEO of Rivalia Chemical, an Illinois startup developing a novel method to chemically recover rare earth elements from coal ash and other mining waste. Rivalia Chemical patented the process and has been working on commercializing it since 2022. Additionally, the firm enjoys access to the Argonne National Laboratory in Lamont under the Department of Energy's Lab- Embedded Entrepreneurship Program, LEAP. Previously, Dr. Stoy served at the Environmental Protection Agency as a National Science Foundation intern fellow. At the EPA, Dr. Stoy worked on an environmental assessment of rare earth extraction from mining waste, precisely the process that she is developing and using now. While at school, Dr. Stoy also helped create an app named RocketJudge, which automates judge work for competitions such as fashion shows, barbecue festivals, and professional conferences. It is safe to say, Mr. Chairman, that Dr. Stoy is a serial innovator. Dr. Stoy holds a Bachelor's of Arts degree in Chemistry from Vanderbilt University and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Georgia Tech. Welcome, Dr. Stoy. Chairman WILLIAMS. Welcome again to all of you. And then, before we begin to recognize the witnesses, we do have a few rules around here. Got to go over the rules, all right? And I would like to remind all of you that your oral testimony is restricted to 5 minutes in length. If you see the light turn red in front of you, it means your 5 minutes has concluded, and you should wrap up your testimony. If you keep talking, you will hear me do this. That is a kind way of saying, quit talking. Okay? And so, and also on another note, you periodically will recognize or will see some of our panel move in and out. That is because we got other hearings going on. It has nothing to do with whether you said the right thing or the wrong thing. We will be moving in and out, but you will see that. So with that in mind, I now recognize Mr. Dowd for his 5- minute opening remarks. STATEMENTS OF MR. AARON T. DOWD, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, RARE EARTH SALTS; MR. HARVEY KAYE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, U.S. CRITICAL MATERIALS; MR. KEN MUSHINSKI, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, RARE ELEMENT RESOURCES; AND DR. LAURA STOY, PHD., FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, RIVALIA CHEMICAL STATEMENT OF AARON T. DOWD, CEO, RARE EARTH SALTS Mr. DOWD. Chairman Williams, Congresswoman Scholten, and distinguished Members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to testify on the critical issue of securing America's mineral future. I appear before you today representing Rare Earth Salts, a Nebraska-based small business at the forefront of addressing one of our nation's challenges. The United States confronts an unprecedented threat to our economic sovereignty and national security through China's control of the rare earth elements supply chain. Rare earths are a set of 17 elements in the periodic table that play a critical role in our national security, energy independence, environmental future, and economic prosperity. These elements are far more than mere commodities; they form the backbone of modern technological advancements. From powering batteries and electric vehicles to enabling medical equipment, military systems, smartphones, and wind turbines, rare earths are foundational to the innovation driving our technological civilization. The age of technology is indeed the age of critical minerals with vast geopolitical implications. The need for securing both domestically sourced rare earth elements and domestic rare earth processing infrastructure is vital. Today, China controls 90 percent of the global downstream rare earth market, impacting the rest of the world's supply chain and giving them significant control in restricting America's access to materials vital for manufacturing and defense capabilities. This was not always the case. From the 1960s until the 1990s, the U.S., specifically California's Mountain Pass mine, led global production. However, China's deliberate industrial policy systematically captured market control, creating the vulnerable supply chain we face today. Though China's dominance in the rare earth market has prompted global efforts to find alternative sources and processes to produce these critical compounds, producers outside of China continue to face formidable challenges, struggling to compete with the highly competitive pricing of China's domestic market. The challenge extends beyond supply security to economic competitiveness. China's current market dominance stems from their large-scale use of Solvent Extraction, which were developed and implemented in the U.S. in the 1960s. These processes require hundreds of separation stages and generate excessive chemical waste. Western companies utilizing this proven method face higher production costs due to necessary environmental and worker protections. This cost differential has created a market failure where Western innovation cannot compete with Chinese production, despite superior technology and environmental stewardship. For small businesses like ours, this represents both a challenge and an extraordinary opportunity to innovate and lead. Founded in 2012 by Dr. Joseph Brewer, Rare Earth Salts exemplifies how America's small business innovation can address strategic national challenges. Rare Earth Salts addresses the global need for a cost-effective, sustainable, and environmentally friendly rare earth separation process. Prior to developing our proprietary processes, we evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of every separation process used since the 1940s. That allowed us to invent a revolutionary electrochemical process from the ground up based on sound basic chemistry. The separation process advancements by Rare Earth Salts represent industry-changing solutions demanded by the rare earth supply chain to profitably compete with Chinese production and maintain a low environmental footprint. Rare Earth Salts has been working closely with the U.S. government and has received multiple grants and awards for its separation technologies from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. These private-public partnerships demonstrate how federal investment in small business innovation can yield strategic returns for national security while building defense industrial capacity. Rare Earth Salts recently received an award from the Department of Defense to increase production of heavy rare earth elements, specifically Terbium. The rare earth challenge represents more than supply chain vulnerability; it is a defining opportunity for American small businesses to lead the next generation of critical mineral production. Companies like Rare Earth Salts exemplify how American innovation can compete globally. Supporting domestic innovation in mineral processing can help ensure the United States does not merely secure its mineral future but leads the world in sustainable, competitive production of these essential materials. By supporting small businesses developing innovative separation technologies, we can reestablish America's leadership in this critical sector. Rare Earth Salts stands ready to contribute to America's mineral independence. The mission requires collective effort. With a robust policy framework that acknowledges the strategic importance of domestic critical mineral production, American small businesses can help transform this challenge into a competitive advantage. The technology is ready. The market need is undeniable. The national security imperative is urgent. We need to now unlock the economic value beneath our feet and secure America's mineral future. Chairman Williams, Congresswoman Scholten, and distinguished Members of the committee, thank you again for the invitation to testify, and I look forward to your questions. Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Kaye for his 5-minute opening remarks. STATEMENT OF HARVEY KAYE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, U.S. CRITICAL MATERIAL Mr. KAYE. Thank you Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee for allowing us to testify today. This is an issue that has taken 15 years to come to the point that we are at right now. We have all talked about Chinese dominance. It is actually 90 or 95 percent dominance in terms of its ability to process rare earths. Their concerns about the environment are not the same as ours. It is no longer acceptable to spend 20 or 29 years to get a project online. To that end, U.S. Critical Materials controls 339 claims covering approximately 11 square miles in a place called Sheep Creek, Montana. Montana in the past has been known as the Treasure State. Our objective is to make it the Treasure State again. To that end we have a two-point point of our spear to accomplish those goals. First, is the rare earths that encompass our deposit have been considered now the highest- grade rare earths ever found in America, averaging 9 percent up. We also have a very robust deposit of gallium. Gallium is a mineral, a critical mineral that has 3,800 military applications. We now face a geopolitical situation that we are all aware of. It is in the front page news. To that end, we have expanded a great amount of the critical minerals and rare earths required for missiles, for radar, for advanced aircraft, the F47, et cetera. We cannot be dependent upon the Chinese to be our supply of these materials. Therefore our focus and the focus I hope of this committee is to assist companies such as ourselves to accomplish those goals. What do we need to do that? We need help in accelerating permitting. Today, as the congresswoman stated, there is regulations that we are dealing with since 1870. Okay? We have made an attempt to fix that through Fast-41. Okay? Now, it requires cutting the red tape, unchaining the American entrepreneurial spirit in order to accomplish the goals. We have it here. It should be found in America. We also have now entered into a venture with one of the prestigious American National labs called Idaho National Lab. Dr. Robert Fox is an acknowledged expert in the world of developing processes and technologies to process these kinds of minerals. We did a full-court press with them, and at the end of a year, they have accomplished the goal of setting forth the flow diagrams and the methodology for a process that we call an electrochemical membrane reactor. It is environmentally conscious. It has the ability to process rare earths in an efficient environmental manner. To that end, therefore, we are working very hard to cooperate with the government. This committee can help us and the entire industry enormously. We need to do what we did with Sputnik. We need to do what we did with the Manhattan Project. This country can no longer have the Chinese knee on our neck. Therefore, as a group, we need to work together, government- private partnerships. And what is required? What is required is help in permitting. What is required is for us to establish a permanent market for the offtake so the Chinese can no longer utilize price manipulation to hurt our domestic marketplace. And we need to work together as a team in order to make the United States critically mineral independent and sovereign again. And so with that, I yield with 22 seconds left. Chairman WILLIAMS. You are going to go far in this company. Thank you for the testimony. I now recognize Mr. Mushinski for his 5-minute opening remarks. STATEMENT OF KEN MUSHINSKI, PRESIDENT AND CEO, RARE ELEMENT RESOURCES Mr. MUSHINSKI. Chairman Williams, Ranking Member Scholten, and esteemed Members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to address this committee on issues of vital importance to this nation-securing critical minerals and, in my case specifically, rare earths, for our National defense and high-tech industries and supporting small businesses in meeting that need. RAR is a publicly traded company with a critical rare earth deposit and state-of-the-art innovative rare earth processing and separation demonstration plant in Wyoming. We have invested over $170 million in developing our USGS-recognized world-class rare-earth deposit and proprietary separation technology. I know you are all well-versed in why rare earths are critical components in our modern technology, essentially, in everything from smartphones, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and defense systems. Our rare earth elements are enablers to the evolution of our high-tech world and vital to our American defense system. It is also widely known that China dominates the rare earth industry and is taking deliberate action to control the entire processing and manufacturing supply chains where rare earths are utilized for downstream products. This has created an untenable National and economic scenario. Chinese dominance and manipulation of the rare earth extraction, processing and separation, and permanent magnet production is an existential risk to our modern world. Further, this dominance allows China to influence global prices, making it risky for competitors to invest. Small businesses like RER have unique technologies and the potential to innovate and contribute to domesticating the rare supply chain from mine to magnets. However, our small companies face challenges that have distinct needs and must be addressed to ensure a sustainable domestic rare earth supply chain. As an example of the obstacles faced by RER, we have completed our resource confirmation and commenced the arduous NEPA permitting of the Bear Lodge Project in 2011. We spent over $30 million and many years progressing that effort, an effort that was ultimately derailed through Chinese market manipulation whereby rare earths supplied by the Chinese flooded the market, and prices bottomed out. As a result, RER's access to capital quickly disappeared and, ultimately, resulting in cessation of operation and almost bankrupting our company. Realizing we could not compete with predatory Chinese market dominance, RER, in conjunction with its now majority shareholder and affiliate of General Atomics, pivoted to proving our novel and proprietary rare earth material separation technology so that we and potentially other domestic rare earth companies would not be reliant on China to economically and efficiently separate the rare earth concentrates produced here in the United States. Our goal is to compete with China in rare earth production and also create a path for processing and separation that is economically and environmentally superior--adhering to all U.S. Environmental regulations while supplanting the environmentally detrimental and costly steps in conventional Chinese technology. With that challenge in front of us, RER, with partial funding from the Department of Energy and the state of Wyoming, have constructed and will soon begin operating our over $66 million demonstration plant that is intended to prove our separation technology on an industrial scale. Even with the expected success from this plant's operation, without additional support from the government, RER and other innovative small businesses face monumental hurdles. Specifically, access to capital requires a certain level of market stability that is thwarted by Chinese ability to manipulate the rare earth market. Small businesses like RER, unfortunately, find themselves in a paradox whereby investors and potential industry supply chain partners require certainty in the markets, and yet this is not possible with the ongoing threat of Chinese market interference. We believe addressing this nascent market's unique challenges, especially for small and innovative businesses, requires a multifaceted approach to market stabilization. RER encourages Congress to pursue policies and support funding to support small businesses that are innovating and progressing a secure domestic rare supply chain, including government purchasing to establish strategic stockpiles as potentially envisioned, but with the $2.5 billion critical minerals included in the recently passed reconciliation package, government grants to unlock industry innovation, government incentives and guarantees to encourage private investment in loans and permitting reform to bring surety to project timeliness. We believe these types of initiatives will remove the significant market obstacles and barriers to progress for small businesses engaged in rare supply chain so that collectively, we can become a solution to a very real and present danger to our nation's defense and high-tech industries. I am honored to be here today to share with you RER's unique experience as a small business in the rare earth industry, and I look forward to addressing your questions. Thank you very much. Chairman WILLIAMS. Gentleman yields back. And now recognize Dr. Stoy for her 5-minute opening remarks. STATEMENT OF LAURA STOY, FOUNDER AND CEO, RIVALIA CHEMICAL CO. Ms. STOY. Chairman Williams, esteemed Member Scholten, Members of the committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today. It is an honor to discuss this issue that is critical to the future of U.S. mining and materials, securing our critical mineral supply chains for national defense, technological innovation, and manufacturing strength. My name is Dr. Laura Stoy, and I am the CEO and founder of Rivalia Chemical Company. At Rivalia, we are pioneering new chemical extraction technologies to cover valuable rare earth elements from industrial wastes, including coal fly ash and other coal combustion byproducts, phosphogypsum, acid mine drainage, and mine tailings. Our patent-pending process extracts rare earths from these materials and separates them from their major elements in a single step. A significant challenge in traditional mining processing for rare earths. Using this method and by using wastes, we can avoid the environmental and economic costs of mining while minimizing hazardous waste generation. The U.S. has approximately 2 million metric tons of rare earths and reserves. However, there is far more locked in our waste materials. Researchers at UT Austin estimate that there are 11 million metric tons of rare earths and coal ash alone. Oak Ridge National Lab found millions of tons of rare earths in phosphogypsum. Duke University did research that found that abandoned mine drainage releases 500 to 3,400 tons of rare earths annually through acid mine drainage. These waste streams are often overlooked, but they present an opportunity to both recover rare earths and remediate environmental damage in local communities. There are currently no companies producing rare earths from waste at scale in the U.S. right now, though I will note to this committee that there are many small businesses and startups addressing this opportunity space. Rivalia's focus is on mining rare earths from waste, but I want to emphasize that it is likely that this is just one component of a broader rare earth element supply chain along with traditional mining. Building a broader, more diverse supply chain for rare earths will make our system overall more resilient to disruption and manipulation by our adversaries. To achieve supply chain stabilization, the U.S. can't only mine. We can't mine our way out of this. We also need to separate, find, materialize, and produce the finished products--the permanent magnets. China's dominance in rare earths comes from its control over this entire supply chain, which includes processing minerals both from its own mines and from international partners. To compete globally, U.S. rare earth producers must have robust midstream processing. This requires a skilled workforce, innovation, and efforts to derisk the market for private investors, especially given the price volatility caused by China's outsized market influence. Our market also must be cost competitive. China has subsidized their supply chains, enabling their businesses to offer products at significantly lower costs. Competing with that will require American ingenuity and innovation to lower our production costs and make U.S. rare earths attractive to both customers and investors. I founded Rivalia after completing my PhD in environmental engineering at Georgia Tech, where I was fortunate enough to receive both government and private funding, the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship, as well as funding from Georgia Power, one of the major utilities in the Southeast. This funding allowed me to develop the core technology behind Rivalia. Since then, we participated in TechStars, a prestigious startup accelerator which included raising venture capital. This also allowed us to secure a future pilot with Southern Company. We have also raised non-dilutive funding through the National Science Foundation's SBIR program, which is helping us to de-risk our technology and validate it with other materials. We also have obtained funding through the Department of Energy EnergyWerx Vouchers Program as well as the Department of Energy Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program called LEAP. And through that, we have gained access to critical expertise and facilities at Argonne National Lab. This support has been crucial to scaling our technology and positioning it for high market impact. For hard tech startups like Rivalia and my colleagues here, government funding is essential. It provides early-stage capital that is needed for high-risk project with immense potential but limited investor interest. Government funding acts as a third-party validation, attracting private capital and allowing us to make tangible progress on critical milestones. Hard tech ventures require significant upfront capital from prototyping, testing, and compliance, and without government support, companies like ours would face much greater challenges in bringing new game-changing technologies to market. The U.S. is at a critical juncture in securing its mineral future. We need to embrace innovation, leverage public and private funding, and develop new technologies to ensure a robust and diverse critical supply chain here. Government support for startups like Rivalia are essential for maintaining U.S. leadership and technology, national security, and economic competitive--competitiveness. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. Chairman WILLIAMS. Gentlelady yields back. We will now move to the Member questions under the 5-minute rule, and I will recognize myself for 5 minutes. Throughout the Biden and Harris administration, the government has burdened small businesses with endless regulatory red tape. These regulations have slowed business- building projects and mining efforts. And I think we can all agree that we should get the government out of the way to let small businesses do what they do best. Now, Mr. Kaye, can you provide us with some examples of how the government has stood in your way? Mr. KAYE. We have had these claims for better than 35 years. They--our approach is to do this with a great amount of environmental consciousness. Therefore, we deal with the U.S. Forest Service. The response many times is slow to get back. There has been a great amount of progress, however, recently with the advent of Fast-41. We have filed an application for that. And what it does is it holds the various agencies that are responsible for approvals to a very strict timetable. Our plan is to be able to extract from our deposit literally this year, to be able to, in effect, stand on the steps of the White House and or Congress with a bag of gallium rare earths that were found in Montana, processed with American technology, and available for the defense of this country and indeed the free world. So it is starting to change. And we are seeing the effect of that because there is now a recognition that there is an issue, and we can't wait 15 or 20 years to bring a deposit online. So we feel that things are getting much better, and for that, we are grateful. Chairman WILLIAMS. Good. Let's book that date, okay? Mr. KAYE. Yep. Chairman WILLIAMS. Domestic mining of rare earth elements and critical minerals faces numerous challenges, and one of which is that America has few known large deposits of pure rare earth elements. Despite these challenges, the United States is well positioned to quickly build its rare earth refining capacity. So, Mr. Dowd, can you please explain the innovative approach your company has taken in the refining process and what impact those innovations have on the entire mining industry? Mr. DOWD. Thank you, Sir. We believe the enormous demand for non-Chinese rare earth supply will only be met with the reimagining of innovative, nontraditional clean separation technologies. Our processes have a significant advantage over existing separation technologies in an industry that has not seen much viable refining innovation in more than three- quarters of a century. Our technology significantly reduces the cost of producing rare earths from concentrate, be it from recycled material, rare earth elements, specific mining operations, or as a byproduct of a mining operation. Our patented processed capital expenditure and operating expense are highly cost-competitive versus traditional rare earths refining. Our processing time from concentrate to first finished products is days with very limited separation steps versus months and dozens of steps with solvent extraction. Rare Earth Salts provides an immediate opportunity to reestablish domestic commercial production. The capability of our technologies has been thoroughly validated. Chairman WILLIAMS. Okay, thank you. And now, quickly in the time I have got left, rare earth mining extraction is a heavily regulated industry that we have talked about today. Well, rare earth mines must comply with a substantial number of regulations intended for traditional mines. Rare earth mines also must navigate Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements. So Mr. Mushinski, how is your business dealing with this complicated web of regulations? How can it be simplified? Mr. MUSHINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do have a NRC possession license because as with most REE ore, it does have some naturally occurring thorium and uranium in it. So, we do have a license. That was quite a detailed and lengthy process. They, the NRC, did their own environmental assessment in addition to what is required by the EPA for a mine. It was costly, expensive and took a significant amount of time. We do have that license. That license is valid through 2027. However, we, like others, have a deposit that is on National Forest Service. We also have invested and had various meetings with the permitting council and are progressing toward Fast-41 permitting of our mine. That (Fast-41) is a much welcome improvement to the permitting process, and I will admit it is not a Trump administration policy, it is a previous administration that started Fast-41, but it is this administration that has advanced it into the mining sector. And we are very appreciative of that, and that is looked at as being helpful to our processing. Chairman WILLIAMS. Gentleman yields back. I now recognize the Ranking Member for her 5 minutes of questioning. Ms. SCHOLTEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Stoy, I am wondering if you could just start out and elaborate on the recovery process Rivalia is developing. Talk to us about how you are getting these minerals out of waste. Ms. STOY. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the question. So Rivalia's patent pending technology employs a recyclable ionic liquid in a closed-loop process that selectively extracts rare earths from the starting material. So again, this starting material might be coal ash, bauxite residue, phosphogypsum, mining tailings, acid mine drainage magnets, for really any rare earth element-rich waste is in our realm. So, we have some physical separation processes optimized to isolate higher rare earth element contained fractions within the original material. This helps improve our downstream efficiency. And depending on the material we also might have some chemical pretty treatment steps. But our core innovation is that our method both extracts the rare earths from the starting material and does the separation from the bulk in one single step. We use this using--or we do this using proprietary chemistry to selectively bind with the rare earths while leaving most of the elements behind. This approach achieves higher selectivity than conventional acid leaching methods, reducing chemical consumption and waste generation. Following extraction, the chemical chemicals are recovered and recycled through the system, so they are ready for reuse, while the residuals are conditioned for beneficial use applications. We generate two valuable rare earth element product streams. Scandium oxide product, which is a valuable rare earth used in solid oxide fuel cells, high-performance aluminum alloys, and specialized lighting applications. Second, we produce a mixed rare earth element concentrate containing multiple elements, including neodymium, cerium, lanthanum, terbium, europium, yttrium. All of these have significant roles in different applications that we have talked about already. Ms. SCHOLTEN. Thank you. For my second question and sticking with you, Dr. Stoy, how much of the rare earth in existing products currently are we recycling? Ms. STOY. Thank you for the question. To my knowledge, there is very limited recycling of rare earths in the U.S. I don't know of any companies doing this at scale right now. For some products, it is fundamentally challenging to extract rare earths from them. You know, consider consumer electronics, you know, your cell phone, your laptop is not designed to easily pull the rare earth elements out. You also have to collect them from the consumers. And that is not trivial. This is the same for EV motors. Permanent magnets in the motors will need to recover those. Industrial wastes don't have that kind of spatial distribution issue. In that way, they are almost more like a mine. But there is no one really recycling rare earths at this time. Ms. SCHOLTEN. So, as a follow-up to that, can you describe the potential for recycling to add to the rare earths supply that we have here? Ms. STOY. Yeah, absolutely. Ms. SCHOLTEN. And be as specific as you can. I know it is not currently being done, so it is hard to sort of, you know, get into specifics. But in terms of percentages. Ms. STOY. Yeah, there is a lot of potential here. It is hard to quantify and be forward-looking here. There is a researcher at Ames National Lab in Iowa, Dr. Kenneth Nlebedim, and one of the things he suggested was in the next 10 years, more than 25 percent of the demand for rare earths could come from recycling efforts. Ms. SCHOLTEN. Okay, very good. I agree with your comments about, you know, the pressing nature of this problem requiring a bit of an all of the above approach. Traditional mining, as well as recycling. How would you characterize added returns created by new mines individually, but as well as opposed to recycling or in contrast to recycling? Ms. STOY. Yeah, I think all of the above is really the answer here. You know, we, right now, we have one active mine. Would it be helpful if we had more? I can imagine so, but it is hard to say, right? Is five new mines the new--is the right answer. 50? 500? At a certain point, we do reach diminishing returns. Frankly, you know, what all of these minds do really need is refining. And I know some of my colleagues here are talking about integrating that into their processes. And that midstream or refining, in my opinion, is much more important and a higher priority than opening a new mine. Because if we don't have that refining capacity, we are sending our concentrate abroad for refining. And 99 percent of the time, that is going to be in China. We don't have--we won't have--you know, we could have dozens of mines, but if we are still sending the concentrate abroad, we haven't solved the problem. Ms. SCHOLTEN. Okay, thank you. Very enlightening. I yield back. Chairman WILLIAMS. Gentlelady yields back. I now recognize Mr. Stauber from the great state of Minnesota for 5 minutes. Mr. STAUBER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The development of America's abundance of resources is critical, and rare earth minerals are of deep importance to me in my district. The Minnesota's 8th Congressional District holds the biggest untapped copper-nickel find in the world. The previous administration banned 224,000 acres of it and took two leases away from a mining company that they had since 1966. Just last week, Talon Metals in Tamarack, Minnesota, brought an exploratory drill section: 28 percent nickel. The highest in the world. I don't know if you all knew that. Talon Metals, Northeastern Minnesota, drill hole, 28 percent nickel. Nowhere in the world can we do that? Northeastern Minnesota is ready, able, and willing to deliver these critical minerals to this great nation for our strategic national security. I sit on the Natural Resources Committee. There was a Democrat witness when we were talking about mining. I said to her, I said, ``You say it is too wet in Minnesota to mine. It is too dry in Arizona to mine. Where would you like us to mine?'' And her answer, she said it out loud, ``Nowhere.'' We have an anti-mining political agenda in this nation that is crippling our security, our strategic national security. Northeastern Minnesota mines the iron ore that makes 82 percent of this nation's steel that helped us win two world wars. And we continuously have to battle for these good union jobs in this town. The prior administration was the most anti-mining administration in the history of this country. We will follow all environmental and labor standards. Allow us to do so. And when we do that, we will bring the economic engine to our communities. We will bring good-paying jobs to the iron range of Northern Minnesota, which jobs start at $90,000 a year without overtime, health benefits, et cetera. The median household income for the district that I represent is under $74,000. One mining job can make up for that. This is how important domestic mining is to our nation, to our strategic national security, to our economy. And, ma'am, you are right. Recycling is part of it. That is part of the concern. And bring it on. But we are--the demand is so much more right now. There are 17 rare earth minerals, right? China just stopped selling six of their critical rare earth minerals to the world. 15 of the 19 industrial mines in the Congo are owned by the Chinese communist party, who use child slave labor. We can't accept that anymore. We should never enter into a memorandum of understanding with the communist country of China for our rare earths. Never. Yet the past administration did. We have the opportunity to mine in this country. We can mine in Minnesota. We can mine in Alaska. We can mine in Utah. We can mine in Nevada. We can mine in California. We can mine in Washington. We can mine in Pennsylvania. And the list goes on and on. We have to have the political will to do it. It will be an economic boom for our communities. The jobs. What an opportunity do we have? Let's not miss it. And it starts with all of us understanding the importance of mining and the value that it can bring to our economy and our strategic national security, the state of Minnesota, and Northeastern Minnesota. I want you to understand the iron range and the Duluth complex, which is the copper, nickel, and cobalt--we have the opportunity to bring it to the nation. I am so proud of each and every one of you here to talk about this opportunity. Mr. Chair, we cannot miss this opportunity. Our nation is depending on it. Our small businesses are depending on it. Our strategic national security is depending on it, and our communities and our minors need it. And I yield back. Chairman WILLIAMS. Gentleman yields back. I now recognize Ms. McIver from the great state of New Jersey for 5 minutes. Ms. MCIVER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our Ranking Member for convening this hearing today. I want to thank each witness for being here today with us. Critical minerals are the foundation of our national security and economic resilience. And we must ensure that Congress supports the responsible development, processing, and reuse of these essential resources. Small businesses, from clean technology startups to equipment manufacturers to recycling innovators, are the engine of American creativity. They must be at the center of any National critical mineral strategy. That means leveling the playing field, ensuring fair access to capital, and providing consistent federal support to help them compete with larger and often state-subsidized global players. We must continue to build on the historic investments made through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, not roll them back. These programs support responsible development, promote environmental innovation, and empower the small businesses driving the next generation of American innovation. America's energy future, security, and economic leadership depend on it. I have two questions, and these are both for Dr. Stoy. Some of my colleagues from across the aisle argued that repealing clean energy investments made under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act will save money for our nation and its small business owners. Can you speak about how repealing the investments made under these laws will cost us in the critical mineral--minerals industry? Ms. STOY. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the question. I will say I am not an expert on the Inflation Reduction Act. But my understanding is that, you know, as we seek to build out the entire supply chain in the U.S. as we seek to, you know, bolster manufacturing, we need to have incentives all the way down the line, especially given that we are dealing with a non- market player. The IRA includes many provisions that help bolster that. And if we cripple the end of the process by removing customer-consumer incentives, we are terminating the line. And ultimately, what that means is that our products will not end up being sold in the U.S. They won't end up being refined in the U.S. They will go abroad. Ms. MCIVER. Thank you for that. Given how far behind we already are in securing critical mineral supply chains, wouldn't further funding rollbacks be a national security risk, in your opinion? Ms. STOY. Yes, I would agree with that. Ms. MCIVER. Thank you. With that, I yield back. Mr. MEUSER. [Presiding.] Gentlelady Yields back. I now recognize myself for 5 minutes. Folks, we have got a very serious discussion here. I think Mr. Kaye brought that out very well initially, and it is certainly being repeated over and over. So we got to figure out what we can do about it. Something tells me you all have some good ideas and perhaps a written plan, white paper, on what, not just what we need to do over the next 10 years, but even over the next 2 or 3 immediately, right? We have one mining company of rare earths elements in the United States, MP in Southern California, one processing refinery, I believe owned by MP. Now, China provides 70 percent of the world's rare earths. What are we doing, right? So this is a very important meeting, and hopefully, this is just the beginning. I have a bill, and frankly, looking at it now, I think this just scratches the surface offering for rare earth elements production, tax credits $9 within a ton--on a ton of coal for refuse, $20 per kg on REEs extracted and sold from coal, $3 tax credit per barrel on brine water that we are about to introduce and et cetera, a couple of others. Now, I am not sure that is going to do the trick. It might be a step in the right direction. Mr. Kaye, what are your thoughts on some of my comments here? Mr. KAYE. I think you hit the nail on the head. It goes this way. 15 years it has taken for us to do nothing while the Chinese have dominated. They and their government have been extremely supportive of their ability to create world dominance in this. And it was part of a strategy because they think in that context. The first thing we need to think about is creating a stockpile. Why a stockpile? If we have a strategic oil reserve, then we need to have a strategic critical mineral reserve. What we intend to do, just to comment on it, is we intend to deliver a reasonable amount of gallium by the end of this year. That means that we will stockpile the other rare earths, perhaps on a military base, which is part of an executive order that said let's use the Pentagon, let's use military bases. We are in discussions regarding a project such as that today. Secondly, with a little bit of government support that Idaho National Labs has agreed that they can cut a year off the development of the plant that we are putting online. That will be a full-blown demonstration plant, at least 2 tons a day, and we can start delivering actual rare earths to our Defense Department, to various other. They talk about the Stargate project. We have allocated $500 billion artificial intelligence, medical applications. Nobody has ever talked about medical. Well, guess what? You can't have diagnostic equipment. You can't have the new technologies that are coming out without rare earths. Mr. MEUSER. So let's hear now, Mr. Mushinski, I am going to ask you on the type of tax credits, incentives, and regulatory reform, some of your thoughts on what we need to do to springboard and blast off, if you will, or at least get off the ground. Mr. MUSHINSKI. Thank you, Congressman. For me and for RER, and I assume the other businesses here, it is market stability that is important. We have tried to start up businesses before, and the Chinese are very aware. The Chinese are very smart people. They can flood the market and deplete prices and drive us out of business. You will recall that even MP, Mountain Pass, at the time, was driven into bankruptcy by that exact point. So, I agree a strategic stockpile is important. This is a nascent industry in the United States, and the companies here, mine included, need a foothold. We are not looking for the government to give us a complete handout. We need a foothold so that we can get investors. So that we can have bankable contracts. So that we can go to capital markets and have a business plan that they don't have to be concerned about market manipulation. Mr. MEUSER. All right, quickly, Ms. Stoy, do you agree? Ms. STOY. Yes, absolutely. The thing that I talk to when I talk to investors is they say, well, what about China? What about the market? Like for me to deliver a 5-year financial plan, I need to have pricing information, and we have an opaque market with non-market players on non-exchange traded metals. Mr. MEUSER. Well, as I opened with, this is very, very important. Perhaps rather than call it the Manhattan Project, as I am from Pennsylvania, we will call it something other, maybe the Pennsylvania Project. But we look forward to continued conversations very much so. Thank you. I yield back. I now recognize Mr. Tran from California for 5 minutes. Mr. TRAN. Thank you so much, Chairman. Welcome, witnesses. Thank you for being here. Dr. Stoy, in 2024, the Select Committee on China released a bipartisan report revealing that the Chinese communist government supplies over 50 percent of the U.S. demand for 24 critical minerals, including 90 percent of rare earth elements. The report also emphasized that advanced recycling technologies offer a scalable solution to strengthen the domestic supply chain for these minerals and reduce our reliance on China. However, the Trump administration has reduced staffing in the Department of Energy's loan and R&D programs, the various resources needed to help reduce U.S. dependence on China for critical minerals. In fact, over 77 billion in funding at the Department of Energy remains frozen. How does that affect their capacity to invest and award contracts to businesses like yours, Dr. Stoy? Ms. STOY. Thank you so much for the question. This is something that I think about very often is how, you know, to fund, you know, the--the projects that we will be building, the projects that we will be financing. These will take high amounts of capital. The Department of Energy has been instrumental in putting together different loan offices, different programs for startups like mine and many others. Without staff at these agencies, they are not able to do their jobs. They are not able to evaluate loans. It is a huge problem for me, especially as I go out to investors, to say, here is my plan for building a facility. You know, I am going to use this contracting agency, this loan office. If they are not considered reliable, then my plan is no longer reliable. Thank you. Mr. TRAN. And are you concerned that these cuts would cede America's global STEM leadership to the PRC? Ms. STOY. Absolutely. I mean, one thing I also think about a lot is the training that comes from loans just like these. You know, China has, I think, 80 universities dedicated to mineral processing and mining. We don't have any. You know, if we are serious about building talent, the talent that we need to run our businesses, we need to have those funding agencies in place. Mr. TRAN. Yeah. In fact, President Trump's proposed cutting of the National Science Foundation staff by half and reducing its grants awards, which would threaten the agency's ability to fund critical R&D nationwide and further advantage the PRC's technological competition with the U.S. Mr. Chairman, I asked for unanimous consent to insert an R&D World article about the impacts of the proposal and existing Trump cuts into the record. Chairman WILLIAMS. So moved. Mr. TRAN. Thank you. Next question goes to Mr. Dowd. In September 2024, your company received a 4.2 million contract from the Department of Defense to expand domestic production of rare earth element terbium, one of the most difficult to obtain rare earth elements from recycled fluorescent light bulbs. Can you explain how important government contract like this one are to your business? Mr. DOWD. Yeah, absolutely. You know, when we talk about government support and kind of step back, big picture, you know, 35 years ago, the leader of China said that rare earths are going to be to China what oil is to the Middle East. And that is before this electrified world that we live in today, right? And so the government of China really instigated a deliberate industrial policy to systematically capture this market and the U.S. and the rest of the world now have to turn on all across the supply chain, mine to metal, so that we are no longer reliant upon China for the sources of material in any way. And that is not going to happen overnight. Obviously, that is going to take a decade or two or more. That is exactly what China has done. But it really needs necessary long-term policy that will transcend administrations, Republican and Democrat. And specifically to us, terbium is only otherwise produced in China. We are the only other company in the world producing terbium. The Department of Defense award allowed us to be able to scale up and produce what is necessary for military applications, for the U.S. government in the defense sector. Mr. TRAN. That is amazing. And you would agree that it is important for us to continue federal investments in promoting recycling and a circular economy for these critical minerals, yes? Mr. DOWD. I think turning on mining, recycling all sources of material is vital for the future of the country. Mr. TRAN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentleman yields back. I now recognize Mr. Finstad from the great state of Minnesota for 5 minutes. Mr. FINSTAD. Thank you, Chairman Williams. Thank you for holding this important hearing today, and thank you to the witnesses for being here. As a Member of this Committee and then also on the House Armed Services Committee, I am excited to have you here today to discuss the important role critical minerals play in our national security interests and our overall economy in this country. The state of Minnesota is home to a large majority of our nation's domestic critical mineral reserves, including nickel, cobalt, platinum, and copper. And after hearing Congressman Stauber's comments, I used to think his roads were paved in gold, but I guess they are going to be paved in nickel here now soon up in Northern Minnesota. Those Minnesota grown companies have been unable to renew their federal leases due to both the Obama and Biden administrations pulling the rug out from underneath them and putting up roadblocks. So, with that being said, Mr. Kaye, the United States has the strictest environmental and labor standards in the world, yet we have become reliant on China and other adversarial nations to control a large majority of the world's global supply chain. In your experience, what environmental and labor standards do these countries have in place for their operations? Mr. KAYE. They are very supportive of their homegrown industries and China particularly has been extremely robust in making it easy for it to happen. I believe that now it is an all-hands-on-deck approach for this. It is regulatory, it is, as my colleagues have said, support for the offtake agreements. We are in discussions with multiple country companies both in the defense industry and the automotive industry for supply even if it takes 3, 4, 5 years to come on stream. So what we would need is, as everyone has said, we need support so that China cannot manipulate the price. We need fast tracking to permit. Even Mountain Pass is partially owned by the Chinese. Even some of their concentrate is shipped to China to be processed. That can't be good. So it is, I believe, public-private partnerships. I believe it is regulatory relief. You know, as one of my colleagues said, unchain us and let American entrepreneurialship, let us do what we know how to do. And it is always now with an environmental concern because the environment is sensitive. But the pendulum has switched too far to that side. It can't take 29 years. Mr. FINSTAD. So, Mr. Kaye, just as a follow up, just to be very clear, so our strictest in the world environmental standards, our state-of-the-art best that can be labor standards in this country, China isn't competing at that same level, correct? Mr. KAYE. Absolutely not. Mr. FINSTAD. Okay. So to my colleagues here, I mean, I guess the question we have to ask ourselves, are we content putting our head in the sand and pretending that they are playing by the same rules? And the answer is no. And so it is incumbent upon us and our government to do better in this area. I would like to move on to Mr. Dowd. My constituents would rather rely on our neighbors in northern Minnesota, heck, even Nebraska, to extract and refine these minerals for our domestic supply chain. We trust our neighbors. We can have a healthy discussion about environmental standards, labor standards, and then we can, through our government and through our policy and through our process, make sure those standards are met. And we can do that face to face, neighbor to neighbor. Given your experience operating and innovating in this space, what are the biggest challenges preventing American companies right now from leading the world in critical mineral development? And a lot of times we in this Committee, you know, people will come and say, well, it is the regulations or it is this or it is that. If you were to leave here today and say, I got this off my chest, here is the four or five things that this Committee and this Congress can help us do, what is it? Mr. DOWD. Thank you, sir. You know, it is, as I said earlier, China, 35 years ago, said that rare earths are to China what oil is to the Middle East, and that is before this electrified world we live in today. We are literally in the infancy of this industry. It was referenced, perhaps a Rockefeller moment, where this is oil 100 years ago. I think that is absolutely to be true. China controls this industry, one, because they made it a deliberate policy, but, two, the Chinese government subsidizes the industry, so there is no ability for this country to be able to compete on level ground if our government is not also part of that equation. Mr. FINSTAD. My time is up here. I would just say this, we are ripe for critical minerals permitting reform 2.0 in our country. Let's reimagine the next 50 years and not try to fix broken policies of the last hundred. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentleman's time is up. Mr. FINSTAD. I yield back. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentleman yields back. I now recognize Mr. Olszewski from the great state of Maryland for 5 minutes. Mr. OLSZEWSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our witnesses for joining us today. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss America's economic and technological growth alongside the need for a stable supply of critical minerals. In addition to my service here, I am honored to serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and in the Africa Subcommittee in particular, where we have recently also discussed the need to support Africa's critical mineral sector as a driver for economic growth. We know that this conversation must also include conversations about support for families, children, and local communities. These are groups that are often exploited through forced labor and small-scale informal mines across the continent, often in deadly work environments. So I am concerned both about the action of this administration working to dismantle the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety in terms of our own safety in that work here in America. I also know that we are currently facing a fairly chaotic landscape from a President who has unilaterally enacted tariffs on nearly every import from every country. These tariffs affect 35 of the 50 critical minerals that we discussed today, which raises prices for American businesses and consumers and causes higher prices for mining and for refinery equipment. The reality is that this is an important conversation, but we cannot only mine our way out for reliable and ethical critical mineral supply chain. So I look forward to working with all of you in the years ahead, as well as my colleagues on this critical issue, while doing so not backtracking on issues like workers' rights and protections and removing some of the barriers to our success. To that point, I have two quick questions. One is on tariffs and one is on grants. I will start with you, Dr. Stoy. According to the U.S. Geological Service, the U.S. has little to no reserves for many critical materials. So obviously, as we discussed, we are trading to acquire them. Can you talk a little bit about how tariffs affect our ability to buy them from abroad? Ms. STOY. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the question. I am not an expert on tariffs. I am not an economist. But what I can say is that when I look for investors, when mining companies globally look for investors, investors are looking for stable markets. They are looking for stable capital. Refiners that I think personally is the most important thing right now beyond just mining, you know, to build up these facilities, we need stable markets. And tariffs, I think, pose issues to that. And consistent pricing is important. We have talked about a lot of different levers that the government can use here, you know, stockpiles, ensuring price floors. There is different things we can use here, but all of them can be negatively impacted by tariffs. Mr. OLSZEWSKI. I appreciate that, and I want to make sure I have it right. As a fellow ``ski,'' is it Mr. Minishski? Mr. MUSHINSKI. Mushinski. Mr. OLSZEWSKI. Mushinski, Olszewski. We got it. Okay. I appreciated your testimony and your calls for unlocking grants for commercialization efforts. I think that is critically important as one way to increase capital access for this work. So I just want to, I guess, pose to you, would you be concerned if very large grant makers, and in particular, thinking about the federal government, right, if we froze our grants and other funding sources, that certainly would be a challenge to that and would erase some of the capital landscape? Is that a fair assessment? Mr. MUSHINSKI. Of course. Mr. OLSZEWSKI. Yeah. And so, yeah, just to that point, to my colleagues, we are seeing a lot of the dismantling of these kinds of programs, not just in this space, but across the government. And I think we want to try to work with our partners across the aisle to find ways that here and in other spaces that I think the federal government actually does have a key role to play in spurring innovation, safety, and success in the private sector. And so, again, I want to just thank our witnesses to today, Mr. Chairman, for their insights and their wisdom. Look forward to working with them and you and our colleagues in the years ahead. And with that, I will yield back. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentlemen yields back. I now recognize Mr. Bresnahan from the great state of Pennsylvania for 5 minutes. Mr. BRESNAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and to the Ranking Member, for holding today's hearing, and especially to the witnesses for taking time out to come and testify today. Securing our supply chains for rare earth minerals and other critical resources is not just an economic priority. It is a matter of national security. These materials are essential components in a wide range of technologies, from smartphones to electric vehicles and advanced defense systems. Yet, despite their importance, the United States has fallen behind over other nations, particularly China, in both the mining and refining of these vital resources. China's dominant position in these supply chains have given them significant leverage on the global stage, leverage that can threaten our economic competitiveness and our security. To address this challenge, we must bring about commonsense permitting reform that allows us to responsibly develop these resources here at home. My district lies within the Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania. Fracking has been a key driver of our country's energy dominance and Pennsylvania's economic growth for the last 20 years. But fracking can potentially deliver more than just oil and gas. Recent studies by the National Energy Technology Laboratory have found that the water used in fracking can unlock up to 1,160 metric tons of lithium. That is almost 40 percent of the current demand for lithium, which is 3,000 metric tons per year. This is comparable to the lithium produced in the brine ponds in Chile, the world's second largest lithium producer. In Wayne County in my district, there is roughly $1 billion of natural gas deposits that we cannot tap into because of governors in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware have banned it based on some science and under pressure from some environmental activists. If our country is going to reduce emissions and have a cleaner grid, we need these rare earth minerals like lithium to achieve these goals. Sadly, the prior administration stifled their own green energy goals with overregulation by trying to ban natural gas exports, trying to ban fracking, the IRA's methane tax, and use of ESG's metrics and investments, and not approving pipelines quickly enough. Instead of American energy powered by clean American fuel sources and rare earth minerals processed under the American environmental standards, we have been forced to rely on Chinese imports, which are produced under horrendous environments and labor conditions. Our goal must be to provide essential raw materials that fuel our economy, support our national defense, empower the innovative technologies of tomorrow. We can, we must, and uphold our commitment to environmental stewardship while advancing economic growth. The false choice between economic progress and protecting our environment has held us back far too long. With that, I am going to start with my first question to Mr. Dowd. I want to echo on Mr. Finstad's questions a little bit earlier. If you can point to just one specific action that Congress can deploy to help us in the progress, would it be towards workforce development? Would it be permitting? Would it be regulation? If you can point to just one thing, and you had mentioned China in the prior answer, but is there anything else beyond China that we can be of assistance with? Mr. DOWD. Yeah, as a rare earth element separation company, at least the way we do, how we do our refining, there is no regulatory or regulation that is permitting us from doing what we are doing. The workforce is really not a challenge where we are, fortunately. I would say the big thing is continuing, as the government has through the Department of Defense and Department of Energy, funding companies like us to boost the defense industrial base to have the capability and the capacity in this country to compete with China. Mr. BRESNAHAN. What do you mean ``funding''? Is that through grant processes? Is that through R&D? What kind of funding do you reference? Mr. DOWD. Yeah, sure. Our company has received a handful of grants and awards over the last handful of years, which have really furthered us to where we are today. The Congressman earlier mentioned we received a Defense Production Act through the Department of Defense for $8.67 million back in September. That really enabled us to be able to produce terbium, which cannot be found anywhere else in the world other than China. Mr. BRESNAHAN. So why is that the responsibility of the American taxpayer to provide economic grants to a company like yours? Mr. DOWD. Yeah, I think it is a real question for the Committee or for the country in terms of the responsibility of government to help fund what is necessary to be able to have this capability in this country. And I think if the government does not compete, given that the Chinese government is subsidizing the industry, we will be fully reliant on China for rare earths for a long period of time. And that is obviously a geopolitical supply chain issue. Mr. BRESNAHAN. My time has expired. I yield. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentleman yields back. I now recognize Ms. Goodlander from the great state of New Hampshire for 5 minutes. Ms. GOODLANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today for this important hearing. You have each testified that the rare earth challenge is a really critical one to our national security. Our supply chain vulnerability is core to addressing, to keep our country safe. But it is also an extraordinary opportunity that small businesses across our country are seizing. And I am seeing it all across my home state of New Hampshire. What I would say is our hearing today, the title of the hearing today, I note is ``Securing America's Mineral Future: Unlocking the Economic Value Beneath Our Feet.'' The economic value I think is more than just beneath our feet. And I saw this firsthand in visiting an extraordinary service-disabled, veteran-owned small business in the Monadnock Region of my state that more than 6 years ago predicted that we would have a germanium crisis in this country. Germanium is used, as many of you know, in high-speed computer chips, plastics, and a wide range of military applications from night vision devices to satellite imagery sensors. My constituents started a company, they self-funded the research and development costs of a cost-effective, ecofriendly germanium recycling effort and they began production. They have encountered a lot of challenges in getting the support that they need for small businesses to actually tackle this. And I wanted to ask you, Mr. Dowd, can you speak to your experience? I also serve on the Armed Services Committee and, knock on wood, we are going to have a National Defense Authorization Act this year where we have an opportunity to really take a look at ways in which we can improve the way that the Department of Defense does business with small businesses in our country. Can you speak to your experience contracting with the Department of Defense and what challenges you encountered? Mr. DOWD. Yeah, our experience with the Department of Defense and, specifically, receiving funding through the Defense Production Act has really been incredibly positive. I really don't have a negative thing to say about that. Ms. GOODLANDER. Really? Mr. DOWD. I can only speak from the award that we are currently in and our experience in receiving that award in the last year. Ms. GOODLANDER. Dr. Stoy, could you tell us a little bit about the challenges you have encountered in contracting with the federal government and getting the kind of investment that small businesses like yours need to bring us to the next generation of recycling critical minerals? Ms. STOY. Absolutely. My experience has largely been very positive in applying for funding. I will say there were--there have been a handful of Department of Energy grants that required really an extensive amount of paperwork for small businesses to apply. As an example, I think there was a grant that was for $500,000, which is not--it is a sizable amount of money, but not huge, that I think I ended up writing, you know, 100 pages of content for on, you know, economic development. And, you know, 500K for a 3-year grant is not really enough money to have an outsized impact on, you know, your local community. So I think there are ways to streamline grant processes that would make it easier for small businesses to take advantage of. Ms. GOODLANDER. Well, we welcome any and all ideas that you have on this front. We are all about cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse, and making it easier for small businesses like yours. Just note that the funding cuts that we have seen across our federal government have made it very difficult for these important programs to reach their intended small business recipients. I want to ask you about the impact of the President's unilateral trade wars, which have impacted 35 of 50 critical minerals, 10 of 16 rare earth elements. You have each spoken to just the time that it takes to build up our domestic manufacturing base. Many on our Committee have supported an exemption for small businesses. But I wanted to ask you to the President's unilateral tariffs because they threatened to put so many essential small businesses out of business. I want to ask you about the uncertainty that you are seeing across the industry and the markets and the customers who you work with in this moment of absolute uncertainty for our country. Ms. STOY. Yeah, you know, customers, investors, everyone is looking for stability and these tariffs add uncertainty. One of the big things--I have been a little bit insulated because I have been housed at Argonne National Lab, which has been a tremendous opportunity that--you know, it is a very small program. There is maybe five innovators per year. This is not-- it is not a big enough program for many small businesses to benefit from that if they have to buy their own equipment. I mean, I am deeply impressed that someone from your state was able to self-fund a recycling project. So I think that that is something that we need to work on is adding that stability. Ms. GOODLANDER. Thank you. I yield back. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentlelady yields back. I now recognize Mr. Downing from the great state of Montana for 5 minutes. Mr. DOWNING. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses. I come from Montana, the Treasure State. If you want it, we can probably grow it or mine it or produce it. So we are blessed with incredible reserves in critical minerals. So I am going to start in my backyard with Mr. Kaye. You are on the front lines of critical minerals discovery and extraction in Montana. Your company, U.S. Critical Materials, is set to develop the Sheep Creek site in Ravalli County into a major producer of rare earth elements. In your testimony, you note the remarkable nature of the mineral concentrations at the Sheep Creek site. Can you explain to us more about the unique abundance of rare earth elements at the site? Mr. KAYE. Thank you for your question. We have concentrations that range about 9 percent and in some cases higher. That means as a comparative to Mountain Pass, they average about 5 percent. It literally, as confirmed by Activation Labs, the blue chip lab for evaluating purity of the product, and Idaho National Labs who did extensive work in our (phonetic 25:29) ore, which, by the way, is very low in thorium and very high in grade. That means we are below the standards required to seek nuclear regulatory authority, which is a boon to us in being able to get our product online quickly. It is an extraordinary deposit because it is carbonatites. And carbonatites, geologically, 150 million years ago have come up from the earth, have penetrated through dikes and fissures and have extended above the surface within just three adits, which are horizontal tunnels that have been drilled into the side of the mountain 35 years ago, there are 62 carbonatites. We have sampled them all. They all show mineralization down at depth. And there is a theory going right now that we are working to prove this summer that there is a continuous source that lies below. So while---- Mr. DOWNING. Hey, just in the interest of time, the critical, and I appreciate that, the critical minerals mined at Sheep Creek support--how do they support the manufacturing of technologies critical to national security? Mr. KAYE. The answer to that is samarium, which is not found in the United States. We have an abundant supply. Gallium, which, as mentioned earlier, has 3,800 military uses. The Chinese have banned it to export about a year ago. We have 180 to 380 parts per million. We are working with Idaho National Labs now. We expect that we will be able to extract gallium and be able to present it for the use of this country within this year. Mr. DOWNING. So on that note, how are small businesses uniquely positioned to initiate American critical mineral independence from China? Mr. KAYE. We have the entrepreneurial spirit that has grown this country. We are entrepreneurs. We understand risk-reward and we have the attitude of it has to happen, we will make it happen. And with the support of the regulatory authorities, state government, and the like, it will occur. Mr. DOWNING. Thank you, sir. In my district, we have experienced firsthand the difficulties of competing with mineral dumping by foreign adversaries. The Sibanye Stillwater Mine in Stillwater County is the United States' only platinum and palladium mine. Unfortunately, Russia's dumping of cheap minerals into the international market forced the Sibanye Stillwater owners of the mine to scale back its operations and lay off 700 workers at the end of last year. I am going to move to Mr. Mushinski. In your testimony, you outline how your company, Rare Element Resources, experienced similar hardships from Chinese dumping. Can you elaborate on to what degree you believe this dumping effort by Chinese producers was coordinated and deliberate? Mr. MUSHINSKI. I think it was 100 percent coordinated and 100 percent deliberate. If you go back to the 2016 timeframe, when there were restrictions on--I am sorry, it may not be before 2016, the Chinese deliberately put restrictions on exports of rare earths. That spiked the price. As with any mining business, when the price goes up, the exploration goes up, the technology goes up, and it is a continuous curve. The mining companies, Mountain Pass at the time, took off. Their stock went over $100 a share. A mere 4 years later, the Chinese absolutely flooded the market. The prices cratered, Mountain Pass went bankrupt. That is when our company almost went bankrupt in the middle of our permitting process. Mr. DOWNING. Unfortunately, I have run out of time. Mr. Chair, I yield. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentleman yields back. I recognize Mr. Cisneros from the great state of California for 5 minutes. Mr. CISNEROS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As a Member of the House Armed Services Committee and previously serving at the Department of Defense, I deeply care about our national security. And I understand and agree with the importance of securing our critical mineral supply chain and I support the small businesses helping address this vital need. However, this hearing is not focused on what we can actually do to help these small businesses, but rather it is another attempt to infomercial the President's agenda to deregulate. The House Natural Resource Committee already had a hearing on domestic mining for U.S. national security on February 6. The House Energy and Commerce Committee already had a hearing on enhancing our critical mineral supply chains on May 21. If we want to stretch the bounds of the House Small Business Committee to also talk about critical minerals, let's talk about federal funding opportunities like the small business research grants that help companies like Rivalia. This hearing is not talking about SBA programs to help these small businesses. It is not talking about funding from other agencies for these small businesses. It is not diving into federal contracting to support these businesses. I urge my colleagues to engage with us in meaningful discussions on how to better support small business, not just rubber stamp an agenda. So, Ms. Stoy, could you kind of go into detail a little bit more about SBIR, how it helped you get started, and really the importance of programs like this to encourage investment in other businesses like yours that could help, like you said, recycle these minerals instead of them just going to waste after they have been used? Ms. STOY. Absolutely. You know, I founded Rivalia using a blend of government funding, SBIR funding, and private venture capital. I think, you know, to prove that you should be a company in the market, you need to have that kind of buy-on from, you know, a private group. But, you know, programs like the SBIR help front load some of the high capital costs that come with hard tech startups. I mean, we are all in mining. You know, this requires equipment, this requires labs, this requires resources. The SBIR program has been incredibly helpful to me. There is also some programs offered alongside the SBIR program, including a business boot camp where they help you do customer discovery, engage with your customers and the partners. You know, we are dealing with very complex supply chains here. And learning how to have those conversations was something I learned through the NSF SBIR program. The Chain Reactions Innovations Program that I am a part of at Argonne National Lab, the LEAP program is also, I think, incredibly useful as a tool to help small businesses access resources that they otherwise wouldn't have access to. Mr. CISNEROS. Thank you very much for that. And again, I think the importance of research and funding these grants in order to help small businesses like yours get started is of vital importance and something that we should be discussing today more than about how regulation is getting in the way. Mr. Mushinski, hopefully I said that right, I hear your company is exploring training and education programs with universities in conjunction with the Bear Lodge Project. Can you speak to the importance of a strong STEM workforce in career and technical education programs for projects like that? Mr. MUSHINSKI. Thank you for the question. We do, we currently have three interns from the University of Wyoming and South Dakota, the School of Mines, which is dedicated to minerals and mining. And we live--our process and our facility is in a very small town of Upton, Wyoming, 800-and-something people. We are relatively close to other population centers. But the ability to recruit STEM employees is difficult in that area and that is a very important issue for us. Where do we locate our final plant because of those issues? We fortunately live in a very pro mining state, which is Wyoming. And the governor and the University of Wyoming and all the Members within that legislation are very supportive to us. You know, it is junior colleges, it is colleges, it is technical trades. A mining and processing facility is not just STEM. You need all the blue collar work as well, and that is a very important concern. Mr. CISNEROS. No, thank you for that answer. I am a big believer in education and training and everything that we need to put into it. You said this isn't a field that most people probably grow up thinking they are going to get into, but it is vital importance to make sure that we invest in the technology and the training for that. So with that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentleman yields back. I now recognize Mr. Patronis from the great state of Florida for 5 minutes. Mr. PATRONIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for participating in speed dating. It is kind of back and forth and, you know, the input that we are getting is really helpful. For the last 8 years I regulated mining and blasting in the state of Florida. And I have learned of the proponents and the opponents and specifically understanding, at least in the case of the state of Florida, whenever we have what seems to be good policy or good proposed legislation, how it dramatically could potentially change your cost of business or where your customers may do their business. I look at what you are providing. You are providing quality jobs in a heavily regulated environment with a sensitivity to supply chain needs and also what you need to do to balance the environment. And I don't envy what you do, but I am glad you are able to find a margin to make you want to continue pursuing it. I have always been a big proponent for predictability in the timelines when it comes to permitting. I don't want to belabor this because I know it was kind of touched on a little bit by you, Mr. Kaye, but I am going to ask you to elaborate more on it and maybe even a little bit of a comparison of the timeline of how China has the ability to bring goods to market versus the United States and how much of a difference there is in that timeline because does this create an advantage for China? Mr. KAYE. I have a couple of comments that I think would be relevant. One of which is that to the former--the congressman over there who said, how do you attract young people? Okay, the answer is technology. Technology makes it a lot more glamorous than a pick and a shovel. We are using artificial intelligence, predictive analytics for fast tracking exploration. It brings a whole other kind of person to the table. Secondly, today we made an announcement that retired four- star General Steven Townsend has become a senior advisor to us. He testified in front of the Senate some years ago about the need for critical minerals. He told us that in Africa when he was running AFRICOM, he wanted to find out how many mines, rare earth and critical mineral mines, were owned by the United States versus China. He found none owned by the United States, all owned by China, except for one, a Canadian company, which turned out when he put his intelligence team to it, to be a front for the Chinese. So somebody asked earlier about Africa. As to your question, fast tracking is everything right now. Okay. Speed and time. Speed is most important. Time is our enemy. And, therefore, the ability to have access to the decision-makers, to be able to have a meeting such as this, to be able to understand what their requirements are and how we can fast track application for DPA grants or Department of Defense or the movement of money from, you know, environment to defense is critically important. How can we manage the bureaucracy so that it makes it easier for us instead of cutting the red tape and drowning in the things that all my colleagues have just talked about, years and years of going through these things? It is getting better. Mr. CISNEROS. And it is not--the technology's not going away and the demand is not shrinking. I guess my also concern is just, if you can just expand on it a little bit is the national security concerns we have about being beholden to China on our pipeline. Mr. KAYE. Yeah. Thank you. The F-35 requires 920 pounds of rare earths. A submarine is 5,000. The new F-47, which is now being proposed, requires large amounts of rare earths. The newest radar that we are working on requires rare earths. The missiles, we expended a tremendous amount of our armaments with Israel, with the Ukraine war, et cetera. You got to rebuild the stockpiles, and yet they require rare earths. So it is got to be domestic supply, and it is got to happen now. We don't have 5 more years. And so, therefore, that is why we are focused so hard on being able to deliver gallium by the end of this year, because it is required in 3,800 different defense systems that our government requires. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentleman's time is up. Mr. CISNEROS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. KAYE. Thank you. Chairman WILLIAMS. Next, I recognize Dr. Morrison from the great state of Minnesota for 5 minutes. Ms. MORRISON. Thank you, Chairman Williams and Ranking Member Velazquez, for holding this hearing. And I want to thank our witnesses for being here and taking the time to testify and share your expertise about the critical mineral industry. This is a topic we will return to again and again as demand for critical minerals continues to grow during the coming decades. The International Energy Agency projects that growing investments in clean energy will double global demand for minerals by 2040. Growing demand for electric vehicles could increase the need for minerals such as lithium and graphite by as much as 4,000 percent over the next few decades. And by the way, I am thrilled by the enthusiasm for mining critical minerals I have heard here. So I assume that everyone on this Committee will be voting against clawing back the IRA and clean energy tax credits. One of the mines that my colleague from Minnesota, Mr. Stauber, referenced, is on public lands in the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the most visited wilderness in the United States and a major economic engine in Northeastern Minnesota. One point I want to make regarding proposed hard rock mines in Minnesota is that this kind of mining has never been done in Minnesota before. We have a proud tradition of iron ore taconite mining. It is very different kind of mining that carries very different risks than copper, nickel, and other hard rock mining. And the proposed mines, respectfully to my other colleague from Minnesota, are not Minnesota grown. They are owned by Glencore, Rio Tinto, and Antofagasta. These are not small businesses. These are not homegrown, and they are not American companies. They are international mining conglomerates with some of the worst labor and environmental records in the world. I would like to point out a study that found that the proposed mine in the watershed of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness would cause a net economic loss in the long term, due in part to the job and revenue losses, for the thriving outdoor recreation industry that that area depends on. So, Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to insert the study into the record. Chairman WILLIAMS. So moved. Ms. MORRISON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Stoy, can you comment on some of the tradeoffs of unrestricted, minimally regulated mining in terms of environment impacts? Are there any negatives or is it just all upside? Ms. STOY. Thanks for the question. Wouldn't that be wonderful if there were only upsides? You know, as we discussed securing a domestic supply chain for rare earths, you know, we have to talk about these trade-offs. There are benefits. You know, we can increase our domestic supply long term. We can reduce our dependence on foreign sources. We can support national security. We might bring jobs and investment to rural areas that didn't have access to that before. But, of course, there are significant costs. You know, there is the timeline. We have to consider what is going to happen environmentally here. The environmental impact, you know, we are talking about disturbing large areas of land. We are consuming water, we are producing hazardous tailings that include radioactive elements, like thorium, uranium. This is, you know, especially concerning and sensitive ecosystem or near indigenous lands or, frankly, anywhere where people live. There is also, you know, community opposition. Many proposed mines face strong pushback from Tribal Nations, environmental groups, and local residents who are simply concerned about the place they live, you know, water quality, land access, the long-term plan for these sites. These projects carry legal, social, and reputational risks. In contrast, recovering rare earths from existing industrial waste avoids new land disturbance. It leverages materials already above the ground and offers a faster, cleaner pathway to supply security. So while I think new mining may play a role in the long term and, of course, in the entire economic picture, we have to be clear-eyed about the costs and pursue lower impact alternatives when they are available. Ms. MORRISON. I appreciate that perspective. Thank you. I want to just take a moment before my time expires to brag about a Minnesota company that is doing innovative work to reduce our dependence on critical minerals. Niron Magnetics is the world's only producer of high-performance rare earth-free permanent magnets, which are used in everything from cars to audio systems to medical devices. Niron Magnetics uses technology that was developed through research at the University of Minnesota and they received an SBIR award in 2024 to explore the use of their magnets in DOD applications, exemplifying, I think, how well-designed innovations system can support our small businesses and address pressing issues. Mr. Dowd, we have talked a little bit about SBIR and STTR programs. Can you just speak to how federal grants and awards can be mutually beneficial to both small businesses and government agencies? Mr. DOWD. Yeah. For my company, who has been in business for about a dozen years, we have had a handful of grants and awards with the Department of Defense and with the Department of Energy, which has really helped further us to where we are today. And I am not sure without the support of the government, we would have been able to achieve what we have achieved. Because what we do is not easy. If it was, we wouldn't be having this issue today, this conversation today. A lot of R&D goes into getting to where we are today. Thank you. Ms. MORRISON. Thank you, Mr. Dowd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentlelady yields back. I recognize Mr. Alford from the great state of Missouri for 5 minutes. Mr. ALFORD. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for our witnesses for being here today. Rare earth minerals, elements like neodymium, cerium, lanthanum are critical for modern technology from smartphones to electric vehicles to defense systems. Missouri's role in their mining has a rich history and untapped potential, but government overreach is holding us back. In the mid-20th century, Missouri was a leader in rare earth exploration. The Pea ridge Mine in Washington County, operational since the 1960s, revealed significant deposits of rare earths alongside iron ore. And by the 1980s, studies confirmed Missouri's geological potential with deposits in the southeast region rivaling global hotspots. However, low prices and foreign competition, mainly from China, stalled development. China now dominates, producing more than 60 percent of the world's rare earths, leaving the U.S. dependent on imports for more than 70 percent of our supply. Today, Missouri stands at a crossroads. The Pea Ridge Mine, now dormant, holds an estimated 600,000 tons of rare earth oxides, enough to bolster domestic supply. This is just outside my district. Private companies are eager to restart operations, but progress is slow. Why? Excessive regulation. Permitting for new mines can take over a decade in the United States of America compared to just a year in competitors' nations. Environmental reviews, while important, are often redundant, delaying projects without code clear benefits. Meantime, communist China tightens export controls, threatening our supply chains. The government must act decisively. First, streamline permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act to cut timelines without sacrificing safety. Secondly, offer tax incentives for rare earth processing facilities as refining is a bottleneck. Third, fund research into cleaner extraction methods to address environmental concerns. These steps will unleash Missouri's potential, create jobs, and secure our national interest. Missouri's rare earths are a sleeping giant. It is my intent to help them wake up by getting government out of the way. Mr. Kaye, critical minerals are not only essential for the long-term economic success of the U.S., but also for its national security. Could you please explain the importance of the resources in your minds to our national security, sir? Mr. KAYE. Thank you for your question. We spoke about gallium. Gallium is critical. There is no supply here in the United States. The Chinese have embargoed it. Our gallium is in a very pure mineralized form found in the carbonatites themselves, which means it is relatively easy to bring them out and properly refine them. Samarium, there is no supply here in the United States. And so we have the same situation with that. Third is our government understands now, particularly the Department of Defense, and the reason that General Townshend has become an advisor to us is exactly that reason. He understands what the problems are. He understands what national defense means. And the Chinese are betting that we are going to keep slow like we have been. But that is not going to happen anymore. And so we believe that the 17 rare earths and natural and critical minerals that are important to all aspects, artificial intelligence, chips, new radar, new aircraft, new ships, new technologies leading to the future, have to be domestically sourced. And we and our colleagues are determined to make that happen. Our attitude now these days is while we are all friendly competitors, we are all Americans. And whatever we can do to help each other, whether it is technology, whether it is cooperation, whether it is working together to make us critically mineral independent again and, therefore, critically mineral sovereign again, is our number one mission. And so we are all working toward accomplishing that goal. And thank you for your question. Mr. ALFORD. Thank you, Mr. Kaye, Mr. Dowd, Mr. Mushinski, and our other witness, we really appreciate you being here today. This is a national security issue. And with that, I yield back. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentlemen yields back. I now recognize Ms. Simon from the great state of California for 5 minutes. Ms. SIMON. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is an honor to be sitting by you. And I do believe that you have the best tie in the room today, sir. It is amazing. Yes, sorry. I apologize. I am so happy to be having this conversation with you all. In fact, as you all were talking, what came to me was a writing from Bernice Johnson Reagon, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon. And she was one of the leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement. And one of her writings was called ``Battered Earth.'' And one of the stanzas in the piece said, ``If the earth could run away, she would be running for her life.'' And I really appreciate this very timely conversation. I also appreciate, Dr. Stoy, you talked about being supported in your graduate studies as a young scientist. And it is not missed on me or anyone on this dais that you are the only woman on the panel. My daughter is in the biological sciences. My eldest, go Aggies at UC Davis, and she told me she was one of the few folks who crossed the stage an undergrad focused again on our earth, on biology. I wonder what we would be talking about if, in fact, the United States paid homage to young scientists and fully supported their educations. And once they got out of grad school, fully nurtured their labs, fully nurtured your staffing process, provided support for your insurances. I wonder what we would be thinking about as we try to juxtapose where we are in terms of earthing rare minerals with our adversaries like China. It is hard to compare and contrast when you have countries around the world that fully support young people advancing in the sciences. But like Bernice Johnson Reagon says, our adversaries don't care about the earth. And if she could run away, she absolutely would. You know, just a few months ago, I was able to visit an amazing small business in West Oakland, where I am from. A small company that has developed fascinating technology to extract lithium directly from brine using significantly less land and water than conventional evaporation methods. And in talking to the founders, young, brilliant, scrappy, they don't wear suits, they wear Converse, they are amazing and super smart and they have PhDs and they are physicians. That is crazy smart, amazing folks, right, again, in a low-income community in the Bay Area doing everything that they could to create a sustainable model moving forward. They talked to me about how difficult it was not just in the last administration, but also in this administration to acquire resources. In fact, they are waiting on money right now to keep their staffing levels up. We are talking not just about rare minerals, we are talking about a finite Earth. And so when you have innovators, like some of you all on this panel, committed, committed to sustainable practices, committed to new opportunities and innovations that will literally save, save the lands of our dear country, you can't go in a gazillion times, right? The Earth is, in fact, finite. I am curious, Dr. Stoy, when you talk about--well, you talked about, I would say in your testimony rather beautifully, how, in fact, it was difficult in this moment, and it has been, and a number of you have also repeated this, to receive the resources that you need and deserve to move forward. Dr. Stoy, can you talk to me about, in the perfect world, how would, whether it is SBA or other government agencies, truly support young innovators like yourself? So that instead of sitting at a computer writing 100 pages for $500,000 divided by 3, and those of us who staffed institutions, we know that that is only a couple of staff with a little bit of health insurance and not for their kids, maybe just for them, what would it be like if you could truly be the scientist that you were trained to be? What would you need? Ms. STOY. So I think I have talked about a lot of visions I have had. You know, in a dream world I am running a team of a dozen people. We are all in the lab. We have folks dedicated on building out the rest of the supply chain, talking to all the partners, building out the network. You know, this is something that I, instead of using government funding, I will go out and fundraise later this summer, you know, a couple million dollars to start building out that team. And I am trading that for equity, and I am trading that for, you know--that is betting against the money I will need in the future to build a plant. You know, there is--for startups, you know, you can be scrappy, but you can only do so much with so little money. So I appreciate your question and I think, you know, betting on young innovators is a win for us. Ms. SIMON. I appreciate you and I appreciate all those who came out today to listen, and those are folks who came to testify. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back. Chairman WILLIAMS. The gentlelady yields back. I would like to thank our witnesses for their testimony and for appearing before us today. Without objection, Members have 5 legislative days to submit additional materials and written questions for the witnesses to the Chair, which will be forwarded to the witnesses. I ask the witnesses to please respond promptly. So if there is no further business, without objection, this Committee is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] A P P E N D I X [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] [all]