Report: A Global Race to the Top for Critical Minerals

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The SAFE Center for Critical Minerals Strategy has released its inaugural report “A Global Race to the Top: Using Transparency to Secure Critical Mineral Supply Chains.”  The report examines the extent to which the United States can work with major allies and, per Inflation Reduction Act requirements, countries with which it shares a free trade agreement, to generate new, globally distributed critical mineral supply chains that are not dependent on the Chinese Communist Party to access the building blocks of a more electrified, connected, and autonomous future. This report also examines how a shared agreement among these countries to require responsible mining standards as a condition of market access—or financial penalties for failure to meet those standards—will be necessary to achieve a measure of cost parity for developing mining projects outside CCP control.

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The report breaks new ground in several areas:

  1. Analysis of existing large-scale, voluntary mining standards to inform the creation of a common baseline.
  2. Analysis on the extent to which the United States can work with major allies (NATO and majority non-NATO allies and FTA countries) to meet expected U.S. demand.
  3. Recommendations on how to operationalize a global “race to the top” and truly diversify critical mineral and battery supply chains, via:
  • Incorporate basic principles embraced by commonly accepted large-scale, voluntary mining standards into existing multi-lateral and bi-lateral trade arrangements, and establish new sector-specific trading agreements with major minerals consumers like the EU and Japan and minerals-rich countries like Argentina.
  • Provide additional authority to U.S. government agencies—Bureau of Land Management, EPA, Mine Health and Safety Administration—to inspect practices at mines as a condition of accessing U.S. market.
  • Establish detailed metrics aligned with the basic principles embraced by commonly accepted large-scale, voluntary mining standards that are then displayed on a digital identifier affixed to the window sticker (aka the Monroney Label) on each EV sold in the United States.

The report was produced at the direction of Abigail Wulf, SAFE Vice President of Critical Minerals Strategy. The report is a product of the Ambassador Alfred Hoffman, Jr. Center for Critical Minerals Strategy team.