'Keep Their Resources Out Of Beijing's Grip': Cruz Calls For Mineral Deals With African Countries

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During a Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke about critical mineral deals with African countries.

Transcript

00:00Fully agree.

00:02We will do one final round of questions and then we will wrap up.

00:06Mr. Woodard, I want to discuss prioritization of efforts.

00:10The Department of Interior has a list of 50 critical minerals.

00:14The Department of Energy has a list of 18.

00:17The Defense Logistics Agency has a list of 62.

00:21When you combine the three lists, there are 13 minerals that all three consider critical.

00:28The existence of different lists makes prioritization for U.S. investment increasingly important.

00:34There should be a clear message to the private sector on where the focus should be to establish

00:40a unified approach to investing in the critical mineral supply chain.

00:45In your judgment, what critical minerals should the United States be targeting in Africa specifically,

00:51and how should we prioritize given today's supply chain vulnerabilities?

00:55Yeah, that's a very helpful question, Senator.

01:02When we consider critical minerals, as you mentioned, there are so many that you could

01:06look at.

01:07Figuring out how to categorize them is a challenge.

01:11One way that I like to do it is I divide them sometimes into four kind of buckets.

01:17There's the battery metals like copper, lithium, cobalt, the rare earths that we've talked about,

01:24especially things like dysprosium and terbium for permanent magnets.

01:30You can create a category of kind of defense industrial needs minerals like antimony, and you can look

01:37at something like the low volume processing byproducts, gallium, germanium, scandium, which are a very interesting

01:45category because these are not mined directly, but they're acquired as kind of waste byproducts of smelting processes.

01:56And in China, for example, by legislation, many smelters have to capture gallium and germanium.

02:07It's expensive.

02:08It requires an investment to do that.

02:11In the West, outside of China, there's no such legal requirement, and so to do that requires

02:17some kind of incentive because these are, again, low volume but very important kinds of things.

02:24And so each of these categories that I've kind of depicted here all require sort of slightly

02:30different approaches to solve the problem behind them, but all of them are challenges, right?

02:38When we get back to the battery metals, you know, copper, it's a scale problem in a sense, right?

02:46So the copper mines that we have in the United States, the grades are far lower than in a place

02:53like the DRC.

02:54So just for an example, in the United States, a copper mine might have a grade of like 0.3% of copper.

03:03Mines in the DRC have a copper grade more like 2.5%, so like eight times higher.

03:09So you can imagine how the economics of that is dramatically different, and so each of those

03:17requires very different kind of approaches, if you will.

03:21So I guess the bottom line message for all this is that it's important to keep in mind,

03:28as we're talking about strategies for these minerals, that there's not just one strategy out there.

03:34Each of these minerals is unique in their own way, and it will require kind of a different

03:39kind of approach, and we'll have to kind of sort them in different ways that make sense,

03:46like the way that I've outlined here below, but there are also other ways you could do it.

03:49But that is kind of one way to kind of think about how you would create the approach you would need

03:54by categorizing these things effectively.

03:58I think that was a very helpful answer, and I hope that U.S. investors and companies

04:03listen to that answer that you just gave. I think that's helpful for prioritizing, and I hope also

04:09the administration gives weight to the answer you just gave, because if we don't prioritize,

04:14it means we're prioritizing nothing, and that's not a path to success.

04:19The final set of questions, Ambassador Pratt, I'm going to direct to you.

04:23The Trump administration has taken unprecedented steps to end more than 30 years of conflict in

04:28the eastern DRC. In the next month, the leaders of the DRC in Rwanda are expected to come to

04:33Washington and formally sign a peace agreement that includes the regional economic integration

04:38framework. This is not just a political deal. It's a chance for African nations to build real

04:44prosperity and keep their resources out of Beijing's grip. Critical minerals will play a major role in the

04:51final agreement. The DRC holds the largest concentration of cobalt in the world, plus large amounts of

04:58copper, lithium, tantalum, and more. If this peace deal holds, it's a real opportunity to bring stability

05:07to the region, to boost our African partners, and to safeguard U.S. interests – all while countering

05:13the Chinese Communist Party. Two questions. What tangible commitments has the United States received

05:25from President Shizakedi's administration for the U.S. DRC cooperation in critical minerals?

05:32Number one. And number two, how can this agreement be used as the blueprint for future deals across the

05:38continent? Thank you. Thank you, Senator. We were blessed that at the beginning of this year when the

05:49conflict broke out, my colleague mentioned the assault on an area close to a tin mine where a U.S.

05:58company was operating. We got involved. I was with Senior Advisor Boulos when we brought the parties

06:04together. They were in Washington. We said, we need to stop this immediately. And that needs to be the

06:09first step. And that was where we began this peace process four months ago, five months ago now.

06:17The economic piece of this will deliver for U.S. companies, especially in lithium and cobalt that you

06:26mentioned, in central and southern Congo. It will also – because those offers have been made and they're

06:34in live negotiations with the government of the DRC right now. And so that's been successful and those

06:43commitments are there. We also are hoping to formalize the coltan sector in eastern Congo so that

06:51we can have more involvement of U.S. companies, major U.S. companies that rely on coltan and their

06:57products, which right now aren't sourcing from coltan from eastern Congo because they know that it's

07:03coming from areas that have completely unacceptable labor standards and that this is a totally informal

07:11sector approach. And so we hope that through this agreement the countries will live up to their

07:16commitments. They have told us that they will. And part of the strategy of getting them to the White

07:24House once they have – they're well on the road to implementing this agreement is that they live up

07:29to those commitments that they've made to us, including on formalization of the coltan sector in eastern

07:35Congo. Thank you. That's helpful. Ranking Member Booker.

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