Washington, DC – This morning, Drew Horn testified before the House Ways & Means Committee in support of reshoring America’s critical mineral supply chains thus ensuring our resurgence of leadership in critical minerals which fuel our national defense assets, the bedrock of our homeland security and the security of our allies that demand our control. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) tax credits were projected to directly benefit U.S. companies, especially the small and disadvantaged among others. GreenMet’s President and CEO pounded home that loopholes in execution of these credits that must be closed to prevent those with bad intent from leveraging our own tax code against us.

“As currently drafted, key terms are undefined, so that any foreign monopolistic company such as those backed by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can use IRA tax credits to the disadvantage of our free market economy. It’s as if the Chinese government had a hand in writing these credits directly for their own benefit. This is a simple form of Chinese representation in U.S. governmental workings without a vote in the matter but with a tax benefit coveted by American small businesses and workers heading to the Western Hemisphere,” Horn responded to a question from the committee.

“The CCP has walked right through the open door to our supply chain industry without any barrier or impediment and has set up shop on our shores. They are just the first foreign entity to quickly stand-up competition in alignment with a big domestic corporation thus weakening our ability to lead this country to a new independence which is vital to our very national security.”

“Gaining a geographic foothold was not enough, now we have offered up tax credits to help expose further soft targets in our economy, intelligence, and competitive intellectual property with foreign eyes and ears among us. We must assume any Chinese presence in the U.S. comes along with intrusions into our private and personal information, our community strongholds, our institutions of higher learning and our government entities at all levels be they local, state, or national.”

“If the current tax credit policy remains unchallenged and unchanged, we are playing right into the hands of these bad actors whose goal is 100% dominance in owning, mining, processing, and implementing critical minerals. They don’t do it better than we do but are subsidized by the whole of the CCP. The U.S. used to be the leader in advancing new energy technologies until offshoring these innovations in the 1990s began.”

“Several processes are ready to come online but, when U.S. entities continue to source Chinese and other covered entities’ resources diverting funds and jobs across the ocean, it allows the Chinese to forward their ultimate goal of world dominance.”

“The vulnerability of supply chains for critical infrastructure is acute and self-inflicted. The U.S. and allies have allowed themselves to become captive to Chinese cartels that control all aspects of the critical mineral.”

“We ignored the massive vulnerability handed to PRC and they reacted by deploying a Trojan Horse at light speed on our soil to exploit the current U.S. tax code.”

“We need to do all we can to close the door to hostile intentions and restore our sovereignty in mining and processing of our domestic resources. These resources fuel our national defense base and solidify our ability to operate both domestically and abroad.”

“I still believe that our free market economies, which made possible the American industrial revolution, can rise to the moment with a bigger, better, cleaner new energy renaissance.”

Find a link to his written testimony here.

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GreenMet (www.Greenmet.com) is focused on developing the infrastructure for sustainable, reliable, and secure critical mineral supply chains to meet North American energy and technology needs. Based in Washington, D.C., GreenMet’s mission is to elevate the importance of responsible critical mineral mining, mineral processing, and metallurgy. The company works to promote domestic mineral resource development as integral to U.S. trade and defense, energy, and fiscal policy.

 

According to Executive Order 13817, “Critical Minerals” are defined as a non-fuel mineral or mineral material essential to the economic and national security of the United States, the supply chain of which is vulnerable to disruption, and that serves an essential function in the manufacturing of a product, the absence of which would have significant consequences for our economy or our national security.