The Biden Administration Should Deny China Access to American Lithium | Opinion

For years, we've known that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pillaging Africa for rare earth elements and other raw materials integral to modern life. What disturbingly few people know is how close Beijing came—and might still be coming—to doing the same thing in America.

Lithium Americas, a Canadian company whose single largest shareholder has direct ties to the CCP, wants to mine the largest lithium deposit in North America with the benefit of taxpayer-funded loans—and the Biden administration needs to step in before it's too late.

For years, the CCP and its state-owned enterprises have spread around the globe in a quest to dominate the mining and processing of critical minerals like lithium—a key element in electric vehicle batteries. Now, under the terms of a new loan program administered by the Biden administration, our top global adversary could be in line to obtain taxpayer-funded partial control of a massive lithium mine in Nevada, which is known to contain roughly a quarter of the world's lithium deposits.

In 2020, Nevada's Democratic governor Steve Sisolak awarded almost $9 million in tax abatements to Lithium Nevada Corp., the Nevada-based subsidiary of Lithium Americas, to develop a mine in northern Nevada. In April of this year, Lithium Americas announced that it had submitted a formal loan application to the U.S. Department Of Energy's Advanced Technologies Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, which the company said would cover "the majority" of "capital costs" associated with its Nevada mining operation.

All of this, of course, is problematic because the largest shareholder of Lithium Americas is Ganfeng Lithium. The Washington Free Beacon has reported in disturbing detail on Ganfeng's ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Ganfeng's 2021 annual report describes one board member as "a member of the Communist Party of China" and its president is closely connected to a suite of organizations that feed into the Chinese Communist Party. Ganfeng itself is also under investigation in China for suspected insider trading.

Lithium Americas, ostensibly to quell concerns over its links to the CCP, is splitting up its North and South American mining operations, a move Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) calls a "shell game." The problem of state control remains, however, because Ganfeng will remain the largest shareholder of both companies. Despite Lithium Americas' downplaying of its ties to the CCP, publicly available information is enough to raise red flags both inside the government and among the general public.

Now that Republicans are poised to retake the House—and to start meaningful oversight of the Biden administration—deals like this will face substantial scrutiny. In a recent piece in Foreign Policy, Matthew Pottinger, Matthew Johnson, and David Feith warned that Xi Jinping hopes to "replace the modern nation-state system with a new order featuring Beijing at its pinnacle." Will we let him?

If the Treasury Department won't block this deal, House Republicans should step in. The administration did take a promising step in banning the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, but the Department of Energy just announced it is awarding hundreds of millions of dollars to a different lithium battery company–one poised to be removed from the NASDAQ due to shady financing–which operates primarily out of Huzhou, China, underscoring the importance of House Republican oversight.

"Congress should absolutely investigate this acquisition [if the Biden administration won't] as we need critical minerals to remain competitive with the global economy and for our own national security," Rep. Waltz told the Daily Caller. The future of America's rare earth minerals—and our fight against communist China—depends on House Republicans holding the line on bad deals like this one.

Matthew Foldi is a conservative journalist and former U.S. congressional candidate from Maryland. Twitter: @MatthewFoldi.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.