Bruce Westerman: “Mr. Speaker, let's look at the issue at hand here. I want to address the policy issue and the weakness in the argument…”

“Mr. Speaker, let's look at the issue at hand here. I want to address the policy issue and the weakness in the argument that we could restrict mining companies to 10 percent Chinese ownership. That is a bad policy decision. It is a bad policy decision, Mr. Speaker, because if you are the Chinese Communist Party and see a mine is getting ready to happen in the United States, and it is going to be done by a company that is traded publicly, you could go buy 10.1 percent and stop the project. We don't need that kind of policy. Plus, that policy doesn't apply to the jurisdiction of this bill. If a policy like that needs to be designed, then it needs to go through the Financial Services Committee. Also, don't think, Mr. Speaker, that our opposition on this--being China, for the most part--will not play dirty. What they do is when they see any kind of mining project or processing facility considered in the United States, they dump product onto the global market, driving the price down to make the economics such that nobody would invest in that project. Fortunately, that is being addressed. Just this week, the administration announced something called the vault, which will be a repository for critical minerals. It will be similar to our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We will have strategic critical mineral reserves.”