INTERVIEW | How China Is Dominating African Minerals, and Why US Should Care

An energy expert is sounding the alarm over the Chinese Communist Party's dominance of African minerals. 

"It's such an important topic because President [Joe] Biden and the governor of California, Gov. [Gavin] Newsom have the goal of having all new-vehicle sales in the United States battery-powered electric by 2035, so if we're going to have all electric vehicles with batteries, we need the minerals for those batteries, and the United States used to produce those minerals," says Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) 

Lithium brine and cobalt and nickel ores are among the minerals needed for electric vehicles with batteries, Furchtgott-Roth says. 

"As recently as 1990, the U.S. was the world's No.1 producer of those minerals. Today, we are in seventh place. Even though we have vast mineral reserves worth trillions of dollars, we are now 100% dependent on imports for some 17 key minerals, and China is a significant source for many of those minerals," she says. 

Furchtgott-Roth explains how China "can go to Africa and purchase vast tracts of land in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, where it can get out the cobalt," and that Beijing "doesn't have problems with using children to mine for these minerals or using slave labor in Xinjiang to mine for these minerals."

"So, China has all kinds of business advantages that we in the United States do not have," she says.

Furchtgott-Roth joins today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss what the U.S. can do to have more influence in Africa, why the U.S. should be more active in reducing China's role in regard to African minerals, and the connection between "environmental, social, and governance" policies and China.

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