There are many reasons why Biden’s electric vehicle mandate will be impossible to meet. Forcing manufacturers to go overseas to get the minerals they need will only make it harder.
One might think that since the average electric vehicle requires more than twice as much copper as a combustion engine vehicle, the Biden administration would want to ramp up domestic copper production.
UNCLE JOE HAS A CAR YOU CAN'T REFUSE
President Joe Biden has mandated that two-thirds of all cars sold in 2032 must be electric vehicles.
But nope. Biden is so beholden to environmental extremists that his administration is doing everything it can to halt domestic copper mine production instead of expanding it.
Mining giant Rio Tinto has been working with the U.S. Forest Service for years to obtain the permits necessary to develop the Resolution Copper Mine in Arizona, a mine that could supply more than a quarter of domestic copper demand.
Congress voted to approve a land swap with local Native American tribes in 2014, and the Trump administration issued an environmental report approving the project in 2020. But the Biden administration rescinded that report in March 2021. The project has been on hold ever since.
Last week, the Forest Service was expected to republish the original Trump administration environmental report, but instead, the Forest Service said it still is not done reviewing the project and had no timeline for when it would be completed. “The department has not yet identified a timeframe for completing its review,” a Biden administration lawyer said.
Local leaders whose communities depend on the mine for jobs were not happy with the Biden administration’s delay. “Every time there’s another delay to this process means that investors in our community may decide this isn’t the place to invest because the federal government can’t make up its mind,” Mila Besich, the Democratic mayor of Superior, told Mining.com.
Republicans in Congress have correctly identified the federal permitting process as one of the biggest barriers to domestic infrastructure development. Their Lower Energy Costs Act would set timelines for all federal environmental reviews that would make it harder for Democrats beholden to environmental activists to delay key projects like Biden is doing to the Resolution Copper Mine.