GOP Lawmakers Raise Alarm About Critical Minerals From China Being Tainted by Forced Labor

House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) questions U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 28, 2022. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Two Texas Republican lawmakers are expressing concerns that critical minerals tainted by forced labor in China could be imported into the United States.

Rep. Michael McCaul, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. August Pfluger, ranking member of the Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and counterterrorism, outlined their concerns in a Sept. 29 letter to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Chris Magnus. Their letter was first reported by Breitbart News.

“America imports a large quantity of critical minerals from China, which has a stranglehold over the global trade, especially of processed critical minerals and rare earths and leaves America reliant on Chinese exports,” the two lawmakers wrote.

Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) speaks during a hearing in Washington on March 10, 2021. Ken Cedeno/Pool/Getty Images

Currently, the U.S. government considers 50 different critical minerals as vital to the United States’ national security and economy. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), these minerals include lithium and cobalt, key ingredients used for rechargeable batteries, and many rare earth metals such as neodymium and samarium used in defense applications.

Between 2017 and 2020, 78 percent of rare earth compounds and metals imported were from China, according to the USGS (pdf).

“Due to the importance of critical minerals to such a broad range of applications, the Chinese Communist Party leadership has long made dominating the supply chain a priority,” the lawmakers wrote.

Now, China dominates the world’s market for rare earths, with nearly 60 percent in mined production and more than 85 percent of processing capacity, according to (pdf) the U.S. Department of Commerce.

However, China’s market dominance has come via “unfair trade practices, minimal concern for environmental standards, huge state financial backing for Chinese critical mineral firms, and the use of forced labor,” the lawmakers wrote.

Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act 

McCaul and Pfluger, citing recent reports from The New York Times and Bloomberg Law, pointed out that Chinese companies in the critical mineral industry have exploited forced labor in China’s far-western Xinjiang region. As a result, they said that companies importing these Xinjiang-originated mineral products could be in violation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA).

“Although Xinjiang-originated polysilicon and cotton have received the most attention, recent reports combined with the extreme difficulty in tracing the supply chain for critical minerals indicate an extremely high risk that imports of these products could violate the Act,” the lawmakers wrote.

Polysilicon is a key raw material for making solar panels and semiconductor chips.

The UFLPA, which President Joe Biden signed into law in December 2021 and went into effect in June, bans imports from Xinjiang unless companies can prove products weren’t produced with forced labor.

Police officers patrolling Kashgar city, in China’s western Xinjiang region, on June 4, 2019. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

In Xinjiang, more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are currently being held in Chinese internment camps, where they face forced labor, torture, sexual abuse, political indoctrination, forced abortion, and forced sterilization. The U.S. government has characterized the communist regime’s persecution of Uyghurs as genocide.

In September, Germany-based advocacy group World Uyghur Congress took to Twitter, calling on the CBP to “enforce the UFLPA more robustly.”

“Despite the existence of the US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (#UFLPA), shipping records and customs data suggest that #UyghurForcedLabour goods are still making their way onto the US market,” the group wrote, citing an article from the South China Morning Post.

The article, citing data from Chinese customs, pointed out that Xinjiang-based entities exported $56.8 million worth of goods to the United States in August, a record high in 10 months.

The two Republicans wanted Magnus to answer several questions by Oct. 15, including the following:

“How is CBP currently screening the imports of processed critical minerals or products containing critical minerals originating from China?

“What resources does the CBP need from Congress to effectively accomplish its mission of ensuring that products made using forced labor do not reach American shores?”