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Secure critical mineral supply chains through processing, recycling, substitution, transparent permitting, cleanup bonds, community benefits, and public supply-risk dashboards.
Verification Status
AI-researched, unverifiedLast Reviewed
Jul 12, 2026
Cited Sources
6
What is failing, what we would change, and the conclusion we are willing to defend.
Critical minerals sit underneath semiconductors, batteries, grid hardware, defense systems, robots, aircraft, medical devices, and clean-energy supply chains. The United States should not answer that dependence with either extraction-at-any-cost or import dependence disguised as environmental virtue.
The Innovation Party's position is mine, process, substitute, recycle, and govern the harms. USGS's 2025 critical minerals list contains 60 minerals and reflects updated assessment of economic and national-security disruption risk. DOE's critical materials work evaluates materials by energy importance and supply risk, while DOE funding now supports domestic processing, recycling, and battery-material manufacturing.
Publish supply-risk dashboards for critical minerals, including import concentration, domestic processing, recycling capacity, defense exposure, energy exposure, and substitute readiness.
Fund domestic processing, refining, recycling, and battery-material manufacturing where the supply-risk case is public and the environmental controls are enforceable.
Use permitting deadlines for mines and processing facilities only with baseline monitoring, cleanup bonding, water protection, worker safety, tribal consultation, and community benefit agreements.
Prioritize recycling, recovery from manufacturing scrap, and substitution research where those routes can reduce extraction pressure.
Build critical-materials workforce pathways through apprenticeships, community colleges, mine safety, metallurgy, recycling, environmental monitoring, and advanced manufacturing.
Use federal procurement and loan programs to buy resilient supply chains with safeguards against permanent dependency on any one favored firm or chemistry.
The party should be honest about the trade. A clean-energy, chip, defense, and robotics economy uses materials. The responsible position is to reduce risk and harm in the supply chain rather than pretend the supply chain is optional.
Turn frustration into useful pressure.
If this position misses evidence or a lived consequence, challenge it. If it holds up, help test it locally and connect it to the issues around it.