President Joe Biden is calling a reporter as he answers questions as he talks about his government’s plans to fight rising gas prices at the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus on Thursday, March 31, 2022 in Washington. President Joe Biden marked one of the biggest weapons in his financial arsenal on Thursday in hopes of turning the United States into a leading producer of electric vehicle batteries and the minerals used to make them. THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP-Patrick Semansky President Joe Biden marked one of the biggest weapons in his financial arsenal on Thursday in hopes of turning the United States into a leading producer of electric vehicle batteries and the minerals used to make them. Biden mandated defense law, a powerful procurement tool dating back to the Truman era and the Korean War, to force the production and processing of critical minerals and rare earth elements. “We need to embrace all the tools and technologies that will help us break free from our dependence on fossil fuels and lead us to cleaner energy more domestically,” he said. “Technologies made by American companies and American workers so that we can strengthen our domestic supply chains here and export these technologies around the world to reduce greenhouse gases.” It’s an ambition shared by America’s northern neighbor – but for Canada it will depend heavily on strong US demand to succeed. “It’s a very raw tool to be used to motivate domestic production,” said Mark Agnew, vice president of policy and government relations for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. With demand ready to skyrocket, Agnew was among a chorus of voices pushing Ottawa in recent months to take production seriously in Canada, which has rich reserves of more than 30 different critical minerals. A series of supply chain reviews ordered by Biden shortly after taking office included one from the Department of Defense that made it clear that the United States would need the help of “international partners and allies” to secure a reliable supply. which is also vital in a number of military applications. However, Biden – perhaps in view of the upcoming midterm elections in November, which are widely expected to give the Democrats a hard ride – made no mention Thursday of whether the US plans to work with foreign producers. “There was a lot of scrutiny out there talking about the potential Canada has and the role it could play,” Agnew said of the supply chain report. “The DPA (announcement) does not even seem to comment on this, which is worrying.” Thursday’s announcement was part of a series of new steps framed as a new White House effort to cut record gasoline costs – especially since the United States banned Russian oil and gas imports. Indeed, the White House is leaning back to divert responsibility for the rise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, repeatedly describing it as a “Putin price hike.” The government is putting more pressure on U.S. energy producers to increase production, urging Congress to impose “use-or-lose” tariffs on dormant wells instead of helping to reduce the shortage that keeps prices high. Biden also approves the release of an extra million barrels a day from the US Strategic Oil Reserve over the next six months, the largest release of oil reserves in history. Building what he called “a Made in America clean energy future” will help ensure U.S. national security, tackle climate change and create secure jobs for future generations, Biden said. It was a difficult balancing act: reconciling a historic release of US oil reserves and demands for higher fossil fuel production with a dramatic display of presidential power to drive the development of electric vehicles. “Look, the bottom line is this: between increasing production in the short term and reducing demand in the long term, we can get rid of our dependence on imported oil from around the world,” Biden said. “I know gas prices are painful – I understand that. My plan will help alleviate this pain today and protect it from tomorrow.” Canada is not sitting on its hands when it comes to battery production. Last week, automaker Stellantis and South Korean tech giant LG announced plans for a $ 5 billion battery plant in Windsor, OD, to be the largest single investment ever in Canada’s auto industry. But increasing the production and processing of essential raw materials is a labor-intensive process that takes time to put into operation, said Brendan Sweeney, chief executive of the Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing in London, Ont. “There is a public acknowledgment – from Quebec first, the federal government afterwards, and the province of Ontario very recently – that we have the beginning of a plan to get these things off the ground and to customers,” Sweeney said. “The two things that will be the bottleneck for this decade will be work and the delivery of goods like lithium to customers.” Canada has pledged to produce critical minerals within its borders to meet modern environmental and labor standards – a condition that is likely to slow production compared to less climate-conscious producers like China, but make the final product more politically delicious for the customer as the US “It’s a very, very, very important process and it’s what sets us apart from the African and authoritarian countries that do this thing, but it takes a long time – it’s not easy,” Sweeney said. “It will take some time to do that, if we want to do it right.”
