American industry has a voracious appetite for minerals. The manufacture of a typical automobile, for example, requires not only such familiar metals as iron, copper, lead, and aluminum, but also such less-familiar metals as manganese, platinum, molybdenum, and vanadium. For the time being, the United States has an abundant supply of many critical minerals. The country as of 2002 is essentially self-sufficient in such major metals as iron, copper, lead, and aluminum. In each case, we import less than a quarter of the metals used in industrial production.

There are some minerals, however, that do not occur naturally to any considerable extent in the United States. For example, the United States has essentially no reserves of columbium (niobium), strontium, manganese, tantalum, or cobalt; sheet mica; or bauxite ore. To the extent that these minerals are important in various industrial processes, they are regarded as critical or strategic...