Biden Wants to Cut Into China's Electric Battery Dominance

President Joe Biden highlighted his efforts to counter China’s dominance of the electric battery market as he touted domestic efforts to mine and process lithium and rare metals necessary to create the technology that powers cars, electronics, wind turbines and more.

The Democratic president announced his administration is giving $35 million to MP Materials, a company that mines rare earth metals near the Nevada border in Southern California,. The funding will boost MP’s ability to process the materials domestically for use in U.S. manufacturing.

He also touted efforts to extract lithium from geothermal brine found around California’s Salton Sea. Biden said U.S. demand for such materials will grow by 400% to 600% over the next several decades.

“We can’t build a future that’s made in America if we ourselves are dependent on China for the materials that power the products of today and tomorrow,” Biden said. “And this is not antiChina, or anti-anything else. It’s pro-America.”

Biden spoke virtually from Washington with a group of California business and government leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Las Vegas-based MP Materials runs the Mountain Pass mine and processing facility that is the only one of its kind in North America. It extracts rare earth metals and produces a concentrate that’s exported for use in other countries. Such metals are used to produce magnets necessary for batteries in electric cars and many other items.