U.S. needs to reduce import of metals, minerals

American manufacturing is more dependent on the metals and minerals access than ever before. Yet, we are tied with Papau New Guinea for the time it takes to permit a new mine. Seven to 10 years is the average delay period. Waiting for technology metals will severely hamper our ability to innovate our advance weapons systems that are increasingly metals intensive.

The U.S. has domestic resources for 18 of those 19 metals and minerals that we now exclusively import from abroad. However, a maze of government regulations has made mining them too difficult.

Reform could begin with streamlining the permitting process to get rid of redundancies by allowing the processes to run concurrently. All this would take is for the White House to take the first step toward a strategic resource policy that asserts the importance of domestic metals and minerals exploration.

Of the 19 strategic metals and minerals, for which the U.S. is currently 100 percent import dependent, 11 of them come from China, who is really not of our trusted allies.

This is a time when President Obama could use his supreme power to do something positive by helping to reduce the red tape.

Gerald W. Ray, Spokane