Is Greenland the answer to America’s critical need for minerals and metals and alarming overreliance on Chinese mineral supply chains? Hardly. 

The best way for the United States to meet the soaring demand for raw materials critical to the production of everything from electric vehicles to semiconductors and fighter jets is to use the abundance of minerals and metals hidden beneath our feet.

The United States has no shortage of minerals. Our reserves tower over anything in Greenland and most other places. Our challenge for far too long has been mining policy, not geology.

Land withdrawals of mineral-rich public lands, a byzantine permitting system, and head-scratching decisions to block proposed domestic projects have not only stymied companies that want to mine in the United States but also driven dozens more from considering it.

In an executive order, President Trump declared that “it is the policy of the United States … to establish our position as the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals, including rare earth minerals, which will create jobs and prosperity at home, strengthen supply chains for the United States and its allies, and reduce the global influence of malign and adversarial states.”

Despite flirtations with Greenland’s frozen resources, the Trump team seems to get what the Joe Biden folks did not: domestic production is the surest path to American mineral security.

While the Biden administration did recognize the urgency of our minerals problem, it tried to solve it with one arm tied behind our back. In fact, it did the tying. The administration zeroed in on metals needed for electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries, backing a few significant projects but dragging its feet or blocking many other critically essential U.S. mines. Biden went looking for minerals from nearly anywhere but here, even supporting mining projects in places like Angola and the Congo, which have environmental and safety records that pale compared to the United States.

Unfortunately, Trump has inherited a sobering reality: U.S. mineral insecurity has never been worse. Today, we’re far more dependent on Chinese-dominated mineral supply chains than we have ever been on OPEC oil. And mineral demand is soaring.

While the United States has taken steps to refocus and galvanize U.S. mining policy, efforts to ramp up domestic production will fall flat if Congress can’t come together to take on permitting. A study last summer from a leading research group found that it takes 29 years to bring a mine online in the United States — longer than any other country except Zambia.

Despite our vast resources, including a copper endowment equal to that of Canada and Australia combined, and lithium resources double that of Australia, the world’s largest producer, our broken mine-permitting process must be streamlined if we stand any chance of turning our mining promise into reality.

The Greenland minerals idea is a reflection of our policy failures. We’ve neglected our resources, created barriers to mining investment, and allowed a permitting system that has turned what should be a source of strength into a vulnerability.

Chasing minerals trapped above the Arctic Circle is not the solution we need. Finally, reshaping and reenergizing domestic mining policy is the only way forward. Now is the time for the administration and Congress to make it happen.