Coordinator: Good afternoon and thank you
all for standing by. I'd like to inform all
participants that your lines will be on a
listen-only mode until the question-and-answer
session of the call. At that time if you would
like to ask a question, please press Star
1, ensure that your phone is unmuted and state
your name clearly when prompted. Today's call
is also being recorded. If there are any objections
you may disconnect at this time. I will now
turn the call over to Ms. (Wendy Peebles).
Ma'am, you may begin.
(Wendy Peebles): Thank you, operator. Good
afternoon everyone. My name is (Wendy Peebles),
Lead Outreach Coordinator Census Bureau Economic
Management division. With me today our experts
from the US Census Bureau and our sister agency
International Trade Administration who will
be discussing valuable information on the
metals and critical minerals industry, along
with its resources, helpful tools to include
the Schedule B search engine and the global
market finder for attracting global markets.
The Census team is happy to collaborate with
International Trade Administration to bring
you this webinar. I'd like to start by thanking
everyone for joining today's webinar. We have
an informative webinar plan, and I'd like
to go over a few items before we start. As
the operator mentioned, the webinar is being
recorded and for confidentiality reasons,
we ask that during the question and answer
period that will occur at the end of today's
webinar, that you only provide your first
name and do not disclose your company's name
or any other sensitive information.
The presenters will address as many questions
as possible during the webinar. The contact
information will be provided for further follow
up if your questions are not addressed today.
A few days following the webinar, the transcript,
recording, and presentation will be posted
to the Web site. I'd like to introduce the
presenters for today. Again, I'm (Wendy Peebles),
I'm your host.
The presenters from Census we have Ashley
Albritton, Statistician, International Trade
Indicator Micro Analysis Branch, and Henock
Kebede, Section Chief, International Trade
Indicator Macro Analysis Branch, and from
the International Trade Administration, we
have Gary Stanley, Director, Office of Materials
Industries, International Trade Administration,
Salim Bhabhrawala, Senior International Trade
Specialist, Office of Materials Industries.
So today's agenda, we will have an introduction
to the online databases and data analysis
tools. You'll be provided with some examples
of tools and the actions, products and services
by ITA offers to promote export and facilitate
trade. And once again, at the end, we will
have our Q&A.
So at this time, I'm going to turn it over
to Miss (Ashley).
(Ashley Albritton): Thank you, (Wendy). Once
again, I'm (Ashley) with the micro analysis
branch here of the economic indicators division
and here's my contact information, ashley.f.albritton@census.gov
or you can call my direct line at 301-763-1158
or you can call our schedule B hotline at
1-800-549-0595 select option two, or you can
send us an email to our schedule B mailbox
which we check frequently at eid.scheduleb@census.gov.
Today, I'll be helping you all navigate our
schedule B Web site in order to get your schedule
B number which is also known as your export
code. We will begin by going to our schedule
B Web site which is www.census.gov/scheduleb
and you see that it takes you to our foreign
trade homepage.
From there, you can see that there are a few
different links that we can select. Right
here we have the search where we can search
via keyword, we have the Browse button, where
we can search- we can search the Schedule
B book by chapter, we have the download where
you can download the schedule B book, and
then we have the Obsolete Codes link, where
you can see the links that are no longer in
use and the codes that are currently being
used in place of those.
And also if you scroll down, you'll see that
we have the previous year's schedule B books,
as well as the previous years' obsolete codes.
Okay, so what we're going to do is we're actually
going to start with our search link. We're
going to click on that in order to classify
a couple of commodities today.
Now next to describe your product box you
see that there's a little "i"right here - this
actually gives you a couple of different options
as to how you can search our schedule-B search
engine. If you hover your mouse over that
"i"you can see that you can search by giving
a brief description.
If you have the beginning of the schedule
B number, you can start from there or if you
have the CAS number you can use that as well.
Also, if you scroll down to the bottom of
the page, you see the contact information
again, as well as the feedback link, if you'd
like to leave feedback, and there's also a
help link if you need additional assistance.
So we will begin by typing in rare earths
which will be our first commodity that we
will look at. So if we type that in, and then
we hit classify and if you scroll down, you'll
see that rare earths falls under Chapter 28,
which is for inorganic chemicals; organic
or inorganic compounds of precious metals,
of rare earth metals, of radioactive elements
or of isotopes. Okay?
Now the chapter and heading it falls under
will be 2805 and you can see a brief description
in the middle. Under that you see your full
10-digit code, which will be 2805 dot 30 dot
0000. And you see the full description right
here in the middle, as well as you see the
unit of measure for that Schedule B number,
which will be in kilograms.
Now, all of these classifications won't be
as simple as that one. So we're actually going
to try another one that's little more difficult.
We're going to use titanium and once we type
titanium and hit classify if you scroll down,
you'll see this area where it says "Assumed
Characteristics"you actually want to click
on that to make sure that it's guiding you
in the right direction to make sure that it's,
that everything that you have applied to your
commodity is selected correctly.
So for us, everything is correct. So we're
going to leave that alone. We're going to
scroll down to where says tell us more about
it and we're going to select what state our
titanium is in and there will be an "Unwrought".
So as we scroll down, we see that it falls
under Chapter 81 and the subheading will be
chapter 8108, titanium and articles thereof
including waste and scrap. This for unwrought
titanium and powders. Okay?
So we have three options here, you have the
Sponge, Ingots, as well as Other. Now it's
not a sponge, so we're going to eliminate
that and it's not ingots at all. So we will
actually use this last 10-digit code which
will be 8108 dot 20 dot 0090 which is for
Other which is kind of considered our basket
category. And as you can also see that that
unit of measure is in kilograms as well.
Also, once again, if you scroll down at any
point on this schedule B search engine you
see the contact information if you need any
other help any other additional assistance.
All right?
Now, we do have global reach blog posts, as
well as export training webinars that are
on our Web site that can give you additional
help as far as finding your schedule B number,
exporting with import classification numbers,
classifying your product as well as the Spanish
version of our export classification webinar.
Alright, so I'm going to pass this on to Hennock.
(Henock Kebede): Thank you, Ashley. Again,
my name is Henock Kebede. I work in the international
trade indicator macro analysis branch and
essentially, we are responsible for disseminating
International Trade Statistics and our monthly
indicator which is called the FT 900.
My contact information is on the screen now,
I'll pause a little bit so that you guys have
a chance to take a look at it. Before I move
on to my presentation. So we are the official
source for -- sorry about that -- the official
source for U.S. export and import goods and
responsible also for issuing regulations governing
the reporting of all export shipments from
the United States.
And what I'm going to do in this presentation
is give you a flavor of two tools that we
use and our users use to access international
trade data. One of them is USA Trade Online
and the other one is an export our Global
Market Finder, an export tool that gives exporters
or people interested in investigating export
markets for their products.
So what I'm going to do is a jump in to those
sites and go through a couple of examples
using the HS code that (Ashley) just used.
So the first one is USA trade online and how
do I get there is you type usatrade.census.gov
that will get you to the site. And basically
what you have is the toolbar at the top that
is common to the census.gov Web site but we
have a box here that if you are a new user
that would allow you to sign up for USA trade
online it's a subscription based and then
a couple of buttons that will be more useful
for your particular account. One of the things
that we are going to go to is we are eliminating
the need to sign up and creating an account
in the very near future, that way you don't
have to create an account. However, if you
want to save a report, then you would be required
to sign up for an account.
But if you're just coming in and downloading,
creating a report and downloading, you wouldn't
need that in the near future. So let me go
to the data itself. And the way the data is
organized is through imports and exports but
for different classification systems. So we
have our district level data, which is the
most detailed level data that we have at the
10-digit at the top and then we have port
level data which is at the six digit level
and then we have two state data sets for HS
and NAICS. And then we have an aggregation
for NAICS district level data.
So for the purpose of our webinar today, I'm
going to go to the most detailed one for exports
and use the commodity code to run a couple
of reports. So typically, people come to us
asking how to do I run a time series data
for my product or for my commodity, and what
can I analyze my data with in terms of country
or district. So I'll go through that and do
a quick report. So you guys have a good flavor
of the extent of the capability that we have
here.
So the first thing that shows up on the screen
on the right is a commodity page, this is
where you search your commodity. On the left
is the variables that you can lay out your
report in. We have measures commodity country
this is another variable that we use for domestic
and foreign exports, district and (time).
So, the commodity that we're going to use
is titanium. A couple of options that you
can do here is you if you know the code itself,
you can directly go to the chapter and then
drill down. The other way is just like the
Schedule B we have a search box and type titanium.
And then you have to go through a slew of
options to select which is your code. So our
code is 8108200090. So I'll search through
here and I find it here. Okay.
So the other option is really drilling down
here is chapter 81 and the reason that one
can prefer this one over the other is this
will help you go through the different subfamilies
and four digit and six or 10-digit and then
to see the different options that you have
in for titanium. So it's 80, it would be 81
and 8108 -- 810820 and then you find this
one.
Okay now that we have selected commodity,
the next thing that we're going to select
is the objective measure for the objective
variables, where we need to analyze our data,
and so it's typically value, and then and
quantity. And then after that, we can go into
time, and select five-year data.
I will start with the current year 2018, 2017,
2016 and 2015. So at this point, I'm ready
to view my report and when I click report,
right off the bat, I'll see that we don't
have any values for 2015 and 2016. So the
time series really doesn't give me a whole
lot in this view. So what I would do is, how
about if I try to see the trends for monthly
data and the way we go about that is we go
to time again, and I deselect the annual options.
And then we have another tab here is called
time series and if we click on the monthly
choice there, you have a monthly aggregation
or for the time series and we select whatever
periods that we wanted to start with. So the
most recent one is November, so if we leave
it there, every time that you update this
report, it comes to the most recent month.
So next month, it will be December, so you
don't have to manually change it. The period
since we saw only three years of data is available,
will go to 36 months and we'll go monthly.
I will update this time series and now get
a report and the layout of the report is where
you have the time series in columns, and then
it extends horizontally.
So I would probably want to change that to
have a better view of my data and the way
you do that is you go to this icon, and if
you hover over it, it will say, rearrange
report. In this case, what I would like to
do is have time and rows, and the measures
in columns because I only have one commodity,
I really don't want to see it in the table.
Since I already know and then let's see what
kind of view that I get.
So it's a much better view. I can sort the
data but like this is a data that I would
either download to create graphs in Excel
to see create a time series analysis for that.
Okay, what if I would like to add country?
How would I do that? Because we have 36 rows
here. If we have country, then I would look
at annual data. But let me go ahead and select
country first and I'll select all countries
under world total. And then I'll change the
time, I'll deselect monthly and I'll go back
to the Members and select five years, in this
case it's three years since we already know
that 2015 and 2016 don't have any data.
And then click report and that will give me
something again like that needs to be reorganized.
So the way I would do that, again is I will
have countries and this time in rows so I
can sort it by time. Okay, so switch places
for country and let's see what that gives
us. So we have a table that has a lot of empty
values or empty cells, and we can suppress
those so that we have a better view for analyzing
our data.
And again, we go to this features tool and
then suppress those values. And the way I
would go about it is suppress the rows where
the conditions are empty or zero and this
will give me a much succinct data table, which
gives me the option to sort it now. I could
sort it high to low using currency or numbers
by value and for titanium, United Kingdom,
Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada, our top
five, if I sort it by quantity it gives me
resources a little bit and United Kingdom
Canada is number two now was number five earlier.
So this gives you a quick flavor of how you
could do time series data. In USA trade online,
you can save this data within USA trade online
or you can download it and the download option
also gives you an email feature that you can
email to anyone. And you could download it.
The rule of thumb is we use comma delimited
ASCII format or CSV for downloading and multidimensional
so that you have all the dimensions covered
in your report. If you click OK, you will
have an Excel or a CSV report that pops up
and here you can manipulate your data as you
would wish. All right.
The other tool that I want to cover is called
global market Finder and the way we get to
global market finder is let me go to census.gov
and you can search the global market finder
in the search box. Didn't have to capitalize
that, but I did anyway. So global market finder
is atop on the list, and you can click on
that to access that.
Alternatively, you can also use Google, global
market finder census if you type that it would
be the first one on the list. We have a search
box of Schedule B, just like Schedule B and
USA trade online. For this particular code
will use the same titanium commodity code.
Two ways of doing it. Typing titanium in here,
or alternatively typing the code and then
jumping into the code itself.
So I'll type titanium and then scroll down
to see 8108 right here. When I click that
the first thing that pops up is a map and
then the map pictorially shows the top five
in red dots. So we have Chile, United Kingdom,
France, Germany and Japan as the top five
potential markets for titanium and using 2018
data. And, why we would use global market
finder is to get a snapshot of, Hey, I have
a product, a commodity that I'm interested
in terms of investigating potential markets
outside of the U. S., where can I find out
quickly? -
If we use UTO, USA trade online, you can do
that. But and then we can get extensive data
going all the way back to '92 for some data
sets, but this one gives you a quick snapshot,
a quick starting point for your analysis.
The other tool in global market finder is
okay now that I know these are the markets,
how do I evaluate in terms of the unit value
for that particular market.
So what you would get is a scatter plot and
the 45-degree line indicates that anything
above that line is the data points that are
preferable in terms of unit value. Anything
below would not be preferable. So if we look
at, we looked at the top five being China,
I mean, Japan, Chile, UK, France and Germany.
Let's see if where they stack up so we have
Japan and the unit price is $56.76, Germany
at $47.84, France $48.34. Chile is a little
higher $69.77 albeit it's lower volume and
when we go here, which is a higher volume,
higher quantity, slightly lower price because
of the higher volume you have United Kingdom
at $34.57 cents.
So again, a good starting point for analyzing,
hey for my product, these would be viable
export markets. We also have a couple of tabs
in there for time series the trends between
2017 and 2018 and then also methods of transportation.
So most of the exports for 2018 went by air
and vessel and other includes like freight
rail car and other methods of transportation.
And then the data that we have is we have
right now five-year data going back to 2014.
So, with that, I'll get back to the presentation
and pass it on to ITA.
(Salim Bhabhrawala): Wonderful. Okay, well,
my name is (Salim Bhabhrawala).
(Gary Stanley): Good afternoon. My name is
(Gary Stanley).
(Salim Bhabhrawala): And we are both from
the Office of Materials industry and we're
going to give you an overview and discussion
of the executive order on critical minerals.
We'll also delve into some of the functions
of our office as well and give you a little
introduction of who we are and where we sit
within the Department of Commerce.
So, on behalf of Gary and myself we want to
say thank you so much for the hospitality
here at Census here in the Federal Government.
We are all about trying to find synergies
with our particular departments and while
our missions and operations are most certainly
different, I think that we can all agree that
we are committed 100% to serving our stakeholders,
which is the American people and their businesses.
And we want to thank Census for the invitation
to be here with you today because I think
it's really a true opportunity to teach folks
that are on this webinar, how to bridge the
gap between policy and data. So we look forward
to all the partnerships that we hope to create
on the - with the people that are on this
webinar, but not only that, but with our colleagues
here at Census.
So that being said, as all of you know, there's
you know, not much going on I guess in trade
policy these days, right, folks? I mean, nothing
really germane to the discussion of the tools
that have been shown to you by Census or what
we're going to talk about just the section
232 on steel, the section 232 on aluminum,
the section 301 tariffs on China, four lists
of them, Section 301 retaliatory tariffs from
China, a newly announced phase one trade deal
with China,, USMCA being signed - what about
three hours ago and voted in today on the
Senate floor?
China's ban on imported solid waste and scrap,
active trade negotiations with several countries
including Japan, the European Union, the United
Kingdom, and of course what we're here to
talk about today and we'll deep dive into
the federal strategy to ensure a secure and
reliable supplies of critical minerals, affectionately
known in our building as executive order 13817.
So basically times are very boring in Washington
DC, I guess as it relates to trade. Now, as
a disclaimer, while Gary and I might not...uh,
might have played roles in a lot of the aforementioned
topics, we're not the proper government officials
and representatives to speak with authority
on the vast majority of them.
And we would refer you to our colleagues at
the United States Trade representative's office
on the majority of these issues, but we can
speak with some expertise and authority on
a select few of them, in particular, our resources
for U.S. based companies, our advisory committees
that are fully operated under our purview
and the executive order on critical minerals,
and how that may impact the folks on this
webinar.
Before we get into all that, we do need to
do some shameless promotion work so that is
the longest winded introduction for this slide
that you see in front of you, which tells
you where we sit within the Department of
Commerce's International Trade, in the Office
of Materials Industry.
We have three groups and Gary and I work for
our industry and analysis group, which brings
together industry, trade and economic experts
to advance the competitiveness of U.S. industries,
who is the development and execution of international
trade and investment policies, and the promotion
of specific trade and export strategies.
We basically utilize expertise and relationships
with manufacturing and service industries
to increase US exports and to work to address
trade policies that might hurt US companies
in foreign markets, but also try to expand
policies that create competitive advantages
for US companies in foreign markets as well.
So before talking specifically about our group
and our work, want to give a plug to our hard-working
colleagues in the other two groups that you
see listed below the arrow. So advancing the
slide here, what you see in front of you is
a map and we have a global markets team, which
combines ITAs country and regional expertise,
overseas and domestic field staff, and specific
trade promotion programs to provide U.S. firms
with the full suite of country specific export
promotion services and market access advocacy,
all the while promoting the US as an investment
destination for countries abroad and their
companies as well.
We're not in the business of reading slides
word for word, but what you can see is that
we have headquarters in Washington, DC, but
we also have 106 U.S. Export Assistance Centers,
everywhere from Alaska to Wisconsin. If you're
looking for Wyoming that office is actually
based in Denver, and we are willing to work
with you in a variety of ways from resources
such as what we call our district export councils,
to doing specific market research and also
hosting seminars on export opportunities.
And so we would highly recommend that all
of you on this call, create a relationship
with your domestic field office because you
never know how they might be able to assist
you. So moving out of the United States, and
looking more globally, we have a huge footprint
across the world. We have 119 overseas posts
in 77 different international markets. We
often hire locally, which means that we can
provide you with resources such as language
ability, and also just knowledge of foreign
businesses and marketplaces.
Our global markets team is capable of arranging
business leads, B2B meetings, and they can
even conduct trade missions with our political
leadership, if there's enough interest generated
within a specific industry group. And finally,
we also have our enforcement and compliance
group -so going back that's the... excuse
me, the bottom group right there and they're
the group which we don't have a slide for
today.
But I do want to promote them as well, because
they are the group that handles all the enforcement
of our U.S. trade laws and ensures compliance
with our trade agreements. Many of you are
likely familiar with the terms anti- dumping
and countervailing duty laws and this enforcement
and compliance group is the one that administers
and analyzes and enforces those types of cases.
As an overview, you can learn all about all
of our entire operations within the International
Trade Administration by going to www.trade.gov.
Again, that's www.trade.gov. That is the Web
site where we all live at the International
Trade Administration.
So on to our work and what we do, this slide
really summarizes our core mission, regardless
of what product or industry sector we represent.
We're here to make your business more competitive
using the tools, knowledge and relationships
we have. The Office of Materials Industry
undertakes a broad range of trade policy,
trade promotion and trade facilitation activities
geared to increasing the competitiveness of
U.S. building products and we also deal with
chemical and medical industries.
We undertake industry analysis participate
in trade policy development and trade negotiations.
We conduct extensive trade promotion programs
abroad and evaluate the impact of domestic
and international regulatory policies on U.S.
building products, chemicals, metals, wood
products, and a variety of other materials
that might stand under our purview. We stand
to address international market access challenges
encountered by U.S. exporters, but our key
asset, I repeat, our key asset is our strong
working relationship with industry, industry
trade associations, individual companies,
small and large in the sectors that we represent.
So exactly what are those sectors? Here's
just a quick snapshot of everything under
our building products per view and includes
an annual U.S. export portfolio of more than
$80 billion. Oh are we not on that slide?
I apologize if.... We're not moving forward
on the slide for some reason. Just one second
while we gear through a technical issue here.
For some reason we got stuck.
Okay, well, I want to just apologize to everyone
on the webinar for the technical difficulty,
but we believe that we have it sorted now
and hopefully what you see in front of you
is a slide showing of various amount of sectors
of the $81.4 billion that we represent in
terms of our offices purview.
We believe that the portfolios on the chart
in front of you would be most interest to
the folks on the call is the metal sector
and that is highlighted on that slide with
a blue arrow. We, in addition to what you
see on the screen, we also cover a host of
supply chain issues. For example, and we won't
get into the details on this, but a part of
my personal portfolio at commerce is also
covering batteries. So products such as lithium,
cobalt and graphite are also included in the
ticker that you see there.
And incidentally, I went this morning to look
at our concurrence on the HS numbers on all
this, of course these numbers are from Census
so we do thank our partners there for doing
such a great job of gathering data, but these
critical metals that I just mentioned are
(inaudible), but they're really very - they
don't represent very much in terms of value,
because we barely export them.
And as Gary will detail, we are nearly 100%
net reliant on those materials, but we'll
get into that in a few minutes here. Hopefully
this next slide will advance here and you
should see just one more slide on my part
and that is, before passing the baton to (Gary)
here, just a quick plug for what we call industry
trade advisory committee.
In the interest of time, I will let this slide
be the descriptor, but can tell you that there
is really no other country in the world that
has such a unique public private partnership
of cleared advisors directly giving their
input on trade policy to the first line negotiators
of trade agreements than us.
So I would encourage companies on the webinar
and on the call to reach out to us if they
want to find a way how to be in the room where
it happens, within these advisory committees.
You can go to the Commerce webpage or the
USTR web page to find out more about the international
trade or the industry trade advisory committees.
And at this point in time, I've sort of given
everyone a 30,000-foot view of what we do
in the office of materials industry.
And it's my distinguished honor to introduce
my office director, Mr. Gary Stanley, to discuss
the specifics of our executive order.
(Gary Stanley): Salim, thank you very much.
It is truly a privilege and an honor not only
to come out to Census and meet my colleagues
here at the Census Bureau, but to also have
an opportunity to engage with you this afternoon
on a topic that is of uttermost concern and
interest not only just to the U.S. government,
but from the feedback that we've gotten from
the private sector many folks out in the industry
and manufacturing world.
We begin with this slide that you will see
as an indicator of the scope of this activity.
You'll note that there are a number of U.S.
government agencies and White House organizations
represented on this screen. The purpose for
this particular Slide is to give you an indication
of the size and scope of this particular activity
and the level of interest and involvement.
So you have everyone from the Agriculture
Department, EPA, obviously the Department
of Commerce, you see is represented there,
the Executive Office of the President, U.S.
trade representative's office, Energy, Interior,
Defense Department, it is a massive U.S. government
effort to respond to executive order 13817,
which is an executive order announced by President
Trump on December 26, 2017.
You can see the indication there of the exact
time and date and the name of this particular
executive order, which it had at the time,
a tremendous level of engagement by the White
House as well as the, a number of federal
agencies. And in essence, this is what executive
order 13817 says, The President said, we are
import dependent for numerous critical and
strategic, critical minerals, and essentially
we need within the U.S. government to develop
a strategy to address this dependence on imports
for many of these strategic and critical minerals.
And executive order 13817 required the development
of two reports. The first was to be developed
by the Department of Interior, specifically
publishing a list of critical minerals and
we'll go get into that in just a moment. But
following the completion and publication of
that critical mineral lists, the Secretary
of Commerce was responsible for preparing
a report that addressed the five areas that
are identified on that screen.
Most of great interest to our particular agency,
the Department of Commerce was number three,
looking for options for investment and trade
along with our allies and partners within
these critical minerals. Following the completion
of the announcement of the executive order,
our friends at the Department of Interior's
U.S. Geological Survey, initiated an activity
in February of 2018 and completed that activity
in May of '18, as you can see here, which
was basically publishing a list of critical
minerals, that would essentially be the primary
focus, but not the exclusive focus of the
work on the executive order.
The final list was published, May 18, 2018
and again all of this information is out there
in the public domain. So we have screenshot
some of the Federal Register notices for your
information, but a simple search through Firefox
through Google through Internet Explorer should
be able to get you to each one of these particular
items and they're there for your information,
as well as for your background on exactly
the scope of what we're talking about.
So and again in May of 2018, a final list
of 35 critical minerals was published by the
Department of Interior. This gives you a snapshot.
This is one of my favorite slides in the whole
presentation. This gives you an idea of essentially
what are we talking about? I mean, these are
obviously very complex distribution avenues,
supply chains, sources, processing, but this
just gives you a nice snapshot of the scope
of what we're talking about here.
And exactly how broad the impact is, for each
of these critical minerals and exactly where
do they go in, I mean, exactly where do these
things fit in? And as you see there, (inaudible)
anything from the energy and industrial aspect
to advanced technologies to the manufacturing
of steel. As Salim mentioned earlier, storage
batteries, especially those that are used
for long term storage as well as for the electric
vehicle sector - all of these are critical
to not only domestic manufacturing and industry
but also to national security.
Following an extensive inner engagement with
The White House, as well as with a number
of federal agencies, Secretary Ross in 2019,
specifically on June the fourth published
the federal strategy in response to the executive
order, and again, all of these documents are
online. They are certainly there not only
for your information, but if you research
them and have questions, you can certainly
reach back to (Salim) and myself and we'd
be happy to address and answer your questions
to the best of our abilities.
Obviously, we're in the early stages of this
activity. The strategy itself was only released
in June of last year and so we're still in
the process of reaching out to the private
sector and gathering information and particularly
if this is of an interest to you, we would
definitely very much look forward to hearing
from you.
But this particular executive order strategy
now has set in an all public domain, the work
that is being done at the federal level. And
this is essentially what the executive order
strategy says, it identified, six primary
what we called, calls to action. Now, the
operative word here is action. Now, I've been
with the federal government nearly 37 years
and truthfully, you get involved in a lot
of activities, that simply becomes information
gathering, right? There's a lot of analytical
work, there's a lot of discussion, there's
a lot of exchanges of information, but then
you kind of wonder well, what happened?
Well, one of the things that we had the ability
to kind of choreograph in this process because
Secretary Ross was the one who was releasing
the strategy, we had the ability to kind of
choreograph or direct how we wanted the executive
order strategy to unfold and we wanted it
to be proactive. We wanted there to be actions
associated with this. Gathering information
is important, but too often times these kinds
of activities simply become the gathering
of information and you're never sure where
it goes.
Well in something like this that had both
a national security as well as economic security
impact, we wanted this to be very proactive
and forward looking. So you can see the six
major calls to action that are part of this
executive order strategy. The first one really
the Department of Energy is the focus although
a number of executive branch agencies in the
White House are involved in this, looking
at transformational research development and
technologies across the critical mineral supply
chain.
Our defense department colleagues very much
interested in strengthening the defense industrial
base, ourselves, the Department of Commerce
in ITA as well as state department and USTR
- very proactive as far as enhancing international
trading cooperation.
(Inaudible) was very interesting the level
of international interest that I think surprised
even (Salim) and I that literally within 24
hours of June 4th, launch and public release,
we were already getting contacted by Australia,
by Canada, by France, even Japan, wanting
to know how do we cooperate in this area?
I think that took us all by surprise. We were
expecting that this would be a, somewhat of
a drawn-out process and trying to determine
folk's interest, it was just the opposite.
Improving and understanding of domestic critical
mineral resources - that's our friends in
the Interior Department because their scope,
particularly the Bureau of Land Management,
as well as the U.S. Geological Survey, they're
responsible for actually identifying what
do we have within the country? Exactly what
do we have as far as domestic resources are
concerned?
And then again, under Bureau of Land Management,
looking at access, it's one thing to know
that it's in the ground, but the question
comes, is it commercially viable, do we even
have access to this? Where is it? Is it a
mile deep or is it 10 miles deep? Are the
commercially viable, are the quality of the
resources even of good potential for investment
and manufacturing?
And then lastly, our friends at the Department
of Labor, very interested because that's one
of the things that we've seen is the need
for qualified labor. If you find the resource
and you want to harvest it, you want to extract
it from the ground. Do you have an educated
and capable workforce that can actually make
access available to these?
This is just simply a Polaroid to kind of
give you an indication of just how complex
this report is. The report, the executive
order strategy goes into great detail on all
six of those calls to action. You can get
an idea of the kinds of objectives, the recommendations
and what we are anticipating as the outcome
over a two to five-year period. But again,
it is a very, very complex, very detailed
report.
This is just very quickly for your information.
Just to give you an idea of the scope of what
we're talking about, you can see how the calls
to action are laid out. You can see the goals
and then you can start summarizing exactly
how detailed the goals are. (Inaudible) similar
to that with our friends at the Defense Department,
how they're looking at this, again, from a
national security standpoint. Here's the one
specifically that (Salim) in my office are
involved in that's looking at international
trade, and how developing partners get an
idea of who the foreign suppliers are and
the idea here is to build those strategic
relationships with our allies and partners.
This also gives you a scope of the size of
just how broad this is. This is a global activity.
Looking specifically at domestic critical
mineral resources, you'll see that little
picture to the left there, this gives you
an idea of the kind of surveying capabilities
that exist now and with that, which we're
trying to greatly enhance. And then as we
close out there, here's the permitting. You
get an idea from there of just how much material
there is and where it is located predominantly.
And then of course, again, looking at it from
an educational training and labor force development
standpoint.
(Salim Bhabhrawala): Okay, well, we gave you
a very vast amount of information there. So
what we thought we would do is in the interest
of time here, we have a few minutes left,
we would take questions.
(Wendy Peebles): Yes, operator, can you queue
up the individuals to see if there are any
questions for our experts here today?
Coordinator: Thank you. Again, if you would
like to ask a question, please press Star
1 on your phone, ensure that your phone is
unmuted and please state your first name clearly
when prompted. Again, Star 1 to ask your question.
One moment. Our first question comes from
(Don). Sir your line is open.
(Don): Thank you so much and thank you for
the very informative presentation. My question
is simply is will any of these various government
agencies be looking for resources to identify
where these critical mineral assets are located
globally and where new mining assets are being
opened?
(Gary Stanley): Now, that is an excellent
question. Thank you so much for asking. The
answer is absolutely. One of the things that
we are just in the early stages, but are now
being very proactive and doing and that's
part of the reason why we're doing these kind
of presentations and programs is to basically
let people know out in the private sector
whether, and it could be in the area of the
academic world could be universities and so
forth, basically making us aware of information
that they may be aware of that perhaps the
US government may not of at the time availed
itself of.
But the whole idea here is to create partnerships.
This is not intended to be done in an isolated
perspective, but to hear from and to work
directly with private sector and those that
are at different ends of the supply chains,
and specifically if they know about resources
that could be available to assist this effort.
(Don): Thank you very much.
Coordinator: Thank you. Our next question
comes from (Ben), your line is open.
(Ben): Hi, I have a question. I read a report
recently that the Defense Department was building
a kind of rare minerals, um, I guess, processing
plant or mining plant or something to that
effect. I was wondering I guess is the government
like what role does the Defense Department
play in in our overall attempts to create
a, I guess, domestic supply chain or domestic
stock of (inaudible) rare (inaudible)?
(Gary Stanley): Thank you so much for the
question. Well, I given the time constraints
I will try to give the briefest answer but
also to give you the substance of it. The
Defense Department is very much involved in
the execution of the strategy. I can tell
you that we are looking at a number of domestic
as well as international options again, our
friends in Australia and Canada.
We are in the process of looking at areas
of cooperation, joint ventures - we're looking
at a whole host of possibilities. What we're
trying to do at the moment is to simply not
let the process get out ahead of us, but we
are, you know, we are, you know we've had
some discussions, there has been, you may
have heard about a company in Australia called
Lynas that has been in conversation with a
company in Texas called Blue Line Processing
to establish the first ever rare earths separation
facility in the United States
And so, obviously rare earths is getting a
tremendous amount of attention because of
rare earths end use applications but also
the fact that we have become so dependent
on essentially one foreign supplier. And whether
you're in the world of economic security or
national security, diversity of supply, and
finding good long-term reliable sources of
supply is absolutely critical to your supply
chain as well as to your competitiveness.
So, DOD is very much involved in this and
no doubt you will see other announcements
coming out in the weeks and months ahead.
(Ben): Thank you.
Coordinator: Thank you. Our next question
comes from (Neil), your line is open.
(Neil): Hi, thank you for the nice presentation.
Is there any concern about EPA regulations
in regard to the chemical processes with a
lot of these metals? Thanks.
(Gary Stanley): Absolutely. One of the things
that we had the great privilege of doing and
when you saw that first slide, actually, starting
on my portion of the briefing, you saw the
seal of the EPA up there, because EPA was
actively involved in the area of processing
of drafting this study with the executive
agency as well as the White House and we are
absolutely committed to doing this in an environmentally
safe and responsible manner.
There is language in the executive order strategy
that specifically identifies that and we have
a very effective dialogue with our friends
at EPA. And obviously anything that would
be done in this country would be done in a
whole of government approach. So that there
is no one area that that receives a preference
or an exclusive control of the activity. This
really is being done as a whole of government
approach.
(Salim Bhabhrawala): And I think just to add
to Gary's comment, and taking it one step
further, if you look at the report in detail,
it also discusses recycling and closed loop
efforts for a lot of these minerals and materials.
For example, you know, I think in the next
five to seven years, you will see the first
commercially quantitative amount of lithium
ion EV batteries, you know, come out of use
from the roads.
And so, the strategy also discusses what to
do with that and how to recycle and re harvest
those materials to put them back into use
in in the most environmentally friendly way.
(Ben): Do you guys have an exact location
for the report online?
(Gary Stanley): We do. Yeah. If you go back,
yes, if you scan back up, it's in the slides
deck, and (inaudible) you'll see it in there,
but I can assure you if you just do a basic
internet search, and just type federal strategy
or just type EO 13817, I'm quite confident
that the report will come up there and you
can download it fully and be absolutely unedited,
unchanged, unaltered version, the exact version
that was sent over by Secretary Ross to the
White House is fully there, in its entirety.
(Ben): I'm sorry, can you repeat that number
again, I listened on the phone, so...
(Gary Stanley): Of course it's executive order
13817.
(Ben): Thank you. Yes, sir.
Coordinator: Thank you. Our next question
comes from (Anish). Your line is open.
(Anish): Hi, thank you for actually that presentation,
um...I was actually really ecstatic because
these are a few things that I've been actually
looking myself to assess and I think a gentleman
actually mentioned that about the recycling
initiatives. I know that would be actually
huge partnerships right now, with a lot of
countries throughout all across, you know,
various continents with recycling initiatives
and strategies, whether it be from, you know,
computer software to appliances to any kind
of the vehicular modules, all as things kind
of transitioned into like a smart you know,
into a Smart Cities and a smart world technology.
My question would be actually for deregulation
purposes, in terms of recycling measures that
are being currently applied throughout many
different industries. What are some of the
you know, some of the challenges that could
be, you know, looked at, like, let's say,
for instance, I wanted to start an organization
or a company, that was the initiative and
the mission and the values were around recycling
everything from any kind of technological
moduling, or any kind of these elements that
are, you know, essentially becoming rare precious
items now.
So there will be a certain amount that remains
rare in, in alive wild form in the environment,
and the rest is applicable to, you know, our
resources that are used for, you know, the
benefits of humankind. So what exactly are
there any partnerships or any initiatives
that you, you all may have any sort of insight
into that I would be able to access as a resource?
(Salim Bhabhrawala): So let me take a shot
at answering this and Gary, whatever I miss,
you can perhaps fill in. But you know, the
biggest challenge (Anish), I think, is cost
and obviously what we know right now is it's
not economically viable to harvest some of
these materials from recycled material from
second life of products, whether it's electronics
or an EV battery.
But I think that, you know, as this strategy
develops, and as it gets more attention and
more legislative policy comes into fruition,
what you'll see is some government intervention
also on some of these recycling policies and,
you know, just sort of an ideology developing
that, that these products are not waste, but
their an actual national treasure or an asset.
(Gary Stanley): That's excellent (Salim).
That was exactly where my line of thinking
was going. Because really, when you look at
the secondary materials, I don't even really
like to use the word waste because that has
a certain connotation that this is trash,
or this is garbage or this is throwaway. We
look at it as a there's a primary - it's a
renewal stream, and then there's a secondary
one.
For us in our office of materials industries,
we look at a whole host of secondary materials
areas and we see that as a vital in many ways
untapped source of raw materials. But to (Salim's)
point, there is a challenge with a lot of
the areas, one of the technical capabilities
and yet, that is a process that Department
of Energy, even our (inaudible), Commerce's
NIST National Institute of Standards and Technologies
and a number of federal agencies are actively
involved in.
But if there is a challenge to get to a point
where it becomes technically feasible to separate
these materials properly, then after that,
again to (Salim's) point is, are they economically
viable? I mean, if there is a virgin material
stream that is inherently significantly more
affordable than the secondary one is many
companies out there, obviously they're looking
at the bottom line and they're looking at,
essentially, how do they stay competitive
in a global marketplace.
But there is so much level of interest of
this and there, that's where the private sector
and even academics, universities, technical
institutes, can help the process along by
bringing their level of expertise to bear
to the market...
(Salim Bhabhrawala): Sure, and I think that,
you know, a public private partnership needs
to be, you know, in place to try to create
some sort of economic incentive to keep these
materials. If you use Census' tools to look
at how much scrap and waste we export, it
is ridiculous to think about that. And so
we need to really change those trends
(Salim Bhabhrawala): Two more questions. Okay.
(Wendy Peebles): So operator, I think we have
time for about two more questions. Any there
any more questions in the queue?
Coordinator: Yes, we do. Our next question
comes from was (Usmark). Your line is open.
(Usmark): Hi, thank you so much. This was
really great information. I wanted to know,
I have a source for one of the critical mineral,
but I just, I don't have audience here in
US. So could you please advise me what department
can guide me regarding the rules and regulation
of this one of the critical minerals?
(Gary Stanley): Sure. You've come to the right
place you can, my and Salim's contact information
is in the in the presentation. You can drop
us an email, and we will respond to you as
quickly as we possibly can. If we don't have
the answer, I am the, I'm the quintessential
expert in finding the person and letting you
know because this is such a complicated and
diverse area and so forth.
So by all means, you can reach out to us directly
and we will definitely put you in contact
with the right thing. But I will tell you
that there are literally dozens of contacts
that are coming in about this particular topic.
So it may be somewhat of a, you know, a time
to actually get the information, but we would
be more than happy to engage with you.
(Salim Bhabhrawala): Sure, and I think during
our technical difficulties, actually, our
contact slide was deleted accidentally. So
I'm just going to point everybody's attention
to the slide that we brought up. Our email
addresses can be transposed out of this information.
So Gary's would be Gary.stanley@trade.gov.
And mine would be salim.bhabhrawala@trade.gov.
And we're an open resource, and again, as
Gary reiterated, if we can't point you in
the right direction, we will try to find somebody
that can.
(Usmark): Thank you so much.
(Salim Bhabhrawala): Okay, final question.
Coordinator: Our final question comes from
(Bert). Your line is open.
(Bert): Hi. Has there been any congressional
reaction to Commerce's report on executive
order 13817 yet?
(Salim Bhabhrawala): Well, I don't know if
you watch the news, there's just other things
going on right now, but...
(Bert): yea
(Gary Stanley): We have not heard anything
directly to the department, I'm sure there
probably is but the situation regarding an
executive order, it's not like a policy. It
doesn't require legislative engagement. I'm
sure that probably in the future, the White
House as well as number of executive branch
agencies when they go up to The Hill and start
discussing appropriations, that there might
be a question or two, but candidly, we have
not heard any.
(Bert): Okay, thank you.
(Salim Bhabhrawala): Okay.
(Wendy Peebles): Okay Great. Once again, thank
you all for your participation in today's
webinar. Special thanks to all of our presenters
from the International Trade Administration
and the Census Bureau. Wealth of knowledge
was shared today by our presenters. Very informative
and just like to remind you that the presentation,
transcript, and the recording will be provided
in about a week and you can go to the Census
Web site
at www.census.gov/foreign-trade. Again, that's
www.census.gov/foreign-trade.
And please go there to visit our outreach
material. We will be having additional webinars
throughout the year. So this completes our
webinar for today. Thank you for joining.
(Salim Bhabhrawala): And thank you to our
folks as Census for all their hard work. It's
been a pleasure working with all of you.
Coordinator: Thank you. This does conclude
our conference for today. Thank you for calling
in and have a good weekend.
