President Joe Biden’s administration has reinstated a moratorium on renewed leases for Twin Metals to mine in northeastern Minnesota’s Superior National Forest.
The Obama administration was the first to decline a renewed lease, but the Trump administration revoked this move and approved a lease in 2019 that allowed Twin Metals to develop a copper-nickel mine in the town of Ely.
But in the continuation of his broken promises on mining, Biden has followed in the footsteps of his former boss. His presidential campaign privately told a group of miners in 2020 that he would “support boosting domestic production of metals used to make electric vehicles, solar panels and other products crucial to his climate plan.”
Rep. Pete Stauber, who has previously criticized the Biden administration over the broken promises and its two-year pause on copper-nickel mining leases in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, took the administration to task yet again.
“Let me be clear: President Biden is choosing to ban mining,” he said. “He’s choosing foreign sourced minerals, including mines that use child slave labor, over our own domestic, union workforce that follows the best labor and environmental standards in the world.”
Stauber expressed confusion over the Biden administration’s support for “massive taxpayer investments in electric cars” while cutting down on domestic production.
“This Administration has decided to leave American, blue-collar workers behind and bow to pressure from radicals who prefer to rely on foreign adversarial nations for these minerals,” he added.
Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman David Hann also blasted the move as “siding with radical, far-left activists over good-paying Minnesota jobs” and vowed to continue fighting for all Minnesotans.
“This decision by the Biden Administration means fewer jobs for generations of Minnesotan families and more reliance on imported minerals from mines that utilize child and slave labor,” he said. “The Twin Metals mining project sought to mine copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum-group elements, and other minerals needed to produce electric vehicles, something the Biden Campaign promised to source locally last February.”
Evan Stambaugh
Evan Stambaugh is a freelance writer who had previously been a sports blogger. He has a BA in theology and an MA in philosophy.
