The DOMINANCE Act is Decoupling Done Right
Decoupling from China is often framed as defensive. The DOMINANCE Act recognizes the truth.
By Chris Johnson, President of American Energy Leadership Institute
For years, Washington has talked about decoupling from China. But too often, that conversation lives in speeches and symbolism rather than in the hard, physical systems that will determine whether decoupling succeeds. Supply chains, energy systems, manufacturing capacity, and critical mineral access are what separate real independence from rhetorical bluster.
That is why the newly introduced DOMINANCE Act deserves attention. It is not another China-bashing press release. It is an attempt to reorganize the federal government around a simple reality: if the United States wants to compete with China in technology, energy, and industry, it must control the materials those sectors run on.
As Representative Young Kim, one of the bill’s lead sponsors, put it, the goal is to “break China’s chokehold and secure America’s energy future.” That chokehold is real.
Critical minerals—lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, copper, and rare earth elements—sit at the center of modern power. They are necessary not only for electronics, semiconductors, and military equipment, but for batteries, solar panels, data centers, electric vehicles, advanced manufacturing, and grid infrastructure. U.S. defense, industrial capacity, and energy security rely on critical minerals.
Yet China currently monopolizes the critical minerals market, not because it innovates best, but because it processes the most. According to the International Energy Agency, China controls between 60 and 90 percent of global processing capacity. That gives Beijing leverage not just over weapons systems, but over the energy transition, industrial growth, and digital infrastructure of the West.
Developers, utilities, and manufacturers in America all face a common constraint. The bottleneck is not ambition. It is materials. You cannot deploy AI without data centers. You cannot build data centers without power. You cannot modernize grids without copper, transformers, and storage. And you cannot expand our output in an electrified economy without the inputs that almost entirely pass through Chinese refineries.
Decoupling, then, is not ideological. It is logistical.
The DOMINANCE Act starts from that premise. Rather than treating minerals as a niche trade problem, it embeds them into diplomacy, permitting, financing, and industrial planning. It coordinates agencies that currently operate in silos, so that mining, processing, manufacturing, and alliances all work together to re-shore and friend-shore mineral production to break our reliance on China.
What makes this important is that minerals are no longer treated as just a defense issue or just a trade issue. They are an energy issue, an economic issue, an innovation issue, and an everything issue.
This approach will lead to vastly better energy and economic outcomes for the U.S. as well as environmental outcomes for the world. For years, U.S. policy has often blocked domestic production of critical minerals, in large part over fears of environmental harm. This was a shortsighted move. America used to be the biggest producer of critical minerals in the world. Yet as domestic production plummeted in the face of environmental litigation and foreign competition, demand only increased. The world does not mine and process less critical minerals just because America took a step back. It simply mines and processes elsewhere, usually under dirtier conditions. In short, China achieved monopolistic control over the critical minerals market not because it has raw materials the United States lacks, but rather because it mines and processes these minerals while completely ignoring environmental standards.
Extensive, environmentally degrading strip mining would never be allowed in the United States. Not so in China. Meanwhile, despite proclaiming itself a green energy innovator because of its vast deployment of solar panels, China still generates more than 60 percent of its electricity from coal. The United States, on the other hand, relies far more heavily on natural gas, nuclear, and increasingly renewables. That difference matters. A battery, solar module, or data center component manufactured in a coal-heavy system carries far more embedded emissions than one built inside America’s cleaner and more transparent energy economy.
At the end of the day, by pushing critical mineral mining and processing out of the United States and to China, environmental regulations hurt the environment. This proves that when it comes to minerals, trade policy is industrial policy is energy policy is climate policy—whether policymakers acknowledge it or not.
The DOMINANCE Act will help heal this self-inflicted wound by treating American and allied production as strategic advantages rather than environmental liabilities. Mining and processing in the United States operate under higher labor standards, cleaner grids, stronger methane controls, modern reclamation requirements, and public accountability. That’s an asset, not a bug, and we shouldn’t punish domestic producers for refusing to poison our soil, air, and water.
If the DOMINANCE Act succeeds in reorienting American economic, industrial, and foreign policy to secure a diversified and resilient critical mineral supply chain, our citizens will see monumental benefits. After all, demand for critical minerals and the energy innovations they enable are exploding. AI data centers, advanced manufacturing, electric motors, and grid modernization are driving a step-change in electricity and material needs. BloombergNEF projects global battery demand to grow more than sixfold by 2030, while the IEA estimates mineral demand for clean energy technologies could increase by four times by 2040. None of that happens without coordinated supply chains. With a change in policy, the United States can be at the center of this market boom
Of course, we can’t defeat such an entrenched Chinese monopoly by ourselves. The DOMINANCE Act also recognizes that decoupling does not mean isolation. It is about both re-shoring and friend-shoring. America does not need to control every critical mineral deposit, but it does need trusted networks with partners like Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, and others. Embedding critical minerals into foreign policy allows energy, trade, and security strategies to reinforce each other instead of colliding.
That integration is what today’s climate and industrial policies often lack. Environmental goals live in one lane, trade in another, and national security in a third. The result is paralysis. The DOMINANCE Act connects those lanes into a single strategy.
There is also a philosophical shift embedded in the bill. Instead of assuming the future is managed through restriction, it assumes the future is built through growth. Faster permitting, standardized approvals, financing tools, and diplomatic coordination are not giveaways. They are infrastructure for competitiveness.
Investors need certainty that if they put capital into U.S. mining and processing, the government will not sabotage projects halfway through. Developers need timelines measured in years, not decades. And policymakers need to recognize that energy abundance, industrial strength, and environmental performance reinforce each other.
Decoupling from China is often framed as defensive. The DOMINANCE Act recognizes the truth: it’s about building a safer and more prosperous United States that can’t be cowed by Chinese restrictions and that controls its own fate. It’s not about stopping something we fear, but building something that will make us stronger.
If the United States wants to lead in AI, clean energy, manufacturing, and national security, it cannot outsource the physical foundation of those systems. The DOMINANCE Act gets that. It treats minerals not as an afterthought, but as the architecture of power itself.
Decoupling from China, done right, is not about retreat. It is about rebuilding the capacity to lead.
Chris Johnson is President of the American Energy Leadership Institute, a conservative advocacy organization championing America First energy policy. He also serves as a senior adviser to the National Federation of College Republicans. You can find him at @CJohnsonAELI on X and Instagram.