Chairman Mast Delivers Opening Remarks at Hearing on Ending Supply Chain Dependency
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast delivered opening remarks at a full committee hearing titled "Ending Supply Chain Dependency: Aligning Tools, Capital, and Partnerships.”
-Remarks-
I want to thank you, Mr. Black, Mr. Hardy, and Mr. Petrie for being here today.
This Congress, our committee, has spent a great deal of time focused on a simple but urgent challenge: The United States cannot remain dependent on China on any front — it makes no sense at all — or any other adversary, for that matter, for the materials, technologies, energy, and infrastructure that power our economy, keep our military ready, keep our supply chains going. It makes zero sense to have any one dependency. We have worked to reduce those dependencies, strengthen critical supply chains, and ensure that economic tools of the United States government are fit for purpose in an era of strategic competition. That is what makes today's hearing so important, your work on the forefront of that.
The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, the U.S. Trade Development Agency and the Millennium Challenge Corporation are among our most important tools of economic statecraft. Each has a distinct role. U.S. TDA helps shape projects early on, DFC mobilizes capital and moves investments forward, and MCC helps build the infrastructure, institutions, and enabling conditions that allow those investments to succeed. Together, these agencies are on the cutting edge of securing the supply chains that will define American strength in the decades ahead.
Nowhere are the stakes more clear than in artificial intelligence and critical minerals. AI leadership depends on more than software. It depends on chips, minerals, reliable energy, data centers, secure telecommunications, and trusted technology. Critical minerals underpin our weapons systems, advanced manufacturing, energy infrastructure, and nearly every emerging technology that matters.
China understands this well. The Chinese Communist Party has spent decades building control over mines, processing capacity, ports, logistic networks, technology platforms. Those dependencies were not created by accident. They were built to give Beijing leverage over the United States of America, over our allies, and over literally anybody.
President Trump's agenda recognizes that economic security is national security. He is advancing energy dominance, secure critical mineral supplies, stronger American industry, and U.S. leadership in technologies of the future. This committee is helping carry out that agenda. We passed the Bipartisan Dominance Act unanimously through the House Foreign Affairs Committee, taking bold action to align American diplomacy, financing, and partnerships around secure energy and critical mineral supply. The opportunity before us is to make these tools work better together, faster, more efficiently, and with clear results for the American people, the American taxpayers. American strength.
China brings every tool to the fight. The United States of America will do the same, and we will do it better. We will do this to win. As we all know as Americans, we don't do anything to lose.
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