America is sitting on the answer to China’s lithium stranglehold. It’s time to use it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert S. Walsh, a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant general, is the founding Principal of The Walsh Group LLC and serves as a strategic adviser to Standard Lithium. He retired from the Marine Corps in 2018, last serving as commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command and deputy commandant for Combat Development and Integration.

I spent 39 years in the United States Marine Corps confronting threats to American security. Some wore uniforms and carried weapons. Others were harder to see coming. The threat we face right now falls into that second category: Chinese influence over critical minerals, especially lithium. And the window to act is closing faster than Washington wants to admit.

Here is the hard truth. The United States produces less than 1% of the world’s lithium supply. China controls roughly 70% of global lithium chemical processing capacity. Beijing did not stumble into this position. The Chinese Communist Party spent decades deliberately depressing global lithium prices to discourage investment by non-Chinese firms and starve Western competitors of the capital needed to develop alternatives. It worked. And now China is tightening the vice.

Last year, Beijing imposed export restrictions on lithium processing technologies. That was not a market decision. It was a signal. And Beijing is not done. China is actively moving forward with sweeping export restrictions on critical minerals that could target minerals destined for American defense suppliers, turning resource access into a direct weapon against U.S. military readiness. The United States pioneered lithium-ion battery technology. We now risk ceding control of it entirely to a strategic adversary that has made no secret of its intent to use that control against us.

This is not an abstraction for the military. Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, Patriot PAC-3 systems, Hellfire missiles and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense batteries all depend on lithium-based battery technologies for guidance, power and reliability. So do directed energy systems, high-power microwave technologies, and the robotics and unmanned platforms that are reshaping how we fight.

The soldier on the ground carries that same dependence in the form of radios, night vision and thermal imaging equipment, and digital decision-support tools. Armored vehicles and transport systems across the force rely on it too.

As autonomous battlefield systems grow more central to modern warfare, that dependence only deepens. A supply chain that runs through Beijing is not a supply chain. It is a vulnerability. In a peer conflict scenario, it could be a decisive one.

President Donald Trump’s visit to China last month was a moment to make clear that America has a plan. It does. And it starts in southern Arkansas.

The Smackover Formation stretches across Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas and represents one of the most significant lithium deposits in the Western Hemisphere. Smackover Lithium, a joint venture between Standard Lithium and Equinor, is developing the Southwest Arkansas Project, the most advanced domestic lithium development in the United States and the first commercial Direct Lithium Extraction project in American history. The project will produce 22,500 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate annually, roughly five times current total U.S. output, at the lowest-cost of any lithium project in the United States. The project will create 300 construction jobs and 100 permanent American jobs. Private capital is putting real money behind this. The federal government should match that commitment.

Sens. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and John Boozman did exactly the right thing when they wrote to the Department of War last month, urging that domestic lithium production in the Smackover Formation be treated as a priority investment target. Their letter was direct: allowing strategic vulnerabilities in our mineral supply chains is not an option the United States can afford. The senators called for engagement of Title III Defense Production Act authorities and non-standard deal structures to help get this project built at speed. 

The core principle here is simple. The only way to win the race against China is to get projects like Smackover into the ground, into production, and into the supply chains that power our military and our economy. That requires the federal government to move with the same urgency the CCP is already moving with. It means using every available tool, including Title III authorities, streamlined permitting, timely resolution of appeals, de-risking financing mechanisms, and minimum price guarantees, to make sure that domestic lithium production actually happens rather than getting delayed into irrelevance by the same bureaucratic friction that has hamstrung American industrial development for decades.

This is a race the United States can win. The resource is here. The technology is here. The private investment is here. What is needed now is for the federal government to treat this with the urgency it deserves. Trump has the standing, the credibility, and the America First mandate to make this happen.

Designating lithium as a priority critical mineral, deploying Defense Production Act authorities, and putting the full weight of federal support behind the Smackover project would be a defining act of strategic leadership, one that secures American military capability, creates American jobs, and strikes directly at China’s most effective economic weapon.