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Axios
5 days ago
- Business
- Axios
Axios Event: U.S. needs more critical minerals to compete with China, experts say
WASHINGTON – Competition with China and tariff threats are fueling U.S. efforts to secure more critical minerals used to make semiconductor chips and other defense infrastructure, speakers said at a May 6 Axios event. Why it matters: Critical minerals have become a national security asset and subject of global politics, with the Trump administration recently signing a deal with Ukraine locking in preferential access to strategic elements from that country. Axios' Colin Demarest spoke with Reps. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.) and Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii), as well as Gracelin Baskaran, critical minerals security program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), at the May 6 Axios event, sponsored by South32 Hermosa. Zoom out: China has been building up its technological capabilities for decades under its Belt and Road Initiative, investing in minerals and other critical industries, speakers said – and the U.S. is behind. What they're saying: "Some minerals are here at home, we have good copper reserves … but some minerals we just don't have enough of," Baskaran said. The U.S. Energy Act of 2020 defined"critical minerals" as "any non-fuel mineral, element, substance or material that … has a high risk of supply chain disruption [and] serves an essential function in one or more energy technologies." The list of about 50 such elements includes lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite. Catch up quick: The U.S. relies on China for many critical minerals, but export controls and tariffs have limited access amid growing trade tensions. China's recent restrictions on rare earth elements and magnets are a "dangerous game," Bergman said. However, removing China suppliers from the critical minerals equation – even with the security risks – wouldn't be realistic, he said. "The attainable goal would be to marginalize their dominance in it, because there's always going to be more than one player." The latest: It's not clear what impact the recent Ukraine minerals deal will have on U.S. supply, speakers said. "We don't know what the outcome is going to be in Ukraine yet, but we do know if we don't establish the relationship at a different level that hasn't been tried … that Ukraine is still vulnerable," Bergman said. "So it's a good thing to have those deals inked." "For me, it doesn't change the needle any," Tokuda said of the deal. Ukraine doesn't process these materials as well as China, where most of the processing also takes place, she said. State of play: "Let's be very honest, right? This is about making sure that we are in a state of readiness, that we're able to deter," Tokuda said. "Right now we have so much vulnerability because of our dependence on these critical and rare earth minerals with China, that we really, we need to start yesterday in terms of really shoring up that supply chain." Content from the sponsored segment: In a View From the Top conversation, Pat Risner, president of South32 Hermosa, said gaps in the zinc supply haven't gotten enough attention in the critical minerals conversation. "Zinc is used to galvanize steel, it's very important for infrastructure, all forms of energy … even battery storage, and other defense applications," Risner said.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Federal funding for Hawaiian Home Lands on chopping block
The state agency helping Native Hawaiians with housing needs is at risk again of a federal funding cutoff. President Donald Trump is proposing to eliminate the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant program as part of a rough budget plan for the next federal fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 In a May 2 letter from Trump's Office of Management and Budget to the chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, OMB Director Russell Vought indicated that the federal grant funding for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands should be cut off in part because DHHL has an accumulation of unspent proceeds from prior years. 'The program has large balances and only one grantee, which would be more appropriately funded by the State of Hawaii, ' the letter said. Annual funding from the program in each of the last three years has been about $22 million. However, such funding at times has been much lower, and got zeroed out during the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama in 2016 because DHHL had amassed a pile of unspent funding that drew the ire of some state leaders and DHHL beneficiaries. U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii ) disagrees with the proposed move by the Republican president, but also believes DHHL needs to be spending more of its past federal grant awards. 'Sadly these carryover balances, and these high annual re-appropriations that they have, kind of made it low-hanging fruit for the Trump Administration, ' Tokuda said. 'I know for beneficiaries it's extremely frustrating because there's so much need.' Under the program, which is part of the 1996 Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act also known as NAHASDA, DHHL has helped beneficiaries in ways that include homestead development, rent subsidies for low-income seniors, home loans, affordable-housing construction, land acquisition, emergency rent and utility payments, and financial literacy training. Homestead development is the agency's main mission and costliest endeavor. There are close to 30, 000 DHHL beneficiaries waiting for homestead leases that cost $1 a year but require recipients to buy or build their own homes. The homestead program was established in 1921 by Congress to return Hawaiians to their ancestral lands after the U.S. annexed the islands. The program, administered by the state since 1959, offers residential, agricultural or pastoral land leases to DHHL beneficiaries, who must be at least 50 % Hawaiian. DHHL Director Kali Watson said in a statement that the agency fully supports Hawaii's congressional delegation in efforts to educate and convince the current federal administration of the grant program's value and importance. 'We are very appreciative of the recent increased funding over the last three years and are hopeful we can continue to receive the same level of funding, ' Watson said. Tokuda said DHHL has a $53.6 million unspent grant funding balance from prior years, not including a $22.3 million appropriation for the current fiscal year. According to DHHL's most recent annual performance report for the federal program produced in September 2024, the agency's fund balance at that time was $66.6 million, of which $36.8 million was encumbered by contracts for spending and $29.8 million was unencumbered. The agency reported spending $12 million in the 2024 fiscal year, which included $3.2 million for capital improvement projects, $1.9 million for home loans, $1.8 million to assist seniors with rent, $1.5 million for planning and administration, $1.2 million for general homeowner assistance and $875, 000 for emergency rent and utility assistance. DHHL's stockpile of federal funding coincides with an effort by the agency to encumber $600 million appropriated by Hawaii lawmakers in 2022 before a June 30, 2026 deadline. Watson has said that the agency has pretty much done so, and earlier this year asked the Legislature for another $600 million that he said could roughly double homestead deliveries. The Legislature did not approve the additional funding. Tokuda is hard-pressed to understand why DHHL, which is using the state funding to produce more than 3, 000 homesteads at 29 projects and used much of the $600 million to buy land for longer-term homestead development, has not spent more of its federal funding. 'This was something that literally generations of members of Congress have fought for and protected, ' she said, 'and now it's going to be very difficult to defend why we need this money when they're not spending it.' Tokuda vows to fight the proposed cutoff, in part because she said DHHL has committed to spend most of its federal funding from past years by the end of June. She also said eliminating NAHASDA funding for DHHL disregards the federal trust responsibility to Hawaiians, and unfairly shifts the duty solely to the state, thus ignoring generations of legal, historical and moral obligations. 'DHHL must step up and the federal government must not walk away, ' Tokuda said. Previously, DHHL has been able to ramp up spending of federal funds after drawing fire from federal and state leaders for amassing an even bigger stash of cash from the U.S. government. In 2012, DHHL was holding $75 million received under NAHASDA, which led to complaints that the agency was making poor use of the federal appropriations that had been around $10 million a year during the preceding decade. In 2016, during the last year of the Obama Administration, DHHL got no federal funding. And then from 2017 to 2021, which included Trump's first term and one year with Democratic President Joe Biden in office, funding for DHHL was $2 million a year. During a state budget briefing in 2016 for the administration of then-Gov. David Ige, members of Hawaii's Legislature including Tokuda and Sylvia Luke, who then was chair of the House Finance Committee and is now lieutenant governor, chastised DHHL for the hoard of unspent federal funds. 'NAHASDA money was no strings attached … ' Luke said during the briefing. 'All that the federal government wanted us to do was was to spend the money. But what does DHHL do ? They don't spend the money.' DHHL was at that time working to level-up spending federal dollars. From 2015 to 2018, the agency more than doubled such spending to around $15 million per year during those four years. Spending subsided from 2019 to 2021 as federal appropriations stayed low, but then didn't rebound much in tandem with the big appropriation increases under President Biden from 2022 to 2024. According to the most recent annual report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees NAHASDA funding for DHHL, $155 million of such funding has been spent by DHHL over 22 years through the 2023 fiscal year largely to help develop 693 homestead lots and to build, acquire or rehabilitate 765 affordable homes. Some of the spending also was used to rehabilitate three community centers and provide 4, 098 families with housing services that included financial literacy and home ownership education, self-help home repair training and rental assistance, the HUD report said. Watson, in his statement, said continued federal funding is critical and needed to sustain a similar variety of help for beneficiaries. 'We will continue to be diligent and very active in the use of these funds, which have been instrumental in increasing our rental and homeownership housing opportunities for our DHHL beneficiaries, ' he said.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Police, state support legislation to monitor parts for ghost guns
Honolulu police and state law enforcement officials are hoping a proposed piece of federal legislation will help stop the proliferation of untraceable, homemade firearms in Hawaii. The so-called ghost guns are firearms made privately and not marked with a serial number. They are almost impossible for law enforcement to trace when used during a crime, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The Gun Hardware Oversight and Shipment Tracking Act of 2025, aka the 'Ghost Act, ' would create within the DOJ the Federal Interstate Firearm Parts Reporting System to assist law enforcement officers in 'monitoring the shipment or transportation of covered firearm components in interstate or foreign commerce, ' according to draft language of the legislation, introduced today by U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii. The measure would require that five business days before an 'entity ships or transports in interstate or foreign commerce a covered firearm component, ' the entity must register the shipment or transportation of the covered firearm component by submitting the 'name, physical mailing address, phone number or electronic mail address, and the eligible identification number ' of the entity and the intended recipient. Documenting the shipping method, name of the shipper, a list or manifest of items, and the use of registered or certified mail are among the requirements of the proposed legislation. Any violation of the proposed law would result in a fine and up to a year in federal prison. If the violation involves 50 or more 'covered firearm components as part of a single act, commission, conspiracy, or enterprise, ' it is punishable by a fine and up to 10 years in federal prison. State law already bans ghost guns in Hawaii. A measure enacted in 2020 made it a felony to buy, make or import firearm parts for the purpose of assembling guns with no serial numbers. The recently concluded legislative session resulted in further firearms regulation via House Bill 392, which bans ghost guns across the islands. Gov. Josh Green last month signed the legislation, now known as Act 18. Speaking to reporters after a 3D gun-assembly demonstration by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives at the Honolulu Police Department's Ke Kula Maka'i training division in Waipahu, Tokuda said the proposed legislation is about public safety and transparency, and that legal firearm owners, manufactures and retailers would not be negatively affected. 'You can have a file downloaded online and print it on a 3D printer, put it all together and you've got a machine gun—right now. That's really what we are fighting here, ' Tokuda said. 'This is about accountability, this is about traceability. This is something that legal gun owners should embrace because, really, we know the ones that are trying to be untraceable are the ones causing chaos on our streets. This in no way infringes on their abilities and their rights … this is about holding people accountable. 'Let's not make it easy for people to buy the parts that they need to make (illegal ) weapons … endangering law enforcement … killing … innocent lives across this country, ' she added. 'That's what the Ghost Act is all about.' Last year, HPD confiscated found during criminal investigations through Oct. 31, a nearly 70 % increase from the 52 found by officers in 2023, the first year the department started tracking the statistic. 'It's a great act to help us in law enforcement have an idea about what and who is bringing parts into the City and County of Honolulu and … the State of Hawaii so we as law enforcement can help keep everyone safe on our streets, ' said Honolulu Police Chief Arthur 'Joe ' Logan, speaking alongside Tokuda and Mike Lambert, director of the state Department of Law Enforcement. Nationally from 2016 through 2021, 45, 240 ghost guns taken from crime scenes, including 692 murders or attempted murders, were reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives by law enforcement agencies. But county, state and federal law enforcement have no idea of the true number of homemade weapons that are on the street. Lambert said that under the proposed federal statute, lists of regulated firearm parts would be shared with law enforcement. Seeing the number of gun kits and firearm parts being shipped to Hawaii, where they are coming from and who is receiving them would help identify people prohibited from possessing guns. 'We actually have no idea about how many ghost guns … homemade weapons, there are (in Hawaii ) because these parts … (are ) not currently tracked or regulated. We would be able to know … how many of these kits are coming into the state … . Right now we have no clue, ' said Lambert, a former HPD major. 'If you are a legal gun owner and you are selling a part to someone … you want to make sure that individual is allowed to acquire that … (and ) they are a real person and they are not a felon. For me, as a legal gun owner, I have no problem registering a part to know it's going to a real person versus I'm sending it out to someone with a fictitious name and they do something terrible with it.' Ghost guns can be built from scratch or with parts kits, including 'buy-build-shoot ' kits and 3D printers. Buy-build-shoot kits are pre-made, disassembled, complete firearms. Video tutorials on YouTube detail how to make polymer handguns or rifles with the same tools hobbyists use for modeling and crafting. Other instructions online walk viewers though how to build and insert a 10-cent piece of 3D-printed plastic into a personally manufactured AR-15-style assault rifle that allows the weapon to fire automatically. Skilled ghost gun makers can make an assault rifle with a 3D printer in two to three hours.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Could the cost of coffee rise due to tariffs?
WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are concerned that your cup of joe could get more expensive as a result of tariffs. Congresswoman Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii.) launched the first-ever 'Congressional Coffee Caucus' Tuesday morning. 'I am very caffeinated,' Tokuda said at the caucus launch, where Kona coffee was served. She's not alone. 'Did you know that over 70% of us drink coffee every single day?' National Coffee Association President William Murray asked. Murray joined lawmakers for the launch of the new caucus, aimed at being a voice for the coffee industry in Congress. 'In Hawaii, we're the only coffee-growing state, really, that has been able to brand it for over 200 years in the country,' Tokuda said. Most of the coffee in America is imported from countries like Brazil and Colombia. Lawmakers say new tariffs on those countries could make your coffee more costly. 'For many consumers, that's going to hit their pocketbook quite significantly,' Tokuda said. Congressman Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) says it's all the more reason to buy American. 'This is an American grown product right from our 50th state, Hawaii that doesn't have to be subject to any of that stuff, and it's really good,' LaMalfa said. Tokuda says the tariffs will also hit Hawaii's coffee industry through other production costs. 'Fertilizer, equipment, supplies, much of it has to be, if not all of it, has to be literally cargo shipped in,' Tokuda said. Congresswoman Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) says she expects prices to go up on lots of products. 'Whether it's coffee, whether it's bananas, whether it's automobiles. This is going to be an enormous burden on our working families,' Dexter said. Congressman LaMalfa has a different perspective on tariffs. 'Nobody really wants to have to deal with them, but if it shakes things up a little bit, or a lot, then maybe it's a good tool,' LaMalfa said. Some lawmakers have proposed legislation to re-assert Congress's authority in imposing tariffs, but it's not moving forward. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Maui IRS office closes amid federal budget cuts, raising concerns for taxpayers
HONOLULU (KHON2) — As tax season enters its final stretch, residents of Maui are facing an additional hurdle: the temporary closure of the IRS office in Wailuku. Hawaii fentanyl deaths quadrupled in 4 years, experts warn of more potent version The closure comes as the federal government slashes spending and services, including cuts to travel expenses, which are impacting the ability to provide in-person assistance. The IRS confirmed that its Maui office is currently closed due to staffing shortages, with no timeline for reopening. The closure follows a broader issue of frozen or canceled federal expense spending cards, known as P-cards, which are essential for interisland travel. Hawaii lawmakers and advocates argue that this cutback is hitting at the worst possible time, as residents rely on these services to navigate tax season. 'Which, for Hawaii, means you can't travel to the neighbor islands. You can't provide services on each island,' said Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii). 'In many states, it might be fine, they have full-time employees and communities that people can get to. You can't drive from Oahu to Maui.' The IRS has pointed out that most services can be done online, but for many, especially older residents, that's not a feasible option. Advocates for seniors, like Audrey Suga-Nakagawa, director of advocacy for AARP, say the lack of in-person assistance is a significant barrier.'I can imagine that would be quite a big concern,' said Suga-Nakagawa. 'AARP has tax aid centers on Maui as well, but they're already packed with individuals who had made their appointments well in advance.' The shutdown of the Wailuku office is just one of many challenges facing residents. A major overhaul of Social Security will also end phone identity verification in mid-April, which could complicate matters further for those unable to navigate online systems. 'That's going to be a big difference for those individuals,' Suga-Nakagawa said. 'It's really difficult for those who have transportation barriers and trying to get out to the office, or even get an appointment.' The cuts don't stop with tax services. Federal health and human services programs, including Medicare, SNAP, and Meals on Wheels, are also facing significant budget reductions. While the impact on Hawaii is still unclear, these cuts could affect essential services for residents across the state. 'Do we even know the Hawaii impact yet? Not yet. We do not at this time,' said Suga-Nakagawa. 'We are closely monitoring what this means.' In response, Rep. Tokuda and other members of Hawaii's congressional delegation are pushing to restore services and are urging constituents to reach out for help navigating the federal agencies. Download the free KHON2 app for iOS or Android to stay informed on the latest news 'If it's about a federal agency, reach out to our offices and let our people help navigate you through the situation,' Tokuda said. 'At the very least, we'll connect you with folks who can assist you.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
