The current administration is certainly not pursuing self-sufficiency. They will almost certainly contribute to holes being dug/drilled but much more likely to be in places that don’t care about “good union jobs”, the environment, and hurting the feelings of descendants of long dead migrants.
If the administration subsidizes Hectorite mining in the US, taxpayers might want to receive some assurance that the product will be used for what is being subsidized, eg batteries rather than lipstick. Hectorite is used, as the clay, in a bunch of things - including cosmetics. In the past 30 yrs, companies have managed to mine it very profitably in the US w/o govmint subsidies. I suspect the subsidies would cover the profit margin cut incurred in extracting lithium from the clay. Of course, that has some implications wrt to economics of batteries and what might happen if the subsidies went away.
