Sec. 2. Findings

306 words·~1 min read·/bill/118/hr/4548/ih/section-2

A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.

Congress finds the following: The United States recognized the Democratic Republic of the Congo (hereafter referred to as the DRC ) on June 30, 1960. The DRC has long suffered from armed conflicts and threats to its territorial integrity, including by the March 23 Movement (M23), the Allied Defense Forces, and the Forces Démocratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR). The DRC’s instability is further exacerbated by political instability, endemic corruption, exploitation of its natural resources, armed conflict, gross human rights abuses, and humanitarian crises, which destabilize the region and cause mass human suffering.

The DRC is scheduled to conduct presidential, legislative, provincial, and local elections in December 2023. The United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) has failed to stabilize eastern DRC and failed its mandate to protect civilians. The East African Community’s intervention has failed to stem armed conflicts and stabilize eastern DRC. The DRC has globally significant reserves of rare earth minerals and other critical minerals, including deposits of copper, cobalt, lithium, niobium, germanium, and tantalum.

The DRC is the world’s largest producer and exporter of cobalt and the world’s second largest producer of copper. The People’s Republic of China

(PRC)has a near monopoly of the DRC’s cobalt mining sector, with 15 of the 19 cobalt-producing mines in the DRC being owned or financed by PRC based firms in 2021, which directly contributes to its near monopoly over global critical mineral supply chains. The PRC refines 80 percent of the world’s cobalt and 60 percent of its lithium. The United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration projects that the technology costs required for manufacturers to adhere to current industrial targets could increase by $90 billion over the lifetimes of vehicles through 2029, with per-vehicle costs increasing by roughly $1,110 on average per United States consumer for new vehicles.