Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: Cobalt is an essential component of lithium-ion batteries, which are predominantly used for electric vehicles, smartphones, and laptops, among other electronic devices. According to the International Energy Agency, the world is expected to see a forty-fold increase in lithium demand and a twenty-fold increase in cobalt demand by 2040, as the demand for electric vehicles is expected to grow significantly during this period. More than one-half of the world’s cobalt resources are in the DRC, which supplied approximately 70 percent of the global cobalt mine production in 2021.
Fifteen of the DRC’s 19 cobalt mines were owned or financed by PRC companies. Firms based in the PRC hold a near monopoly in the DRC’s cobalt sector, according to the Biden Administration. The mining industry in the DRC is beset with child labor and forced labor, disregard for worker safety, and environmental degradation. Approximately 15 to 30 percent of cobalt produced in the DRC comes from artisanal and small-scale mining. An estimated 255,000 miners work in artisanal and small-scale mining in the DRC, of whom at least 40,000 are children.
Artisanal production was chiefly exported to the PRC or processed within the DRC by PRC firms, according to an article “China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and artisanal cobalt mining from 2000 through 2020” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer-reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). In the 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report, the Department of State ranked the DRC with a Tier 2 for the second year in a row and emphasized that ‘‘In 2020, the Minister of Human Rights issued a decree increasing oversight of mining communities, including a zero-tolerance policy for forced child labor in the mining sector’’, noting further that ‘‘As part of this effort, the government, in partnership with an NGO, certified mining sites in eastern DRC as conflict-free and child labor-free … However, the government did not report certifying any mines or identifying any potential victims during the reporting period.’’ The government also “did not report providing anti-trafficking training to labor inspectors.”.
Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 ( 19 U.S.C. 1307 ) states that it is illegal to import into the United States goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part by forced labor, including forced or indentured child labor. Such merchandise is subject to exclusion or seizure and may lead to criminal investigation of the importer.
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