SB3659, the SECURE Minerals Act of 2026, would create a new wholly owned federal government corporation called the Strategic Resilience Reserve Corporation of the United States. The Reserve would be governed by a seven-member board appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and it would be charged with strengthening domestic and partner-country supply chains for critical minerals and materials. Its stated goals include supporting competitive markets, stabilizing prices, expanding extraction and processing capacity, and promoting recycling, reuse, and repurposing of critical minerals used in defense, energy, transportation, health care, manufacturing, and emerging technologies.
The bill gives the Reserve broad operational powers, including the ability to acquire, store, finance, sell, and otherwise manage critical minerals and materials; enter contracts and loans; use financial instruments such as futures, options, non-recourse lending, and minority equity investments; and partner with private entities, academia, and federal agencies. It also authorizes $2.5 billion in appropriations and allows partner countries to contribute capital for co-investment purposes, subject to restrictions designed to exclude foreign entities of concern and covered countries from benefiting.
A major part of the bill is its framework for identifying eligible minerals and materials. The Reserve would maintain and annually update a list tied to existing federal critical mineral and critical material lists, while excluding fuels, water, ice, snow, and common construction materials such as sand, gravel, stone, pumice, cinders, and clay. The bill also creates a data collection division, a risk and vulnerability evaluation division, and a production standards division to gather market data, assess supply-chain risks, and evaluate environmental, labor, transparency, traceability, and forced-labor concerns in foreign production.
The bill would also add extensive oversight and accountability requirements. It establishes risk and audit committees, requires annual independent audits and biennial Comptroller General reviews, and mandates annual reports, congressional testimony, and a public database of Reserve transactions, with limited national-security exceptions. It further amends federal law to recognize the new corporation as a wholly owned government corporation.
Because there were no committee transcripts or recorded votes provided, the available context shows no formal recorded sentiment from debate or amendment activity. Based on the bill text itself, the measure appears designed to appeal to lawmakers concerned about supply-chain security, industrial policy, and dependence on China for critical minerals, while also reflecting an emphasis on transparency, anti-corruption safeguards, and labor and environmental standards. Likely points of contention include the creation of a new government corporation, the scale of federal financial intervention, the use of market-making tools and equity investments, and the bill’s strong restrictions on foreign participation and its explicit focus on China-related supply-chain risks.
The bill would create a new federal corporation and expand federal authority over critical mineral and material markets by authorizing government storage, acquisition, financing, sales, and market-support operations. It would affect federal statutes governing government corporations, appropriations, procurement-like transactions, financial assistance, and oversight, while also directing coordination with multiple agencies including Energy, Defense, Commerce, State, Treasury, USGS, DFC, EXIM, and others. The bill would primarily affect domestic miners, processors, recyclers, traders, and authorized intermediaries, as well as partner-country producers and investors, by creating a federal mechanism to support projects and manage supply-chain risk.
No committee discussion or vote history is available, so there is no recorded legislative sentiment from hearings, markup, or floor action. From the bill text, the measure is framed positively as a national-security and industrial-resilience initiative, with bipartisan-style sponsorship and a strong emphasis on market stability, domestic production, and supply-chain diversification. The overall tone suggests support for reducing dependence on foreign-controlled supply chains, especially those associated with China, while also trying to reassure observers through audit, reporting, and conflict-of-interest provisions.
The main areas of potential contention are the bill’s creation of a new government corporation with broad market intervention powers, the $2.5 billion authorization, and the Reserve’s ability to use loans, futures, options, non-recourse lending, and equity investments. Critics could object to federal involvement in commodity markets, the possibility of distorting prices, and the breadth of the Reserve’s authority over private counterparties and storage facilities. Other likely disputes involve the bill’s explicit exclusion of foreign entities of concern and covered countries, its China-focused findings, and the balance between transparency and the bill’s national-security and proprietary-information exceptions.