Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.
As you've pointed out, I live in the United States—I'm not a Canadian—so I will answer this from a certain distance. The key point I would like to make is the broader question here: Should we care who owns lithium and who produces lithium in the world? I think that over the last couple of years, especially in the United States, there's been a growing awareness that indifference to that question, that not paying attention, has come at a huge cost.
I will be very candid that Washington has not come up yet with a comprehensive strategy to address critical minerals, to safeguard them and secure them. That's some of the work that we are trying to do as a think tank here in Washington. In my view, what that strategy would entail would be to work with key allies like Canada, like Australia and like the European Union in trying to think about how these supply chains can evolve over time so that they become much more diversified from China than they are today.
That would be the strategic posture that I would expect from the United States. We've seen various U.S. institutions, including the development finance corporation, give money to companies that are trying to diversify these supply chains. That would be a core U.S. objective to be pursued in partnership with allies like Canada.