In Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story The Purloined Letter, a group of investigators search tirelessly for a stolen letter containing information that could be used for blackmail. They conduct elaborate searches and speculate endlessly about where the letter could be hidden, only for detective C. Auguste Dupin to find it hiding in plain sight on a card rack.
The story mirrors how policymakers often respond to problems: crafting elaborate policies while overlooking simpler solutions that may be hiding in plain sight.
As geopolitical competition with China and conflicts across the world highlight shortcomings in America’s defense industrial base and vulnerabilities in its supply chain for rare earth minerals, industrial policy has become fashionable on both sides of the aisle. Whether it’s the subsidies included in President Biden’s signature CHIPS and Science Act or President Trump’s sweeping tariffs, leaders of both parties seem willing to enact costly, distortionary measures to rebuild America’s industrial base and sever dangerous dependencies.
While it is worth discussing the merits and drawbacks of these policies, there are more straightforward ways to strengthen America’s industrial capacity. One of the most important is permitting reform: improving the way infrastructure, manufacturing, and mining projects are approved. If implemented impartially, permitting reform could enable entrepreneurs to respond more rapidly to America’s security needs and unleash the country’s industrial potential.
In order to get a project in mining or manufacturing approved, one must navigate a sprawling web of (frequently overlapping) regulations and get approval from a multitude of state and federal authorities. Agencies can often retroactively veto already-approved projects (if they get around to the approval decision at all), and the lengthy process opens up opportunities for interest groups to shoot down projects they oppose through litigation.
Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan summarized America’s permitting challenges well when he argued, “Too many people possess the power to say no. Too few are empowered to say yes.”
Permitting reform tackles this issue head-on with measures like reducing redundant permission requirements, modernizing legal processes, eliminating retroactive veto power, and setting strict timelines for regulators to reduce delays and uncertainty.
As it stands, mining projects critical to America’s industrial needs are often bogged down by extensive permitting requirements. A report from S&P Global found that the average lead time — the gap between mineral discovery and production — for mines worldwide has increased from about six years in 1990 to nearly 30 years today. Permitting delays frequently push projects back by years or cause them to be cancelled altogether. For the United States to access its abundant reserves of rare earths and eventually reduce its reliance on Chinese supply chains, the permitting process must be reformed.
These problems plague manufacturing as well. One study examining permitting and microchip production noted that “permit notification and review processes can impose delays of weeks, months, or even years. In the presence of competition, delays threaten to erode slim technological and marketing leads.” This echoes broader economic research showing that extensive regulation impedes capital investment and reduces industrial efficiency and competitiveness.
If the process for approving projects were simplified and streamlined, it would empower miners, manufacturers, and entrepreneurs to respond more effectively to demand for critical minerals and improvements in America’s industrial base. A mistake many proponents of state-directed industry make is underestimating the ability of markets to respond to national security priorities. Record private investment in defense manufacturing demonstrates that markets can identify strategic needs and allocate capital accordingly. Effective permitting reform would allow those investments to become finished projects more quickly.
As America’s industrial and infrastructure needs continue to take center stage, policymakers will inevitably face pressure to take an ad hoc approach to permitting reform, allowing favored projects to move through the process more quickly while others remain stuck. Recent permitting exceptions for data centers in Utah and Wyoming, as well as streamlined permitting efforts for rare earth mining, illustrate this tendency.
If lawmakers continue this piecemeal approach, they risk making themselves the kingmakers of industrial policy. An abundance of economic research suggests that government favoritism in industry has a tendency to distort markets, impede competition, and create destructive incentives for rent-seeking among government officials.
More immediately, government favoritism is already hindering broader permitting reform efforts that could provide a genuine boost to American industry. The bipartisan SPEED Act, a bill that streamlines legal processes for industrial projects, faces an uncertain fate in the Senate after being passed by the House of Representatives, as many democrats remain hesitant to embrace broad permitting reform while the Trump administration weaponizes regulatory power to block clean energy projects.
Given the bipartisan momentum behind permitting reform, this should be the moment for a historic compromise. Reform could allow manufacturers, miners, and energy producers to address America’s strategic and economic needs more quickly and effectively.
Americans should ask themselves, like detective C. Auguste Dupin did, whether a solution is hiding in plain sight. If analysts, journalists, and the public paid as much attention to permitting as they do tariffs and subsidies, it could build momentum for policymakers to prioritize the issue and finally unlock meaningful change.
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