WASHINGTON — U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Monday welcomed Korea Zinc Co.'s plan to work with the U.S. government to jointly invest in building a critical metals refinery in Tennessee as a "big win for America." Lutnick made the remarks in a social media post, hours after the company said that it had signed an agreement to forge a strategic partnership with the U.S. Departments of Defense and Commerce for a joint investment to build a 650,000-square-meter refinery in Clarksville under the "U.S. Smelter" project. "Today, we announced a major investment with Korea Zinc to build a state-of-the-art critical minerals smelter and processing facility in Tennessee that will produce 540,000 tons per year of essential materials right here in America," the secretary said on X. "These minerals power the technologies that matter most for our future: defense systems, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, autos, data centers, and advanced manufacturing," he added. Lutnick said that gallium, germanium, indium, antimony, copper, silver, gold and zinc will all be produc