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Feb. 28, 2025 12:02-12:28 - CSPAN

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Washington Journal Gracelin Baskaran

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greta brawner

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Winners would be China and maybe Russia.
		So we're out of time.
		Thank you all very much and thanks to our panelists.
		Enjoying you.
		Thank you.
		Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is at the White House now.
		Earlier, he was on Capitol Hill.
		Senator Chris Koons of Connecticut posted this, just finished an encouraging meeting in Washington with President Zelensky and a bipartisan group of senators to discuss our ongoing partnership with Ukraine.
		Coming up more on President Trump's meetings with President Zelensky, they're in talks on a mineral sharing deal which President Trump is seeking from Ukraine.
		We plan to show you several of their public appearances, including an Oval Office meeting between the two leaders and a joint news conference.
		They'll speak to the press live at 1 p.m. Eastern, and later, the Ukrainian president will talk about securing peace three years after the Russian invasion of his country.
		That'll be hosted by the Hudson Institute at 4.
		You can watch all of these events live on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Joining us this morning is Gracelyn Baskarin.
		She is at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
		She's their program director that looks at critical minerals security here to talk about this proposed U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal.
		President Zelensky will be in Washington today.
		He'll arrive at the White House in a couple of hours, and then there will be negotiations that happen behind closed doors between President Trump and Mr. Zelensky over minerals in Ukraine.
		Big picture.
		What minerals are in the country of Ukraine and what is their status?
unidentified		Ukraine has a whole basket of minerals.
		It is a country that occupies about 0.4% of the world's land, but is estimated to have about 5% of the world's minerals.
		So we have everything from coal and uranium, which are more on the energy side, to rare earths, which we will probably talk about further, which are used for defensive technologies, advanced semiconductors, titanium, graphite, really has a basket of resources.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Aluminum as well.
		So what is their status, though, right now?
		The country has obviously, as we know, been in war for three years with Russia.
		So are these minerals able to be extracted right now?
unidentified		So it's a lot of untapped potential.
		And actually, the majority of minerals that were mapped in Ukraine were done so 30 to 60 years ago by the Soviet Union.
		And there's a couple challenges this poses to the right now story.
		So first of all, before we can mine something, we need to know what's there.
		And that's actually going to depend on whether the private sector even wants to mine it.
		It's common here in the U.S. to have minerals, but maybe the ore grade isn't high enough.
		The deposit isn't big enough.
		It's too deep.
		So they end up not actually getting extracted.
		And we don't have a lot of data on, number one, is it economically viable to mine them?
		Two, like, you know, how quickly can we do them?
		On average, globally, it takes 18 years to build a mine.
		That's a really long time.
		So we've got to map and then add the time it takes to develop a mine before we're going to get to a point where we're getting resources.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And does Ukraine have the infrastructure to mine these minerals from their country?
unidentified		Mining is incredibly infrastructure intensive.
		I mean, we think about the fact that like 16% of the global or the world's electricity supply is used by the mining industry.
		And we know that most of that energy infrastructure has been wiped out during the course of the war.
		So there's a lot of rebuilding for the requisite infrastructure, energy, roads, the port that has to be rebuilt alongside the geological mapping before we get to a point of production.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		When you look at a map of Ukraine, and this is put together by Reuters, and they show the different minerals across the country of Ukraine.
		Here is titanium, we have graphite over here, rare earth minerals here, lithium, uranium, others across the country, iron, etc.
		Why is the United States interested in these minerals?
unidentified		So we'll start with rare earths because we've seen rare earths feature very prominently in the conversation about Ukraine, but also Greenland.
		It's been a broader concern.
		So we are really stressed out by China's dominance in rare earths.
		They process 90% of the world's rare earths, and they are very willing to weaponize them.
		We first saw this in 2010.
		There was a dispute with Japan about a fishing trawler, and China cut Japan off.
		The rare earths are not just, you know, a clean energy story.
		It's really a defense story.
		They are in warships, fighter jets, missiles, tanks, lasers, ICT technology.
		Pretty much the backbone that keeps our country safe is a rare earth story.
		So what we started doing five years ago in the U.S. through the Defense Production Act is we have spent $300 million to build that processing capability here at home in the U.S., in Texas, and in California, which is fantastic.
		Except we only have 1.3% of the world's rare earths.
		So what we're looking to do now is to strategically source rare earths from other places that can come back to the U.S., be processed, and then ultimately be manufactured into these various technologies.
		We've seen, for example, that the Development Finance Corporation, our government financing agency, is looking at financing a project in Brazil.
		Then you add the Greenland story in Ukraine, and you really see rare earths are a top focus.
		And then, of course, other commodities still remain very important that Ukraine has.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Define rare earths.
unidentified		Rare earths are actually a group of 17 minerals.
		So terbi, I always say it's like the spelling be hardship, right?
		Presodymium, you know, neodymium, dysprosium, scandium, they're hard words to say and spell.
		But some of these are really, really important.
		The other thing about rare earths is a bit of a misnomer because they're not actually rare.
		They're actually everywhere.
		Now, the difficulty is they're often found in small quantities and they're expensive to extract and process, which is why there's so few processing facilities globally.
		So the trick is where can we find them in as large quantities as possible?
		But they are a large group of minerals.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Is that in Ukraine?
unidentified		Is there a large quantity?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We have to map it.
		So what does that entail?
		We have to map it because it hasn't been done, as you said, in 30-some years, right?
unidentified		Yeah, it's very old mapping.
		The director of the Ukrainian Geological Survey has come out and said, the former director has come out and said there's no modern mapping of rare earths, right?
		So we're kind of, you know, from the initial deal that was being discussed, whereby Ukraine was asked to repay $500 billion to the United States through mineral revenue for military aid that was paid.
		President Zelensky said, hold on, I'm not on board with that, because there wasn't $500 billion of aid we received.
		And really, we know that figure to be closer to $128 billion.
		But from that point to where we are now, Ukraine has gotten a much better deal, right?
		Now, you know, there's no repayment of military aid.
		What Zelensky will certainly get with time from the world, not just from the U.S., is a mapping, because the mapping comes before the investment.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So tell us about the deal.
		When you look at what we know so far, how does Ukraine benefit from this?
		How does the U.S. benefit from it?
unidentified		So Ukraine gets a few key, one really big thing.
		So what this deal puts forward is a fund, a reconstruction fund in essence.
		And it would take 50% of all future mineral revenue, not just minerals, oil and gas too, revenue and put it into this fund.
		And this fund could then be used to turn around and invest in Ukraine.
		So in a way, it also becomes an economic development tool for some of this infrastructure that we need to rebuild, right?
		What the deal doesn't include is it doesn't include the repayment that was originally discussed and quite tenuous.
		It also doesn't include any security guarantees, which President Zelensky really wanted.
		And President Trump said, you know, that's what Europe's job is for.
		I'm not here for that.
		Now, will this affect mineral investment?
		That's a real question.
		President Macron said, well, you know, there's almost like an implicit security that comes with this cooperation.
		But it's to be determined whether the private sector thinks that's enough.
		And here's why.
		Land is very easy to expropriate in that region, as we've seen over the last 11 years.
		And in the last few days, President Putin has come out and said, hey, I kind of want a minerals deal too.
		And I've got minerals not only on Russia, but also Russian occupied land, which means he's willing to negotiate with minerals that are not on really what's his own land.
		And expropriation globally, history has told us over and over, we go conquer where minerals are.
		Go back to King Leopold's days, you know, in Africa.
		And so there's a real risk, you know, that without an explicit security guarantee, given that mining is decades long, you know, we talk about 20 years to build a mine, the mine itself runs from 30 to 80 years, that another invasion or a further expansion of an occupation could potentially take some of these assets.
		Prior to the war, there were two lithium assets that companies were looking to develop.
		One of them now sits on occupied land and has had to be let go.
		You know, there's no guarantee that that won't happen again.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Let's get to calls.
		Jerome in California, Independent.
		Your questions or comment about this potential mineral deal between the United States and Ukraine.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Thank you for letting me speak.
		This whole program that's being advocated by the president and his followers is basically an experiment or a demonstration of modern-day colonialism.
		And you can trace back in history how the lady who's speaking before was talking about Africa, and you can see how Africa is now regarding what took place in earlier colonialism.
		I'm not saying it's wrong.
		I mean, basically, the Chinese own a lot of the American ports.
		So for countries to go into different areas, not necessarily invade them with their military, but invade them with their capitalistic enterprises to grab minerals or utilize their facilities to generate money for their own particular beliefs is a very complicated and difficult thing and more than likely eventually will be a nightmare,
		as most colonial nations eventually have demonstrated throughout time.
		In essence, The Russian situation in the Ukraine, I mean, who really knows the bottom-line answer?
		I surely don't.
		I've spoken to people who are Ukrainian.
		I've spoken to people who are Russian.
		Surprisingly enough, the Ukrainian individual who's a physician who of mine, he has no problems with it since the majority of people in that particular area that Russia now occupies is Russian speaking, which is an interesting thought.
		And Ukraine over the years, centuries, has gone through tremendous problems as any country that doesn't have a sea as a boundary.
		All of Europe.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Rome, I'll jump in at that point, have our guests respond.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Thanks so much for the question.
		I think you're absolutely right that there's an easy trap down here that's been happening for the better part of centuries on resource colonialism.
		I think President Zelensky has gone to great lengths to try and avoid that.
		And here's what I mean.
		In the initial deal, there was potential conversation about the U.S. owning the land or owning mineral rights of Ukraine.
		That's not the case anymore.
		And we see this actually quite recently, is in 2007, after the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, China went in and negotiated a deal whereby they gave the Congo $3 billion of infrastructure.
		And in exchange, they got access to $93 billion of copper and cobalt.
		Today, 15 of the 19 biggest mines in the DRC are owned by Chinese companies.
		Now, a couple of years ago, the Congo realized they got a really bad deal.
		They got the short end of the stick.
		And they declared that they were going to go back and review that deal.
		And there's a lot of lessons learned from that in terms of trying to avoid ownership, et cetera, where another country gets to make decisions and gets excessively favorable terms to the detriment of their own development.
		And we've seen even interesting, just this last week, President Shiketi in the DRC has come back and said, I too would like a minerals deal because, you know, obviously there's the growing war with Rwanda.
		And President Trump is said to be thinking about it in the New York Times.
		So I think you're right.
		I think President Zelensky has been very strategic to avoid the pitfalls of having sovereign autonomy impinge, being forced to take a bad deal.
		And really where we've landed with this deal is, you know, I was thinking this morning, it's more of a cooperation agreement, right?
		It's more of a government-to-government cooperation agreement than an ownership deal of any sort.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		How dependent is this on private investment?
unidentified		100% dependent on private investment because the U.S. government, unlike Saudi Arabia or China or Russia, does not have a state-owned mining company.
		So if we want that 50% of revenue to go into this fund, the revenue is not generated by U.S. government mining.
		It's ultimately determined by private sector mining output and a revenue coming from that, which is why the best thing the government can do with this piece of paper to keep it from being just a piece of paper is to support infrastructure development, to support mapping, to support the things that make the private sector willing to go in and take that risk.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What companies, U.S. companies, would go in?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What are some names that people might recognize that would go in and do this type of work?
unidentified		So the private sector has been fairly quiet in this conversation so far for a couple of reasons.
		From the American side, part of the challenge is we don't have a lot of big American mining companies.
		The majority, if you look at the majors, eight of the 10, 9 of the 10 are actually foreign.
		If they're British, they're Australian, they're Canadian, they're Chinese, they're Saudi Arabian.
		Is we only have a couple of American mining companies, and the majors are only copper and gold.
		So one is that we do rely on companies and allied nations.
		The second thing is companies are hesitant given volatility to make a statement.
		Mining companies are also mysteriously quiet on tariffs given this.
		So they're kind of staying quiet right now to see how this unfolds.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Mike and Michigan, Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mike, your turn.
unidentified		Good morning.
		A couple years ago, I recall seeing an article that there's a vast store of these rare earth minerals on the seabed between California and Hawaii.
		Has Crittenden something or other?
		I can't remember the name of the area, but many, possibly as many as a dozen nations have stake claims to these rare earth minerals that could be actually vacuumed up, I believe, even though it's so deep.
		We've got the capability of drilling for oil through a couple of miles of water before we hit the basin.
		And I was just wondering what you know about this store of rare earth minerals sitting there on the seabed.
		Thank you.
		Yeah, the Clipperton zone.
		So deep sea mining has become a very interesting because it has a significant amount of minerals.
		The minerals that we generally look at with the deep sea are things like, for example, nickel, cobalt.
		These tend to sit in large quantities.
		There's a few challenges.
		The U.S. is one of the only major countries that hasn't ratified the UN kind of convention on deep sea mining.
		We've stayed very quiet.
		Some of the challenges that exist are that there can be, we don't know the environmental impact of deep sea mining.
		Could it devastate the underwaters?
		Potentially, we don't know.
		So, you know, part of what we're hoping is that, you know, Norway is actually leading the way on the R ⁇ D and the deep sea mining alongside Japan, is that we will learn from Norway and Japan on the environmental side of things.
		We can take lessons learned and we can apply them here.
		However, while deep sea mining is important, we're not going to meet all of our mineral security needs from the seas, which makes terrestrial land-based mining still very important.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Israel in Crystal River, Florida.
		Republican caller.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you.
		Thank you.
		I'm calling because there's a couple key points that are mentioned in regards to minerals.
		And I believe that that's what the Russian leader Putin has been trying to obtain this whole time.
		But he's done that in a war tactic, kind of like Hitler mentality.
		The thing is that from my understanding, from biblical aspects, Israel is a nation which the U.S. responds to, which backs up.
		But the Jews are also a Ukrainian nation and spread around the world.
		So if the United States backs up Israel and Ukrainium being an Israel-related nation, wouldn't it be the best interest for United States to back up Ukraine with military status and considering Putin is an anti-biblical figure as well as many other nations that are Muslim-related and a lot of Do you have some thoughts on that?
		Just a quick thought.
		I think President Trump's foreign policy, which is featuring minerals, is far more transactional than maybe historically ideological.
		If you've seen a lot of his first kind of 30 days, he's looking at annexing Resource Rich Canada.
		He's looking at Greenland.
		He's looking at Ukraine.
		And it's been a mineral story.
		What we do see is a far more transactional foreign policy in this administration.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mooney's in Winnicott, Illinois, Independent.
		Your comment or question on this potential deal between the U.S. and Ukraine on minerals.
		Go ahead.
		Caller in Winnikin, Illinois.
		You are next, caller.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		My question is very simple.
		Would Putin allow this deal to go through as he's looking for victory rather than peace?
		And will this deal really secure our investments in Ukraine?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		That's a great question.
		Through this negotiation, Putin hasn't come out against it.
		Putin, in fact, in parallel, has tried to negotiate his own deal.
		People have asked, you know, why is Putin trying to negotiate his own critical minerals and potentially facilitate a deal?
		I think that Putin has been on the kind of global pariah list for several years now and is looking to potentially leverage mineral resources as a way to forge and get off of sanctions, get back into kind of the on the geopolitical stage.
		And minerals are speaking very loudly, not only to the U.S., but a number of other governments seeking to bolster their supply.
		So it'll be interesting, actually, I think, to see is that this, I mean, someone said to me yesterday, a minerals deal is basically ending the war, right?
		But what we have seen, too, is that Trump hasn't said, oh, Putin must give back the Donbass region.
		So there may just be a bit compromise in that way in terms of he gets certain things and then Zelensky gets certain things as a way to chart the way forward, but minerals will feature on both sides of that.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Doris is in Windard, Georgia, and Independent.
		Hi, Doris.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Good morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		My question is, how many of you are aware that that strip of land called Ukraine is part of the original Garden of Eden?
unidentified		It was placed there at the very beginning of creation.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And Doris, your point is what?
unidentified		My point is they're tearing up the Garden of Eden just to get to those minerals.
		Those are godless men.
		They have no conscience and don't care the damage they do.
		So where do you think they're going to go from here?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Walter in Henderson, Nevada, Independent.
		Walter, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Doing well.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Question or comment?
unidentified		I'd like to know, we keep hearing from Donald Trump about how Ukraine has to give minerals, money to Europe, to the United States.
		What does Russia have to give for the destruction of the children, the families, the infrastructure, and the lives they took in Ukraine for an unprovoked attack on a democracy?
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Graceland Basquarin.
unidentified		This agreement is focusing on minerals.
		I mean, kind of how we said earlier, it's become a very transactional environment.
		And ultimately, this agreement is a minerals investment, you know, kind of agreement.
		And really, it doesn't go beyond that.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Keith in New York, Republican.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Keith.
unidentified		Yeah, hi.
unidentified		Actually, I called in on the independent line.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Well, I just wanted to make a comment.
		So to me, it just appears, from what I can glean, that this whole mineral deal is just another dog and pony show by Trump to just to appease his supporters and they'll praise him up and down.
		And so it appears there's nothing to this at all.
		It's just to make Trump look good and in the end, he's just going to end up stabbing the Ukrainians in the back.
		And these callers who keep calling in with this religious context to everything, this is why everything is going south.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I'm just going to jump in and have our guests respond to there's nothing to this.
unidentified		This is a piece of paper that's a cooperation agreement, right?
		I think as we had aptly said, whether investment comes in is to be determined by the private sector.
		There's all kinds of challenges, as we said, right?
		Energy infrastructure has been wiped out.
		We have mapping, we have a security risk, but whether the private sector goes in to decide if it's commercially viable is entirely a market dynamic.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Mary in Las Vegas, Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Mary.
unidentified		Well, another big lie by Donald Trump is that we gave Ukraine $300 over $350 billion.
		It was more like $120 billion.
		He likes to inflate numbers to get people all riled up.
		We've already agreed to help Ukraine when they gave up their nuclear weapons.
		And we aren't holding to that agreement.
		Why would we hold to any agreement with Donald Trump?
		Okay, he's siding with in the UN, with Putin, with North Korea.
		What does that tell you?
		The alignment is changing in the United States.
		This should be scaring the bejesus out of people.
		I don't know why it isn't.
		Okay, so he talks fast and loose with numbers, but I think I agree with the last caller.
		I think he's going to stab Ukraine in the back.
		You know, on how much, if somebody came after the United States, which state would you be willing to give up?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Mary's comments there.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Your final thoughts.
unidentified		I think this is why, you know, the implicit security guarantee versus the explicit security guarantee is one of the current outstanding concerns to me, is to say, President Trump is here for four years, but a mining investment, and we said is, you know, 20 years to build, could be another 40 to 80 years.
		Is it so long term that changes, you know, even if Putin and Trump are like, you know, we're on the same page about respecting this, that doesn't mean, I mean, think about the development time of a mine.
		It's four more U.S. presidential electoral cycles before you would have a producing asset.
		That's a long time for something to change.
		And this is why, you know, we kind of keep saying, well, an explicit security guarantee could be better, because there's a little bit of a higher standard to holding to it than an implicit guarantee.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Chris Lynn Baskeran is the program director on critical minerals security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
		Thank you very much for the conversation this morning.
		We appreciate it.
unidentified		Thank you for having me.

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