Epoch Times - U.S. Strategy to End China’s Iron Grip, Sec. Doug Burgum

All Episodes

Previous Next

Oct. 13, 2025 - Epoch Times

25:45

U.S. Strategy to End China’s Iron Grip, Sec. Doug Burgum

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	President Trump you know talks about drill baby drill, we've also got a mind baby mine, we've got to get back into this business.
	Joining us today is U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Doug Bergum, who oversees nearly 500 million acres of public land and plays a key role in Trump's energy dominance agenda.
	If a rare earth mineral company became profitable, and then all of a sudden, boom, the next year they're losing 200 million because China's dumping in the market.
	China has got a stranglehold on all of these essential minerals that are needed for our technology, for our defense.
	This is American Thought Leaders.
	And I'm Yanya Kelleck.
	Secretary Doug Bergum, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
	Jan, great to be with you.
	Thanks for having me on.
	So you recently discussed something that's very, very close to my heart or the thing that I'm really concerned about.
	It's this issue of critical minerals.
	You said China today controls 85 to 100% of all the refining of the 20 most important rare earth minerals.
	Okay, break that down for me, please, sir.
	Well, it's it's a shocking uh fact uh that we've we've allowed ourselves to get in a position where China has got a stranglehold on all of these essential minerals that are needed for our technology, for our defense, uh for automotive, uh essentially uh everything we need uh for energy security and and national security and economic security.
	Uh China's been at this uh over a period of decades uh and they're not only in many cases controlling uh the mining around the world with their investments as part of their belt and road, but they bring all those materials back to China and do the processing there and then sell them to the world.
	And so and again, like last spring when we were going tit for dat uh during uh some uh trade wars, if you will, uh, you know, they withheld uh shipping uh a certain type of magnet uh to all Western countries, not just the United States.
	And we were we were facing uh within weeks of every auto plant in the world being shut down.
	I think this is a wake-up call uh for everybody in the West to say we've got to have secure ply chains.
	President Trump understands that uh as part of the national energy emergency that he's created.
	We're using every authority we have to try to bring those supply chains back home.
	Uh that includes us getting back in the mining game uh in this country.
	Uh absolutely important that we do it here, but also we've got to get into the refining of those of those minerals uh in rare earth minerals and critical minerals here in the United States.
	You know, you've got a few initiatives here.
	Um, you know, you're doing this list of critical minerals, and actually explain to me briefly why it's important to just have this list in the first place be codified.
	Well, it's a it's important uh because we want to go beyond uh the periodic table, but start right there.
	Uh if you want to take what your lead-in question was, take the periodic table and then color it red if a hundred percent of the refining uh for the free world is done in China on those minerals, and that should be the wake-up call for everybody.
	But when we when we create the list uh as as part of a uh federal procedure, uh that gives it a different designation.
	We've got the opportunity to uh have more authorities in terms of the work that we do to make those investments, whether it's the Defense Production Act, uh, whether it's under this the national security emergency that we're under.
	Uh but this is uh again, and we're taking extraordinary steps uh since this time last spring.
	The United States is now uh the Department of War has made actual equity investments uh in multiple mineral companies because uh if it was the capital markets had stopped working successfully for private companies in the United States, if a if a rare earth mineral company became profitable, China would dump that particular uh mineral onto the market, depressing prices, uh, and essentially drive uh these companies out of business.
	In the case of Mountain Pass, which was the first uh first deal that was done with the Department of War earlier this summer, uh when they they these guys had made a couple hundred million dollars, uh they were getting ready to go to an IPO, they had plenty of access to capital markets, uh commercial loans, bonds, uh, IPO, and then all of a sudden, boom, the next year they're losing 200 million because China's dumping in the market.
	They've got no access to capital, and they're at the brink of shutting down.
	And this is just a playbook that China's used uh to uh to use uh their uh avoid hot market forces and just strategically as a country subsidize certain industries to gain control.
	Right.
	I mean what we call unrestricted warfare, just one of the methods.
	But so so let's discuss that.
	Like, how do we actually defend against that meaningfully?
	Because um, you know, we've kind of known about these vulnerabilities for a while.
	I mean, whether it's uh, you know, the generic drug precursors, which are somewhere in those, you know, high you know, 80 percentages and so forth, or these critical rare earth minerals.
	How is it that you can kind of speed that process now?
	Well, part of it is this again, the extraordinary step, and having spent almost my entire life in the private sector, I was one like, oh, the you know, government should never be an equity participant in a company.
	We're not picking winners and losers.
	But in this case, where we can come in, take a minority position, uh, send a signal to the market that there's going to be uh a partnership here where they're they've got their they're can receive and thrive in a capital market.
	Uh and then and then the combination of the tariffs.
	When we put the tariffs up, uh again, that creates uh again a measure of protection for U.S. companies uh to be able for us to restart this mining industry.
	I would just tell you one indication of how bad it's come.
	This this country, uh, and again, part of the the climate ideology, climate extremism that said somehow that mining was a bad thing, not just not just energy production, but mining, that we should stop mining in in America, we should export mining to third world countries.
	Uh we graduated over 36,000 lawyers last year in the United States.
	We graduated about 300 people with mining and metallurgical degrees.
	We, you know, when President Trump you know talks about drill baby drill, we've also got a mine baby mine.
	We've got to get back into this business, and we got to help people understand this is a high-tech, sophisticated uh industry mining today.
	Uh the amount of technology that goes into both identifying and the resource, extracting that resource and refining that resource.
	It's an exciting industry.
	Uh and the U.S. uh, you know, innovation, not regulation is what's always been the source of American greatness.
	And we've effectively regulated uh this entire industry out of existence uh in the U.S. That's uh that's turning around.
	Just yesterday, President Trump in the Oval Office uh using his presidential powers uh to uh uh agree with an appeal from the state of Alaska, the Biden administration shut down this 211-mile-long Ambler Road that leads uh into one of the richest mining districts in the world.
	Uh Biden shut that down.
	Uh Trump had approved it, Biden shut it down this time on the appeal.
	Uh it's an irrevocable appeal.
	The presidential power gets to say uh this road's gonna happen.
	He said it yesterday.
	Uh there's over 1,700 mining claims along Ambler Road in Alaska.
	Uh that you know, that's got to have lifted the economic uh value of every single one of those mining claims because for the first time in history, there's going to be uh infrastructure that will allow people to get in to mine those minerals and also to be able to bring them back out.
	Mr. Secretary, to your point about you know, understanding what actually America has, you instructed a while back now, the U.S. Geologic Service to unleash America's balance sheet to understand what's in these in the public land, the subsurface mineral rights and the offshore areas.
	How is that coming now?
	Well, we're making progress, but it's a big lift and it's going to take a whole of government approach.
	Uh but you know, I I think what you understand every time there's a presidential election, every American gets educated on how much debt America has.
	Oh, we've got 36 trillion dollars of debt, and then they'll divide it by household and say each this is each person owes this much money.
	Well, we talk about that.
	Why don't we talk about what each American owns in terms of assets?
	Because uh the Biden administration has been was uh systematically restricting access to the balance sheet of America.
	The Department of Interior alone, which I have the honor of leading, uh controls over 500 million acres of surface land, 700 million acres of subsurface minerals, 2.5 billion of offshore uh resources across from everything from uh the U.S. Virgin Islands to American Samoa, all those U.S. territories and their offshore waters are also part of U.S.'s balance sheet.
	And then you throw in the U.S. Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture, and you add in another couple hundred million acres of of service land.
	So if if Interior was a standalone company would have the largest balance sheet in the world, uh it would also have among the large balance sheet, it would have the worst returns in the world because we've restricted access to it.
	We you know we've tried to shut down the timber industry.
	We're trying to do not we, but the Biden administration, Biden administration putting the clamps on timber production, on grazing, on mineral production on these public lands.
	When Theodore Roosevelt put away these hundreds of millions of acres, he specifically said that this was for the benefit and the enjoyment of the American public.
	Yes, for recreation, but also the benefit to access all of these minerals.
	So codifying that balance sheet has been something that we're working on across government.
	But just the just the Gulf of Gulf of America offshore, 28 trillion, 28 trillion in oil and gas uh resources that are there.
	Uh coal resources, uh close to 10 trillion dollars of coal resources on public lands.
	And again, some of this stuff like the coal Biden administration was basically not leasing any coal.
	They're saying we're gonna just wipe 10 trillion off the U.S. balance sheet.
	They'd shut down uh millions and millions of acres of for any kind of offshore activity in the Gulf of America.
	That also wiped trillions of dollars off the balance sheet.
	And when they did that, no one in the news could ever write a story about the financial impact.
	There'd be a story about, oh, you know, they're saving XYZ territory or land or this or that, they're saving the planet, but there was never a financial number attached to it.
	And in some, there's ways to save the planet.
	One way to save the planet is do all the energy and mining in the U.S. because we do it cleaner, better, safer, and smarter than anywhere.
	If you want to save the planet, you don't shut off uh the ability to develop in the country that actually has got the track record of caring the most, innovating the most, and doing the the safest and the most environmentally sound work of any any any country in the world.
	The U.S. is always led in that area.
	Right.
	So I mean, unless unleashing energy production is of course, I know you're collaborating with the Department of Energy uh uh in this whole realm.
	Uh I understand that uh the ener energy companies, you know, oil and and so forth have kind of rejigged around these kind of policies in the previous administration.
	Um are they shifting back?
	It takes some time to actually um I guess prepare to exploit these resources.
	Uh how is that coming?
	Is that something we can see in the near term that growth, or is it something that's coming further out?
	Well, I think the place we're really seeing it is in uh uh LNG exports.
	Uh one of the things that, of course, uh with under President Trump, you know, energy dominance uh is really about energy abundance.
	It's a it's nothing short of two words peace and prosperity, prosperity at home because energy, whether it's the car you drive, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, there's an energy component to all of those.
	If we can get energy prices down and through a combination of opening up the supply, reducing the permitting times, uh cutting the red tape that burden these these industries, these industries.
	If we can do that, we can lower the cost of energy.
	Uh but then in terms of peace abroad, President Trump already solving seven global conflicts in eight months.
	Uh no one's ever been the peace president like he is, he's got two more to go, and which two more to go?
	We got Russia and Iran.
	What are where are both of them getting their revenues from?
	They're getting them from energy sales.
	So as President Trump, you know, it says we want to sell energy to our friends and allies so they don't have to buy it from our adversaries.
	Because if you're buying Iranian oil like China is, you're funding 24 terrorist groups.
	If you're buying, if you're a European country buying Russian oil or gas, you're funding the war that you're actually engaged in.
	I mean, we have countries that are buying Russian oil and gas and providing support to Ukraine.
	They're funding two sides of a war.
	It makes no sense.
	So energy diplomacy is one of the ways that President Trump has been able to bring peace around the world.
	Uh, and he's determined to uh resolve uh the last two big ones that are out there, but uh it's it the energy and energy diplomacy is a key part of it.
	Right.
	So let's jump back to this national security dimension because really all of these things were again, whether it's critical rights or PPEs, that they threatened to withhold PPEs back in the day on the manufacturing side, um, whether it's uh medical precursors, whether it's um the ability to not be dependent outside on energy, it all ultimately comes down.
	This is the the thing that I keep keeps me up at night is we it feels to me like we have a lot of exposure on the national security side because of these things not being uh uh having been taken care of.
	I mean, and this isn't just over one, this is over multiple administrations over a long time, to be fair.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Yeah, well, we we do have exposure, and again, we saw that this last spring, especially when uh when they China was withholding the magnets, and then China said, oh, well, we'll start shipping again, you just have to fill out this export form.
	Well, the export form is requiring everybody from automakers to tech companies to defense companies to say exactly how they use the magnet, what product it goes into, what are the dimensions, you know, is it for commercial or for military use?
	I it was essentially a giant intelligence gathering uh capability and episode on their part, uh, you know, under the guise of it's just that it's just an export form.
	Uh and they were doing that to countries around the world.
	And and again, we just can't have this kind of dependence, and that's why, again, under the Trump administration, uh we we are in an energy emergency.
	Part of that energy emergency is to make sure we've got enough electricity to win the AI arms race against China.
	It's also that we've got uh the critical minerals and the refining those critical minerals, so we don't we're not put in a uh a stranglehold uh by China.
	And you know, in my view, China played their card too early.
	Uh they had a card, they played it at a time when we were not involved in any kind of kinetic uh we're in a cold war essentially, a trade war.
	Uh we're certainly in a uh cyber war every day because of their attempts to steal our IP all the time.
	Uh but amongst all the wars we are, we're not in a kinetic war, but they played a trade, a pretty big trade war car.
	They played it early, and uh that woke up uh America, certainly woke up this administration.
	Uh we're determined uh as quickly as possible to reduce and eliminate any critical mineral supply chain dependence we have on China.
	Well, so what do you make of this, all this chatter about the president making some sort of massive trade deal, you know, for with with some sort of you know national security restriction concessions then?
	Well, we we certainly hope uh that there won't be any uh national security uh concessions, but you know, China uh for the choke points that they have, they've also got a bunch of issues.
	Uh whether it's the uh you know the overblown stock market, whether it's the real estate overhang, whether it's the demographics that they have of an aging population that is uh uh and and and and a slowing economic growth, uh that they've you know got a lot of debt in their economy.
	The fact that they're the most energy-dependent country in the world, they import 11.5 million barrels of oil a day, a day uh into that country.
	I mean, just to keep the lights on and keep it going.
	Uh so those the in that sense they've got a lot of dependencies going, and so so they've they've they've got they have energy security, they've got economic security problems as well.
	Uh and I think you know, right now when the the tariffs are really having an impact on China because their their whole model was built around over building more supply than they needed domestically, dumping it on the world market uh to try to create employment at home.
	And if you shut if the U.S. shuts its doors uh and can replace those goods, you know, that takes away the largest market in the world, and that can create a lot of havoc uh economically back home for China.
	I think they're starting to realize that.
	I think they're gonna come to the table with some concessions on on their half, but uh again, it's a uh it's a dangerous situation that we're in.
	Mr. Secretary, you raise a very good point here.
	Uh the Chinese economy really only has one leg left, which is the export.
	And that's something we have to pay close attention to.
	You know, and by the way, thank you very much for uh joining me here during this shutdown.
	I understand a lot of your department actually isn't functioning.
	Could you just tell us like what what what's the situation right now and and our are what are the challenges?
	Well, you know, and uh, you know, I'm a private sector guy, so this whole thing is just bizarro land to me that we would actually have a mechanism where either party could allow the federal government to shut down.
	I mean, think if you're running a small hardware store, you know, on Main Street USA, and then all of a sudden one day you just tell your employees, hey, we're shutting down.
	We don't know when we're going to open up again, but you guys just go on furlough and stick around.
	Uh, and then your customers come and knock on the door or they come online and your website's down and you're in the doors are shut, and they're like, well, we're not sure when we're opening again.
	We're waiting for some you know politicians to decide uh, you know, what when they've extracted enough benefit from this shutdown to somehow think I mean it this is weird.
	If if the Democrats want to pass legislation, they can introduce the legislation while the government's running, and then battle it out in Congress and see if they can pass legislation.
	There's nothing good in this for the American people right now, because uh, you know, I'm sitting in a building that should hold about 4,000 people, and for the most part, no one's here except uh a bunch of uh President Trump's appointees uh that are you know in the building uh and they're also working without getting paid.
	And so you know, trying to keep the lights on and keep things moving in this country makes it makes no sense whatsoever.
	Again, and there's not if there was some large political thing at state, I understand why people would uh negotiate, but you know, we these we can have a negotiation about health care in America.
	Well, the government's functioning.
	You don't have to shut it down to have that thing.
	So again, makes as a private sector guy, it makes no sense.
	We've wasted so much time shutting down.
	Uh then we're gonna spend a bunch of time trying to gear up and start up and you know, and meanwhile, we're not we're every is China shutting down this week?
	I don't think so.
	You know, China's not taking a week off over some internal thing.
	And so again, the bigger picture here is that US, we hurt ourselves in world competition uh when we we take these uh narrow, short-sighted inside the beltway DC views of the world uh because uh you know the govern government is uh it does perform functions.
	At interior, we're finding funding sources.
	We're not allowed to spend appropriate dollars, but we're trying to keep permitting open, keeping the national parks open, trying to keep everything going.
	So all the things that you and I have talked about working on Yan, we're we're not slowing down on any of that.
	Uh but there's uh only a period of time because we can only borrow money from so many other unappropriated buckets uh to keep things keep things moving and keep the doors open.
	Uh so hopefully this gets resolved soon uh and uh and we could get some common sense back into it.
	The the House of Representatives has already passed a continuing resolution.
	So if the Senate voted to keep the government open, it's operating under the same budget we were operating under, what, you know, a week ago.
	Uh I think we'd be I think we're okay, and then we'll let them duke it out in Congress.
	But don't stop uh the the wheels of American economy uh and the important role that we that we can play in keeping that going in a Trump direction.
	President Trump's got this economy turning around.
	This is not helping.
	Um Secretary Bergum, uh final thought as we finish.
	Well, I would just say uh again, I'm very optimistic about the future.
	President Trump's leadership, whether it's uh ending wars uh at home, help reshoring manufacturing back, uh, his focus on on us building up the electrical power in this country that we need to win the AI arms race.
	Under President Biden, we were shutting down base load and highly subsidizing uh forms of electricity uh that wind and solar uh that that are intermittent and expensive.
	And on the solar side, most of those solar panels were coming from China.
	Uh it was discovered that there was you know kill switches being put in some of these, so the solar panels is could be just as big a problem as Huawei was during Trump Trump won.
	Uh if again, if we want to have solar in this country, it better be from U.S. manufacturers uh and in ways that where we can be secure about what the supply chain is.
	But meanwhile, President Trump just bringing common sense, we've got to get back in that.
	China added 93 gigawatts of coal last year.
	Uh we need electricity.
	A kilowatt hour of electricity right now is worth more than it ever has been in history because you could turn electricity directly into intelligence in an in what I call an AI factory.
	They're not really data centers.
	Data centers is you know, one company and their customers, it's a closed loop.
	Uh AI is a general purpose technology, a GPT.
	It can be used by def any industry.
	Use it cure cancer, change education, transform the you know, the uh the number of lawyers we need in America.
	There's all kinds of benefits that can come from uh having this kind Of advanced intelligence going around.
	But we need power.
	We used to say that power is knowledge or knowledge is power, is what we used to say.
	Knowledge is power.
	That was a saying in almost every culture and every language, but it's flipped around.
	Now power creates knowledge and we need more electricity to make it happen.
	President Trump understands that.
	Whether it's on the nuclear energy side with the four executive orders that he put in earlier this year, which have helped bring a flood of new venture capital back into the nuclear business, or whether it's all of the innovation that's occurring on other forums, whether it's not small modular nuclears, but geothermal, there's a bunch of exciting things happening.
	Oil and gas continues to get more efficient and it's just essential to our economy.
	So it is uh it's exciting to see uh what's happening.
	And again, uh Eastern or Western Europe can thank America.
	Western Europe uh has benefited so greatly from the LNG exports coming out of the United States.
	Our energy abundance uh is literally saved the EU during this time of conflict uh with uh with Russia.
	And uh kudos to all those patriots that work across America's energy industries because it the work that they're doing to have safe, reliable, secure, affordable energy benefits every American, but it's certainly playing big on the world stage.
	Well, one final quick thought.
	Is it possible that through uh this AI revolution and you know incredible growth and hunger for power, hunger for energy, the narrative it's could perhaps the narrative on energy have been shifted?
	Uh that that's the final thought I'd like to leave us with.
	I is do you think that could have could be happening?
	I mean, across the board.
	Well, absolutely, and I'll tell you it started in Silicon Valley because Silicon Valley made a 180 degree flip, and everybody that understood the AI revolution uh ended up uh showing up as a President Trump supporter.
	People said that wouldn't have been possible two years ago uh because of the of the direction uh where Silicon Valley was uh you know focused on all kinds of issues that were not related to national security, national defense, uh, you know, economic prosperity, America's future.
	Uh and then they woke up one day and said, wow, there's not going to be enough electricity in America for us to power AI.
	There's not gonna be enough electricity to power the market caps of our companies.
	Uh we better get with a team that actually understands that, get with a team that is is committed to actually producing power to win the A arms race.
	And and you saw virtually every major player in Silicon Valley came over.
	They came over, their awakening was all around energy and energy security.
	Uh and and again, I it it takes uh courage and curiosity and humility to switch your positions uh and and swit switch the direction of where they're going.
	But a credit to all those tech leaders uh that you know stood up and uh and showed up and uh were standing by President Trump at the inauguration uh because they're part of the team that's gonna help us win the AI arms race against China.
	Well, Secretary Doug Bergum, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
	Thank you, Jan.
	Thank you all for joining Secretary Doug Bergam and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.

▲