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Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
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There's some of the morning calls this morning. Let's turn to energy and critical minerals. The Trump administration set to announce a major shift in climate rules, rolling back an Obama era policy regulating fossil fuels. On that and more, the U.S. interior Secretary Doug Burgum joins us now for more. Mr. Secretary, you have been a busy man over the last week. I want to start with Project Vote and then we'll get to the EPA and what's going to happen with regulations around fossil fuels and such. Mr. Secretary, what is Project Egg Vault and how should I be thinking about this in comparison to say the spr?
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Well, it's absolutely a comparison. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has created a great buffer on price shocks for American consumers for decades and decades. We have no equivalent on critical minerals. There are 60 minerals on the critical minerals list. Some of those are rare earth elements. China, as you know, Jonathan, controls about 85 to 100% of the processing and refining on about 20 of to put a stranglehold on global industry, whether it's tech, high tech, whether it's defense, whether it's consumer. And so with the threats last year put out by China on export controls, the US Leapt into action. We're broadly bringing mining back in America. But this idea of creating a strategic critical minerals reserve across 60 different elements driven by the private sector, great leadership by across the board of multiple cabinet secretaries in the Trump administration, administration working with the ex IM bank, working with the private sector, about 10 billion in a loan, about 2 billion in equity capital going in. This is going to be private sector funded, market driven. And those critical minerals will be stored at locations that are economically smart and economically efficient around the country. But the idea is that we will in addition to that, last week there was also at the State Department a historic meeting. Over 50 countries came to the US all of them, some of them them already signed on, others, many others interested, joining a club of nations with free trade on critical minerals with price floors. The key on price floors is that it would block China from illegal dumping to kill the price across any one particular critical mineral. And that's going to allow the assurance for capital to start flowing back into mining and refining of these minerals in the US and in our allies. So tremendous interest from the leaders, ministers from around the country that were there at the event hosted at the State Department last week. So anyway, great, great progress, going to make sure that US Is secure relative to our position on critical minerals.
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And Mr. Secretary, you certainly alluded to it. China's got a Stranglehold over critical minerals. And America needs to do something about it. And overwhelmingly this agreement on this program, often almost weekly to do something about it. What is less understood is why they have that stranglehold. You talked about pricing and dumping. What about regulations? This is typically quite a dirty process. Is that how back production domestically as well?
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C
Well, there's been an attack on American energy in this country, but even longer than that, there's been an attack on mining in our country. And just like President Trump says, drill, baby, drill. We've got to get back to mine, baby, mine. The US graduated 36,000 lawyers last year and about 300 people with mining and metallurgical degrees. China, of course, is not doing it cleaner than any, whether they're tearing up the Congo or Indonesia, child labor, illegal cartels, criminal organizations, all of these things that are going on. It's a dirty industry potentially for the environment. But there's a lot of corruption around that, in part because countries like America or like those in Europe that have rules that have EPAs that can do things cleaner, better, safer, smarter, both in terms of the environment, in terms of the labor force basically got out of this business. And we've got to get the free world's got to get back into the mining business and show that with innovation that we can do it and we can do it in a way that protects the environment, protects the workers and also then protects the economies of these countries. And so this is a strategic importance for, for the United States to get back in. And we've in part of that is the permitting process. We've put a stranglehold on permitting. But President Trump, we're breaking the logjam on permitting. Big announcements coming around the endangerment finding. This is going to be a huge, huge step forward in terms of getting projects done and keeping keeping plants open in America.
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A
Mr. Secretary, there's a question around refining things like lithium that are crucial for a lot of the high tech aspects that go into our economy. There's a question about copper really necessary for the build out of some of the hyperscalers in particular. On the other side, there are things like coal and there's a real question of some of the rollbacks. The EPA rules like lowering emissions standards as well as potentially increasing the use of co. Why are those necessary to get some of the national security goals that you're talking about?
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C
Well, we will be making some more announcements on beautiful clean coal today, as President Trump likes to call it and should call it, because there's a coal plant running In America today. It has survived an onslaught for 20 years. But they've taken everything, virtually everything out of the NOx, the Sox, anything that would be considered an issue relative to the environment. And what's left? The attack on coal as a baseload power has been largely around CO2 emissions. And with the reversal of the endangerment finding that says that this was massive overreach by the Obama epa, that we are going to go back to a thing where we can have consumer choice that's lower prices. And of course with the big storms we had in the northeast last week, I mean, check back on Secretary Wright's press conference last Friday. But we would have had many millions and millions of people in this country without power if coal hadn't stepped up. Coal was the hero of keeping the lights and the heat on in America and all of the money that has been spent in the northeastern part of this country on renewables. There was times during those storms where we had less than 2% of the power coming from wind and solar. There was more coming from burning wood and trash than there was coming from wind and solar. And coal in some parts of the country was providing 25% of the electricity. So we need. The Biden plan of energy transition was actually energy subtraction. It wasn't addition, it wasn't transition, it was subtraction. They were shutting down baseload and then replacing it with intermittent, unreliable, foreign sourced forms of energy that required us to build out all kinds of additional infrastructure on top of the infrastructure we already have. That's what drove up prices. And now we're facing this arms race with China. We need more power. We need energy addition. The way to have energy addition is to stop, stop. Getting rid of the stu already works. And of course that includes our fossil fuel baseload. In the PGM market, 70% of the power was coming from hydrocarbons, you know, during, during those storms. I mean America and the world is dependent on it and is going to be for the, for in the long future. Innovation is what we need to help solve any concerns that people might have about future climate change.
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A
Mr. Secretary, a lot of people could get on board with that. The problem is that a lot of people have pointed out that it feels like there are certain energy sources that have gotten subtracted in this administration as well, wind being among them. That it's not necessarily that we want all energy sources, but picking winners and losers. How do you counter that?
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C
Well, it's easy because we're, we're not picking winners and losers. We're picking reliable, affordable, nationally secure sources that, that can provide what Americans need. What we need for low prices for consumers, what we need for industry and what we need for AI. What we're, what we're not subsidizing any longer is intermittent weather dependent, foreign sourced, which in the case of offshore wind hits all three of those. But it's also the highest cost, it's not affordable, and it's also opposed by our marine fisheries. I was meeting with a group of third and fourth generation fishermen in New England last Friday. It's blowing up their business. These are the farmers of the sea that put food on our table. You meet with the marine mammal groups, the save the whale groups. They're opposed to offshore national security. Now there's, there's classified reports out that the radar interference above the water and the sonar interference below the water of these massive offshore products represent real national security risks. These are not made up things. These are things that have to be considered particularly related to offshore. But with the working families tax cut bill that got passed last July, people are not contemplating new projects. We have companies that are coming to us from around the world that are saying, hey, we're not going to be building offshore because we get it, it was only viable because of the massive tax subsidies. So Americans had to pay twice. They had to pay in terms of higher electric costs, and then they also had to pay through their, through these tax subsidies. So, so it's, it's all of the, it's all of the above that are reliable, affordable and dispatchable and don't require massive subsidies. I mean, and that's the level playing field that we're at right now.
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B
Mr. Secretary, just quickly, because people will hate us if we're talking about wind farms when payrolls comes out in about 60 seconds time. But I want to squeeze this in. Courts, as you know, have ruled against your administration, stopped work orders on these offshore wind farms. Are you going to appeal that?
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C
Absolutely we are. And as I'm sure as we get into court and have sessions and share share classified information, there will be further discussions on this. You know, people are saying that, oh, this is some ideological attack on offshore wind. No, this is like a real genuine concern. And as Americans, we should be concerned. No one's reading a story about pilots getting shot down in the Iran or in the Russian Ukraine war because everything is autonomous. It's autonomous on autonomous. And if you've got massive radar interference just off our huge population centers, if you wanted to attack America, you would launch autonomous drones through those through those things, or you'd launch autonomous submarines because of the sonar interference. And so we just have to wake up. Warfare has changed in the last four years. The world's different, and we have to be ready to respond to it.
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B
It. Mr. Secretary, we'll talk another time. A little bit more about this, no doubt. Thank you, sir. The U.S. interior Secretary, Doug Burgum there.