Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Some of the morning calls. This morning, let's turn to
Speaker 2: energy and critical minerals. The Trump administration set to announce
Speaker 2: a major shift in climate rules, rolling back and Obama
Speaker 2: era policy regulating fossil fuels. On that and more, the
Speaker 2: US and Serious Secretary dunk Burgham joins us.
Speaker 1: Now for more.
Speaker 2: Mister Secretary, you have been a busy man over the
Speaker 2: last week. I actually want to start with Project Vote
Speaker 2: and then we'll get to the EPA and what's going
Speaker 2: to happen with regulations around fossil fuels and such. Mister Secretary,
Speaker 2: What is Project Vote and how should I be thinking
Speaker 2: about this in comparison to say the spr.
Speaker 1: Well, it's absolutely a comparison.
Speaker 3: The Strategic Patrolling Reserve has created a great buffer on
Speaker 3: price shocks for American consumers for decades and decades. We
Speaker 3: have no equivalent on critical minerals. There are sixty minerals
Speaker 3: on the critical minerals list. Some of those are rare
Speaker 3: earth elements. China, as you know, Jonathan controls about eighty
Speaker 3: five to one hundred percent of the process and refining
Speaker 3: on about twenty of those, enough to put a stranglehold
Speaker 3: on global industry, whether it's tech high tech, whether it's defense.
Speaker 1: Whether it's consumer.
Speaker 3: And so with the threats last year put out by
Speaker 3: China on export controls, the US leapt into action.
Speaker 1: We're broadly bringing mining back in America.
Speaker 3: But this idea of creating a strategic critical minerals reserve
Speaker 3: across sixty different elements, driven by the private sector, great
Speaker 3: leadership by across the board of multiple Cabinet secretaries in
Speaker 3: the Trump administration, working with the ExM Bank, working with
Speaker 3: the private sector, about ten billion and a loon about
Speaker 3: two billion in equity capital going in.
Speaker 1: This is going to be private sector.
Speaker 3: Funded, market driven, and those critical minerals will be stored
Speaker 3: at locations that are economically smart and economically efficient around
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that we will.
Speaker 3: In addition to that, last week there was also at
Speaker 3: the State Department a historic meeting. Over fifty countries came
Speaker 3: to the US, all of them some of them already
Speaker 3: signed on others many others interested joining a club of
Speaker 3: nations with free trade on critical minerals with price floors.
Speaker 1: The key on price floors.
Speaker 3: Is that would block China from illegal dumping to kill
Speaker 3: the price across anyone, particularly critical mineral, and that's going
Speaker 3: to allow the assurance for capital to start flowing back
Speaker 3: into mining and refining of these minerals in the US
Speaker 3: and in our allies. So tremendous, tremendous interest from the
Speaker 3: leaders ministers from around the country that were there at
Speaker 3: the event hosted the State Department last week. So anyway,
Speaker 3: great progress going to make sure that US is secure
Speaker 3: relative to our position on critical minerals.
Speaker 2: And MISSUS Secretary you certainly alluded to it. China's got
Speaker 2: a stranglehold over critical minerals in America. Needs to do
Speaker 2: something about it, and overwhelmingly this agreement on this program
Speaker 2: often almost weekly to do something about it. What is
Speaker 2: less understood is why they have that strangle holds. You
Speaker 2: talked about pricing and dumping. What about regulations? This is
Speaker 2: typically quite a dirty process. Is that held back production
Speaker 2: domestically as well?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: There's been an attack on American energy in this country,
Speaker 3: but even longer than that, there's been an attack on
Speaker 3: mining in our country. And just like President Trump's drill,
Speaker 3: baby drill, we've got to get back to mine, baby mine.
Speaker 3: The US graduated thirty six thousand lawyers last year and
Speaker 3: about three hundred people with mining and metallurgical degrees.
Speaker 1: China, of course, is not doing it cleaner than any
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, whether they're tearing up the Congo or Indonesia,
Speaker 3: child labor, illegal cartels, criminal organizations.
Speaker 1: All of these things that are going on.
Speaker 3: It's a dirty industry potentially for the environment, but there's
Speaker 3: a lot of corruption around that, in part because countries
Speaker 3: like America are like those in Europe that have rules
Speaker 3: that have epas that can do things cleaner, better, safer, sparder,
Speaker 3: both in terms of the environment, in terms of the
Speaker 3: labor force. Basically got out of this business, and we've
Speaker 3: got to get the free world's got to get back
Speaker 3: into the mining business and show that with innovation that
Speaker 3: we can do it, and we can do it in
Speaker 3: a way that protects the environment, protects the workers, and
Speaker 3: also then protects the economies of these countries. And so
Speaker 3: this is a strategic importance for the United States to
Speaker 3: get back in. And we've been part of that is
Speaker 3: the permitting process. We've put a stranglehold on permitting. But
Speaker 3: for President Trump, we're breaking the logjam on permitting.
Speaker 1: Big announcements coming around the engagement finding, and.
Speaker 3: This is going to be a huge, huge step forward
Speaker 3: in terms of getting projects done and keeping plants open
Speaker 3: in America.
Speaker 4: Mister Secretary, there's a question around refinding things like lithia
Speaker 4: that are crucial for a lot of the high tech
Speaker 4: aspects that go into our economy. There's a question about
Speaker 4: copper really necessary for the build out of some of
Speaker 4: the hyperscalers in particular. On the other side, there are
Speaker 4: things like coal and real question of some of the
Speaker 4: rollbacks the EPA rules, like lowering emission standards as well
Speaker 4: as potentially increasing the use of coal. Why are those
Speaker 4: necessary to get some of the national security goals that
Speaker 4: you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll be making some more announcements on beautiful clean
Speaker 3: coal today, as President Trump likes to call it, and
Speaker 3: should call it, because there's a coal plant running in
Speaker 3: America today. It has survived an onslaught for twenty years.
Speaker 3: But they've taken everything, virtually everything out of the Knox,
Speaker 3: the socks that anything that would be considered an issue
Speaker 3: relative the environment, and what's left. The attack on coal
Speaker 3: as a baseload power has been largely around CO two
Speaker 3: emissions and with the reversal of the Endangement finding that
Speaker 3: says that this was massive overreach by the Obama EPA,
Speaker 3: that we are going to go back to a thing
Speaker 3: where we can have consumer choice, that's lower prices. And
Speaker 3: of course, with the big storms we had in the
Speaker 3: Northeast last week, I mean check back on Secretary Rights
Speaker 3: press conference last Friday, but we would have had millions
Speaker 3: and millions of people in this country without power if
Speaker 3: coal hadn't stepped up. Coal was the hero of keeping
Speaker 3: the lights and the heat on in America, and all
Speaker 3: of the money that has been spent in the northeastern
Speaker 3: part of this country on renewables. There was times during
Speaker 3: those storms where we had less than two percent of
Speaker 3: the power coming from wind and solar. There was more
Speaker 3: coming from burning wooden trash than there was coming from
Speaker 3: wind and solar, and coal in some parts of the
Speaker 3: country was providing twenty five percent of the electricity. So
Speaker 3: we need The Biden plan of energy transition was actually
Speaker 3: energy subtraction. It wasn't addition, it wasn't transition. It was subtraction.
Speaker 3: They were shutting down baseload and then replacing it with intermittent, unreliable,
Speaker 3: foreign sourced forms of energy that required us to build
Speaker 3: out all kinds of additional infrastructure on top of the
Speaker 3: infrastructure already had. That's what drove up prices. We're facing
Speaker 3: this AI arms race with China. We need more power,
Speaker 3: We need energy audition. The way to have energy addition
Speaker 3: is to stop stop getting rid of the stuff that
Speaker 3: already works, and of course that includes our fossil fuel
Speaker 3: baseload and the PGM market. Seventy percent of the power
Speaker 3: was coming from hydrocarbons during those storms. I mean, America
Speaker 3: and the world is dependent on it is going to
Speaker 3: be for in long future.
Speaker 1: Innovation is what we.
Speaker 3: Need to help solve any concerns that people might have
Speaker 3: about future climate change.
Speaker 4: Mister Secretary, A lot of people could get on board
Speaker 4: with that. The problem is that a lot of people
Speaker 4: have pointed out that it feels like there are certain
Speaker 4: energy sources that have gotten subtracted in this administration, as well,
Speaker 4: wind being among them. It's not necessarily that we want
Speaker 4: all energy sources, but picking winners and losers, how do
Speaker 4: you counter that?
Speaker 3: Well, it's easy because we're not picking winners and losers.
Speaker 3: We're picking reliable, affordable, nationally secure sources that can provide
Speaker 3: what Americans need what we need for low prices for consumers,
Speaker 3: what we need for industry, and what we need for AI.
Speaker 3: What we're not subsidizing any longer is intermittent, weather dependent
Speaker 3: foreign source, which in the case of offshore wind, hits
Speaker 3: all three of those. But it's also the highest cost,
Speaker 3: it's not affordable, and it's also opposed.
Speaker 1: By our marine fisheries.
Speaker 3: I was meeting with a group of third and fourth
Speaker 3: generation fishermen in New England last Friday. It's blowing up
Speaker 3: their business. These are the farmers of the sea that
Speaker 3: put food on our table. You meet with the marine
Speaker 3: mammal groups that save the whale groups. They're opposed to
Speaker 3: offshore national security. Now there's a classified reports out that
Speaker 3: the radar interference and above the water and the sonar
Speaker 3: interference below the water of these massive offshore products represent
Speaker 3: real national security risks.
Speaker 1: These are not made up things.
Speaker 3: These are things that have to be considered, particularly related
Speaker 3: to offshore. But with the Working Families tax cut bill
Speaker 3: that got past last July, there are people are not
Speaker 3: contemplating new projects. We have companies that are coming to
Speaker 3: us from around the world that are saying, hey, we're
Speaker 3: not going to be building offshore because we get it.
Speaker 3: It was only viable because of the massive tax subsidies.
Speaker 3: So Americans had to pay twice. They had to pay
Speaker 3: in terms of higher electric costs, and then they also
Speaker 3: had to pay through their thro these tax subsidies.
Speaker 1: So it's the it's all of the above that.
Speaker 3: A reliable, affordable, and dispatchable and don't require massive subsidies.
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's the level playing field that we're
Speaker 1: at right.
Speaker 2: Now, Missus Secretary, Just quickly, because people will hate us
Speaker 2: if we're talking about wind farms when payrolls comes out
Speaker 2: about sixty seconds time. But I want to squeeze this
Speaker 2: in courts, as you know, have ruled against your administration'
Speaker 2: stunt work orders on these offshore wind farms. You can
Speaker 2: to appeal that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely we are and as I'm sure as we get
Speaker 3: into court and have sessions and share share classified information,
Speaker 3: there will be further discussions on this. You know, people
Speaker 3: are saying that, oh, this is some ideological attack on
Speaker 3: offshore win. No, this is like a real genuine concern
Speaker 3: and as Americans, we should be concerned.
Speaker 1: No one's reading a story.
Speaker 3: About pilots getting shot down in the Iran or in
Speaker 3: the Russian Ukraine War because everything is autonomous.
Speaker 1: It's autonomous on autonomous.
Speaker 3: And if you've got massive radar interference just off our
Speaker 3: huge population centers, if you wanted to attack America, you
Speaker 3: would launch autonomous drones through those through those things, or
Speaker 3: you launch autonomous submarines because of the sonar interference. And
Speaker 3: so we just have to wake up. Warfare has changed
Speaker 3: in the last four years. The world's different. We have
Speaker 3: to be ready to respond to it.
Speaker 2: MISSUS Secretary, we're talking another time a little bit more
Speaker 2: about this, no doubt. Thank you, sir. The US and
Speaker 2: Terist Secretary Dug Berg and Matt