Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said yesterday that the U.S. needs to accelerate mapping for minerals to better compete with China. "It's not just 'drill baby drill,' it's 'map baby map,'" Burgum said. He added that building everything our country needs is quote "entirely dependent on critical minerals that exist in our country, but they're not mined or processed in our country, because we said, 'We're going to save the planet by killing that industry in America, and we'll let China do it." End quote. Sounds like this administration is trying to change that.
Copper prices have hit a new record high in London, driven by concerns over tightening global supply. Prices have risen roughly 30% so far this year.
And the Washington Ost has an interesting piece looking at the US-China minerals war, specifically through the lens of Chinese control over tungsten production. One particularly telling quote from the story com3es from a historian of modern China who says of the minerals struggle between China and the US, quote, "The idea that this has been resolved is wildly premature…They have put the gun back in the holster, but they still have the gun."
