Latest / INSIGHT TODAY / 'MINE, BABY, MINE!' Trade tensions rise between US, China
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Earlier this morning, Treasury Circuitary Scott Bessant and US Trade
- 0:03Speaker 1: Representative Jamison Grier spoke about China's restrictions on rare Earth's
- 0:09Speaker 1: Edward Lawrence was in the room. What did we learn
- 0:11Speaker 1: about the trade stand off, Edward?
- 0:13Speaker 2: Yeah, we learned that what they're saying is that the
- 0:16Speaker 2: rare earth mineral announcement on export controls from China, they're
- 0:19Speaker 2: saying is basically a power grab, a global power grab
- 0:23Speaker 2: for the supply chains around the world. Now, this news
- 0:27Speaker 2: conference this morning was meant to send a message to
- 0:29Speaker 2: China that it just pushed too far. Now, China controls
- 0:32Speaker 2: sixty percent of all the mining of rare earth minerals
- 0:35Speaker 2: and about ninety percent of all the processing of the
- 0:37Speaker 2: critical elements. Couple that with China refusing to buy any
- 0:40Speaker 2: soybeans from US farmers this year, which represents sir it's
- 0:44Speaker 2: President Trump says, is an economically hostile act. So the
- 0:49Speaker 2: Chinese have been pretty good at using this rare ear
- 0:52Speaker 2: Trump card for lack of a better term. So we're
- 0:55Speaker 2: not talking about opening the Chinese market to US trade.
- 0:57Speaker 2: We're not talking about the technic intellectual property. Can there
- 1:01Speaker 2: be a sustainable framework, a substantial framework with China. So
- 1:07Speaker 2: there is room for a positive economic relationship with China.
- 1:11Speaker 2: There certainly is, and we would much rather be talking
- 1:13Speaker 2: about that than constantly be talking about rare earths. Scenes
- 1:17Speaker 2: that China's not phased by our tariffs, what levers then
- 1:20Speaker 2: we have left.
- 1:21Speaker 3: I can guarantee you when we were in Geneva and
- 1:24Speaker 3: the terriffs were one hundred and forty five percent, they
- 1:28Speaker 3: were phased.
- 1:29Speaker 2: So the President also getting a little frustrated with the
- 1:32Speaker 2: one step forward, two steps backwards from China. It showed
- 1:35Speaker 2: during his meeting with the Argentinia president yesterday. Listen to this, well,
- 1:41Speaker 2: China trying to draw a wedge between the US and
- 1:42Speaker 2: Argentina by buying soybeans from Argentina and not US farmers.
- 1:46Speaker 2: And in China, China they under ships too.
- 1:51Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, I mean, I guess that's natural. It's China
- 1:56Speaker 4: and it's natural. But it's not gonna stuck, going to
- 2:01Speaker 4: mean anything in the air.
- 2:03Speaker 2: So after this question in President Trump posting us too
- 2:05Speaker 2: true socially is considering terminating business with China. Relating to
- 2:09Speaker 2: cooking oil as retribution. He says there's other trading elements
- 2:13Speaker 2: he's also looking at Stu.
- 2:15Speaker 1: I will take it, thanks very much. Indeed, Edward, look
- 2:17Speaker 1: who's with me now in New York, sitting right next
- 2:20Speaker 1: to me? No less, the man is Stephen Moore there,
- 2:23Speaker 1: he is right next to me. Both sides are playing
- 2:26Speaker 1: hardball China and the United States, and the market doesn't care.
- 2:30Speaker 1: Market's constraint.
- 2:32Speaker 3: What's going on here, Yeah, the two biggest trading countries
- 2:35Speaker 3: in the world. I want to go back to this
- 2:37Speaker 3: mining issue because I'm very frustrated by this. We have
- 2:41Speaker 3: a new study at Leash Prosperity that by one of
- 2:44Speaker 3: the top geologists in the country who is now going
- 2:46Speaker 3: to be running the US Geological Survey, which does the
- 2:49Speaker 3: oversight of all the mining. We have more of these
- 2:53Speaker 3: minerals than any other country in the world. So this
- 2:56Speaker 3: has been a you know, an error that we've imposed
- 2:59Speaker 3: on our and we have to as Interior Secretary Doug
- 3:04Speaker 3: Doug Burgham is saying, we have to mine baby mine
- 3:07Speaker 3: just like we drilled baby drill. And I like in
- 3:09Speaker 3: this situation store to what happened in the seventies and
- 3:12Speaker 3: eighties when Opek had the cartel that controlled the old market.
- 3:17Speaker 3: We have handed this cartel over to China with respect
- 3:20Speaker 3: for these minerals. Why did we do that? Why did
- 3:22Speaker 3: we do that? We should be mining for the resources
- 3:24Speaker 3: we have more than they do.
- 3:26Speaker 1: The global crowd, the global warming crowd, the environmentalist they
- 3:30Speaker 1: don't like mining, period.
- 3:33Speaker 3: Who's the worst do it? Mining standards? China does. We
- 3:37Speaker 3: have the same thing with the drilling. We have the
- 3:39Speaker 3: best environmental standards in the Europe. The little Easterners.
- 3:43Speaker 1: How we gave to the greens was extraordinary. It is
- 3:47Speaker 1: and it's got to be unraveled.
- 3:48Speaker 3: Once upon a time, the United States was the mineral
- 3:51Speaker 3: capital of the world. We were the number one country
- 3:55Speaker 3: of mining, and now we don't. We're not mining for anything.
- 3:57Speaker 3: The fifteen major minerals that we need for production for
- 4:01Speaker 3: everything from national defense to technology to manufacturing. China and
- 4:08Speaker 3: Russia now dominate those dominate those markets. It's crazy.
- 4:11Speaker 1: So how do we reverse that?
- 4:13Speaker 3: My mind?
- 4:13Speaker 1: Mind, But you can't reverse onto the shop.
- 4:15Speaker 3: It's going to take a while. It's going to take
- 4:17Speaker 3: a while to get our mining, but we got to
- 4:18Speaker 3: get started tomorrow. But the other point is Trump is
- 4:22Speaker 3: using the trade tariff threat to get China to right now,
- 4:27Speaker 3: they're essentially embargoing these critical minerals that we need for
- 4:30Speaker 3: our microchips and so on. So it's an ugly situation.
- 4:32Speaker 3: We put ourselves in this situation. But Trump is going
- 4:35Speaker 3: to use the tariff threat, I think, to get China
- 4:37Speaker 3: to open up those markets.
- 4:38Speaker 1: Well's the night leverage we go. Yeah, I mean you
- 4:41Speaker 1: kind of wave a magic wand and suddenly produce these
- 4:43Speaker 1: rare earths here immediately. You can't do that. It's going
- 4:46Speaker 1: to take You've got to ridge that two years before
- 4:48Speaker 1: we can get this stuff.
- 4:50Speaker 3: I'm just angry because we put ourselves in this position,
- 4:53Speaker 3: and it's really it could really hurt our economy, just
- 4:56Speaker 3: as the OPEC countries did in the seventies and eighties.
- 4:58Speaker 1: Can you imagine if we were now dealing with President
- 5:01Speaker 1: Kamala Harris. Well, I had to do, I had, but.
- 5:05Speaker 3: Look, I think at how quickly once we had the
- 5:08Speaker 3: shale revolution we went from we are now the number
- 5:11Speaker 3: one producer of oil. We can It'll take a few years,
- 5:14Speaker 3: but we can be number one again.
- 5:15Speaker 1: That's not so we should be Stephen, more good stuff,
- 5:18Speaker 1: Thank you very much, with you, see you later.