By SANDY SZWARC – PART 1
President Trump has been meeting with Russia, and some speculate it was, in part, to make a deal for Russian rare earth minerals.
No country on earth has a greater abundance of critical and rare earth elements than the US yet we are now 100% dependent on foreign countries for 20 critical minerals. For the first 150 years of our nation’s history, we were self-sufficient in mineral needs and even had a surplus. Now, China dominates. This was not an accident.
With the help of environmentalists, perhaps the situation has been allowed to disintegrate to the point where immediate needs have become so emergent they necessitate our President appealing to Russia, especially in light of tensions with China. But if things were that dire, wouldn’t there also be calls for “All Hands on Deck” and every potential resource be supported and called into service for the good of the country?
Instead, some of the country’s most viable mining projects remain silenced and sidelined. This brings a lot of unanswered questions – questions no one is even asking.
Last month, the Republican X account tweeted it was opening the first rare earth mine in more than 70 years, retired journalist Don Surber shared in his Substack newsletter.
Special report: Pebble Mine, the people’s story spanning more than two decades
Special Pebble report: A permitting process favoring mining opponents
However, this announcement of “a groundbreaking moment” failed to reveal that it was a promotional of a preliminary feasibility finding of rare earth deposits in Wyoming. It was part of intensive marketing for the Ramaco Reserves company’s stock offering, with those all-famous “forward looking statements.” While no one can deny it wasn’t good news for Wyoming and for America, “it will take a long time to get going,” as Cowboy State Daily reported.
Despite the Administration’s optimistic portrayals, Trump’s support of rare earth minerals remains not entirely convincing. His past actions have raised red flags, at the very least. He has betrayed a disturbing alliance with environmentalists and globalists – especially when it comes to mining essential metals.
For example, Trump − aligned with pseudoscientific environmental groups, along with his son, Donald Trump, Jr. − went against the largest mining project in Alaska, Pebble Mine. Yet this mine holds one of the largest undeveloped reserves of copper and other critical minerals in the world. It also has a massive reserve of one of the world’s rarest and most critical metals, rhenium, increasing the world’s supply by 38% that could help supply America’s needs for decades.
The Institute for Energy Research, and other experts, have long recognized Pebble Mine as an important source of a number of critical metals that can help free our dependence of China.
“Pebble Mine is one of the largest undeveloped reserves of copper, molybdenum, and gold in the world. Its mineral deposits also include silver and other critical metallic minerals such as pyrite, chalcopyrite, molybdenite, bornite, covellite, chalcocite, digenite, and magnetite. Pebble’s copper production is expected to average 318 million pounds a year, which could supply as much as 25 percent of our country’s copper needs over the next century. It is also expected to produce 14 million pounds of molybdenum, 362,000 ounces of gold, and 1.8 million ounces of silver per year.
The Pebble Mine contains billions of pounds of rare earth elements. It is rich in two important rare minerals — palladium and rhenium, containing enough rhenium to supply the entire world’s needs for nearly half a century.”
Pebble Mine had spent decades completing the most comprehensive environmental studies ever done for a natural resource project in Alaska. Trump’s impeding that project had nothing to do with science.
Despite its decades of progress and potential to help extricate America from dependence on China, Republicans have been as silent on Pebble Mine as Democrats have.
Of course, Biden’s involvement in Chinese deals have been well documented and reported. Chinese energy interests and environmentalists have massively supported his political career, even directly paying off members of the Biden family and their enterprises, as a 2023 House Oversight committee uncovered. Biden’s administration, in turn, funneled untold millions to Communist Chinese-owned green energy companies, killed multiple domestic mining projects by weaponizing the bogus Clean Water Act (including Pebble Mine), and used the globalist United Nations climate change agenda to benefit China.
Finally, Biden broadened the authority under the Clean Water Act to apply a rare statute – used only three times in history, according to Mining.com − to veto the Pebble Mine project under the guise of dredged materials. [Never mind that the U.S. Corp of Engineering had focused their scientific review on this bogus scare and found no risks or threat to downstream habitat. The industry not only long ago developed guidelines and safe practices for mining tailings, the proposed Pebble Mine is actually 230 miles away from the Bristol Bay and nowhere close to its headwaters or more than 50,000 tributaries.]
Ignoring the scientific facts, Biden and his broad-based environmental coalition celebrated the EPA’s veto of the mine.
Late in the Trump 1 Administration, it also ignored the science and surprisingly fell back on the EPA’s overreach to deny the project a critical permit, which remains unresolved to this day.
According to the Institute for Energy Research, the Administration’s efforts to kill fossil fuels to favor “renewable energy,” while doing all it can to remove new mines that would provide the critical minerals for a successful domestic industry means:
“The United States will be dependent on autocratic countries, particularly China, for the minerals and technologies needed. Given that China is already in control of global critical mineral supply chains, the United States is moving to become four times more dependent on China than it ever was on the Middle East for oil.”
Trump says he supports rare earth mining and has put his support behind revamping MP Minerals, a private equity company magnet project with a Chinese-backed investor. It was announced last week that it had received a $150 million loan from the Department of Defense, along with the U.S. government agreeing to purchase 15% of the company’s preferred stock and a commitment to buy MP materials at nearly double the market prices for at the least 10 years. A MP Minerals press release states it hopes to begin a gradual ramp of magnet production in late 2025.
But MP’s reserves are a tiny fraction of Russia’s let alone China’s, according to Rare Earth Exchange. Its production of 45,000 metric tons in 2024 also paled compared to China’s 270,000 MT.
China will still control the majority of the global rare earth processing, even under best-case scenarios, according to a Rare Earth Exchange analysis. The U.S. may celebrate a handful of magnet plants, it said, but “what is missing is a real industrial policy.”
Certainly, developing US mining projects are positive developments that will benefit our country. But clearly, Americans are also not getting the full story.
If Trump was seriously interested in US mineral production and making America independent again, why is he supporting smaller and less developed projects, while ignoring one of the world’s largest ones, and others like it, right in our own country − projects that have already completed advanced exploration and environmental studies? To better understand this disconnect requires understanding the permitting process that, to date, has been the reason why the US is in this mess.
Return for Part 2 later this week: Puzzling Evidence
Sandy Szwarc is a researcher and writer on health and science issues for nearly 40 years. Her work focuses on the scientific process and critical investigations of research and evidence, as well as the belief that people deserve the most credible information available, and that public policies should be based on sound science and reasoned risk-benefit analyses. No mining project contributed to, or had any role, in this submission.
Susan: Med check time.
Excellent article, which points out we do not have a comprehensive industrial manufacturing policy, and additionally a cogent trade policy or national education policy to develop our human capital.
What we do have is an overwhelming emphasis of reliance on aggressively dominating through foreign policy and military threats and actions of exploiting other nations’ resources, manufactured goods and human capital to enrich a handful of our globalist corporations while ever degrading the quality of life and opportunity for own people. We have all but eliminated what had been a very affluent and educated middle class of the 1950s through 1970s into the mess we have today.
With all of the ongoing overseas wars and planning for more wars, our MIC complex is years in arrears of manufacturing sufficient weapon systems and munitions needed for ourselves and our remaining vassal states in Europe, Middle East and Asia to execute these projects.
Trump’s misuse of weaponizing tariffs for foreign policy objectives rather than protection for domestic manufacturing have led to a strengthening of BRICS and China simply withholding the critical rare earths needed for certain weapons we need to prepare for a war against them, or their trading partners. Despite the deadly seriousness of launching missiles into Russia and threatening China with war we have reached peak farcical idiocy by the performance of our ruling permanent government class.
Here in Alaska, our federal congressional delegation gave in to locking up the majority of our lands into Parks, Preserves and Wildlife Refuges. Our state politicians squandered immense sums on failed social programs and state employee benefit packages instead of building critical transportation infrastructure. Alaska is a “state” in name only, it remains a colony of Washington DC, with a largely decaying urban centric population. Our rural hub and outlying communities have devolved into completely government dependent mini ghettos, without economical transportation routes.
We need to go back to the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, mind our own business, rebuild our country and national society and get out of foreign entanglements and Empire aspirations.
Thank you.
Thank you for speaking up. It’s about time somebody said it! Looking forward to Part 2.
“Supporting smaller and less developed projects, while ignoring one of the world’s largest ones”
The largest resource for Alaska is fish and we don’t need to kill one to hope for another. Endangering an entire economic engine for a foreign company to mine large lands and waters in Alaska is not a risk that needs to be taken. Smaller development and efforts with Alaskan companies support the economy and encourages responsibility. It’s not worth the risk to destroy Alaska. Go to California if you want to destroy somewhere.
I completely agree that we don’t need to kill one to hope for another since the Pebble Project and Bristol Bay fishery can coexist, it isn’t an either or proposition.
If, somehow, Pebble were to completely destroy the entire watershed that it lies in (which is 100% completely impossible) then there are still more river systems that support Bristol Bay reds and the entirety of the economic engine that is the Bristol Bay fishery would not be destroyed.
The value of Pebble is estimated at $350-$400 Billion. The annual value of Bristol Bay fishery is maybe $200 million. There is no doubt as to which is the greater resource.
BB Fisheries is worth sextillions of dollars so long as we take of that resource and remember Steve, Lake Iliamna is less than 20 miles downhill from ground zero toxic waste that flows from wet open pit mining that cannot be stopped according to studies forwarded to President Trump by Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Junior. Of course you will not believe me so I challenge you to click around on the internet and gain some knowledge.
It doesn’t endanger Bristol Bay. That’s the whole point.
The largest resource for Alaska currently is oil and gas not sure where you come up with fishing?? In fact oil and gas absolutely dominate our other industries. And furthermore no modern mining company is going to damage the fishing.
False choice. The only people in the state (and out) who are in the business of killing fish are commercial fishermen.
It is possible to mine and chase fish, though thanks to the happily departed Bob Gillam and the Big Green Machine he constructed, and the lies they have spread for decades, a substantial portion of Alaskans don’t believe that. Interesting that other nations with massive mining also have massive commercial fishing industries (Chile and Scandinavia, for instance).
Pebble is in our future and the fish will do just fine, though commfish in Alaska as it is operating today won’t exist in the not so distant future. Cheers –
In the history of modern mining 100% of the projects have introduced an environmental issue into the surrounding area and the runoff from the Pebble facility would need to be contained for well over 1000 years. Ask yourself if you’d like to take responsibility for the profits extracted by a foreigner that died 950 years ago and then revisit this article.
Alaska’s minerals should be extracted by an Alaskan company. Not another Canuck (or other foreign) operation as has been the norm.
It’s on a tiny creek about 10 feet wide hundreds of miles from Bristol Bay. Its a myth it’s any danger to the fisheries.
Is there an Alaskan company that can do this? 🧐 We’d still be getting the royalties and creating the jobs on top of it.
All so you can have a Tesla an I phone and a computer. Clam. I guess we can go back to lanterns and 100% wood heat. Sounds awesome. No cars No air travel. You can spend your evenings shoveling horse dung instead of surfing the net and bitching on must read which will no longer exist.
That runoff bi product material gets sold off to industries that refine and use or sell those liquids or solids. Pebble will not interfere with salmon. They would be able to detect a problem way before any pollution reached Lake Illiamna let alone Bristol Bay. People in those nearest villages want those jobs that will come with Pebble mine. Not everyone wants to fish to make a living.
President Trump Killed the pebble prospect, good man 😉
It’s not dead, no matter how many lies you tell yourself and others and boy have you told some doozies over the years!
I get my info from news and Northern Dynasty websites, you’re the one that spews whoppers because you’re too stubborn to research. You’d make a terrible juror, that is, if you were ever picked, ha!
Please feel free to point out a single one of the whoppers you are talking about.
After years of you talking about completely absurd and demonstrably false information you’ve finally stopped lying about the size of the proposed project, so that’s an improvement on your part. Remember how you spent so long going on about how this was going to be a 369 square mile open pit dredge mine? Now that was a whopper! An open pit mine almost 40 times larger than the world’s largest open pit mine that has been continuously mined since the 1800’s and what exactly is an open pit dredge mine annd how do you imagine that works…you still haven’t explained that doozie!
The fact that you claim this project is dead only furthers the point that whatever research you claim to have done isn’t research.
What you have been writing about and your support for foreign owned pebble has been nothing but curse.
I have never talked to you or MSA, ever.
In other words you can’t point out a single one, thanks for admitting the truth.
3rd,
Here are a couple of your whoppers that I was able to find in a couple minutes.
“Chinook Salmon are no more”
“the mineral rights to 186 square miles will all be dredged, and I mean every square inch, then there are the mineral rights of other claim owners around the perimeter, that will be dredged also”
“186 square miles of open pit not 5 square miles and they will dredge out every inch”
“769 square miles of open pit mining”
Whoppers, doozies, lies…who’s to say but none of what you’ve said over the years is based in fact.
Steve; You do not understand that several other mining companies own mining claims in that area and the equipment that Northern Dynasty would have located in that area would also be used by or for the other companies, ball mill, bucket dredge, airstrip, etc., and you never have researched Pedro Bay Native Corporations denying pebble access to land necessary for the planed gas line from Cook Inlet to the mine site to power the proposed mine.. and you have to have an energy source to power worlds largest mine.
It’s over Steve for foreign owned pebble, fact.
Pebble on tape between Tom Collier and CEO Ron Thieson said pebble mine would be the largest in the world or words to that effect, look it up, do some research, caused investors to file suite and were ordered to pay many millions of dollars for security fraud, look it up.
Yet more whoppers from 3rd.
I do understand that several other mining companies own mining claims in that area. You said “the mineral rights to 186 square miles will all be dredged, and I mean every square inch, then there are the mineral rights of other claim owners around the perimeter, that will be dredged also” and “186 square miles of open pit not 5 square miles and they will dredge out every inch” and “769 square miles of open pit mining” EVERY SQUARE INCH of 186 square miles will all be dredged? That’s quite the whopper!
The other issues you are now bringing up have nothing to do with the whoppers and doozies you’ve been telling!
The chinook salmon in South East Alaska has been depleted and the Mount Polley mine disaster in British Columbia may be to blame according to environmental studies.
Thanks for admitting what we all know and that the whopper of a lie when you said “Chinook Salmon are no more”.
May does not mean did, in fact many studies show that it didn’t impact chinook as much as crazed environmentalists try to claim.
Please show me how Trump went against the Pebble Project.
President Trump denied Army Corp of Engineers permits for the foreign owned pebble prospect, google it and see for yourself and gain some knowledge.
It is pretty easy to look at the news releases from Northern Dynasty. You can see that they are still in court to get the veto lifted. The release on July 4th talks about meeting with the EPA. A ruling was to be made by July 17. On July 16 northern dynasty executives sold off large amounts of stock that had risen to a 4 year high on hopes of Trump’s EPA lifting the veto. On the 17th they announced they were filing a motion seeking a summary judgements on their pending litigation. Stock price crashed but the management cashed in on insider trading. So no one names Trump but the EPA under his administration.
President Trump has made himself very clear on this: If a project, controversial or not, wants federal approval it either needs to provide him or the US with an ownership stake. Sorry for the Pebble boosters that the Canadian project owners can’t seem to understand this very simple conclusion and offer him something of greater value than Don Jr’s love of hunting and fishing in the Bristol Bay region.
As a lay person, not in any “Loop”, the thought of how busy the Lad has been stopping wars, invoking tariffs, cleaning up Democrat run Blue cities, attempting to create a new state of Canada, writing effective EO’s and the such, the bet is when his attention becomes aware of the Pebble and its potential, permits will be established post haste.
So patience Grasshoppers, patience.
Excellent article and thank you for calling out Trump and his Eco terrorist son. If Pebble doesn’t get approved we know the Eco terrorists have control of both parties
EXCELLENT ARTICLE!! Fact based is something the enviros hate so expect strong opposition to the facts.
Anyone who believes its either salmon or mining has not read the report or the studies. they are ignorant sychophants of the aparachiks.
lets remember who started & funded this entire opposition to pebble. it was to protect his private fishing lodge. enough money & you can buy anything & anybody.
Thank you for your factual, fact based, article.
You want to get Trump to support this? It isn’t hard. Say some nice things publicly about him, pay $5million to get a one on one with him at Mar-a-Lago, stroke his ego for an hour and you’ll have all the support you need. I’m not being flippant, that really is how simple it is. Heck, if it meant more mineral development in this state, I guess it’s a small price to pay?
Fact check….
It is definitely at the headwaters of some of the drainages that flow into Bristol Bay. These flow into the mulchatna and then the nushagak river.
Others streams flow into lake Iliamna and then run into Bristol Bay.
Outstanding piece. Thank you. Trump’s son, Don Jr., fishes and hunts at a lodge located in western Alaska…..far to the south of Pebble. But Jr. bought into the notion that Pebble will ruin the sport fisheries in that area. He’s been lobbying Don Sr. about this and unfortunately, our President believes it. This is the problem. Another problem is retired state Senator Rick Halford, a supposed Republican, who has lobbied against Pebble for decades. Halford has a sporting lodge interest in the area and has vocally opposed Pebble.
56 Years ago we landed men on the moon. For a couple of years now we’ve been flying helicopters on Mars. Should we think we’re incapable of digging a hole and moving dirt without polluting streams? I think not. This country desperately needs the copper at Pebble and its time to get this mine moving.
Blak Blah Blah on the risks associated with Pebble Mine. Same Democrat scare lies we hear every day about Trump. Pebble mine risk assessment has be studied and studied again. Only because of illegal action by Trump and Biden is this Mine not in Operation. Now the test is will Trump let baby Trump rule the roost. Baby Trump ties to the Hunting and Fishing lodges that surround Bristol Bay, are behind this obviously clouded choice to keep Pebble closed. As far as Foreign investment into Alaska. Only a Fool would want only American Investors in Alaska. One does not have to look very far to see Foreign money EVERYWHERE in Alaska.
During Trump I, both Don Jr. and his bestie Tucker Carlson flew in a private jet to the Bristol Bay area for a week-long fishing lodge glamventure. Days after returning to his TV perch, the sun-tanned Tucker, once an advocate for resource development, surprised everyone with his new strong opposition specifically to Pebble.
Deep state money talks.
Noting that President Trump’s decision to go against the Pebble Mine occurred during his first term. As of July 2025–there are indications his administration is reconsidering this past decision, with the EPA negotiating a potential settlement with Pebble’s developers.
“The proposed pebble mine is actually 230 miles from Bristol Bay and nowhere near the headwaters.” This writer needs to learn how to read a map.
Only 20 miles from Lake Iliamna and all down hill and I haven’t even mentioned that you are incorrect on the distance from open pit mine (ground zero) from BB. Educate yourself.
Excellent research done.
Fairly presented.
Congratulations
Would love to see some YES PEBBLE MINE bumper stickers. All we get is morons virtue signaling
It is widely known that the Chinese Communist Party and Russia have funded environmental groups who are opposed to resource development in America. Many of those who repeat the lies of these environmental groups do so in support of the Chinese Communist Party and Russia while knowing the environmental damage that is done in China and Russia all while denouncing resource development using the strictest standards in the world, others who repeat the lies of these environmental groups do so ignorantly…in either case they are nothing more than what the Communists themselves call useful idiots.
So Steve, does that go for president Trump?
3rd,
You still haven’t done any research on any of these executive orders that I shared with you and you asked what they have to do with anything?
EO 14153: Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential
EO 14154: Unleashing American Energy
EO 14192: Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation
EO 14213: Establishing the National Energy Dominance Council
EO 14220: Addressing the Threat to National Security From Imports of Copper
EO 14241: Immediate Measures To Increase American Mineral Production
EO 14262: Strengthening the Reliability and Security of the United States Electric Grid
EO 14265: Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base
EO 14269: Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance
EO 14272: Ensuring National Security and Economic Resilience Through Section 232 Actions on Processed Critical Minerals and Derivative Products
EO 14275: Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement
I see the problem here, you actively choose to remain ignorant. You really should stop telling others to educate themselves when you clear do not care to even try to understand the subject at hand.
Steve; President Trump denied necessary permits for foreign owned pebble through Army Corp. of Engineers yet you will not acknowledge that and you never criticize President Trump.
No means no pebble one.
You are talking about something that happened in the first administration, you claim Trump killed the mine, then Biden killed the mine…if it was killed under Obama and then it was killed under Trump and then it was killed under Biden why is it not dead?
Read some of what is happening the current lawsuits about a project that you think has been killed by three different President’s, read the executive orders Trump has put out about mining and resource development. You keep telling people to educate themselves but you haven’t educated yourself.
With the modern equipment that is available today it would be easy to monitor any pollution caused by the mine.
Pebble has passed all the tests and requirements thrown at it from the EPA and Army Corp of Engineers.
The people that live in the villages near the mine want the jobs that would be available at Pebble.
Not everyone wants to fish for a living. Especially when it’s work not play.
Don Jr. and Tucker Carlson will still have thousands of square miles to fish and hunt.
If Donald Trump owned Pebble mine it would be in operation right now.