特朗普宣扬30亿美元矿产项目以对抗中国

I just wanna hear your main takeaway from that meeting with the president on Friday. What were your main takeaways? Well, I think more than anything else, we have an administration that very much recognizes the dire need of critical minerals for our country, for our industries in this country, and obviously our military. So, the support that, this administration has provided to the mining industry has been immense. And the the real event on Friday at the state department was a $100,000,000 grant that the federal government is giving to universities and schools in order to train new engineers and geologists and the technical people that we need in this industry because we are all are getting older.

A lot of people are retiring, and this industry has been, you know, in the doldrums for the better part of thirty years. And so having that kind of financial commitment to the schools, and then there were a lot of administrators there. For me, the big takeaway was some incredible contacts that we made, at this forum. There were a lot of very influential people involved in the critical mental space, both from a banking finance area, as well as, some of the administrators like secretary of interior was there, secretary of state was there, and we were able to have one on one meetings with them about issues we might have.

And so I think what I got when I came away from that conference realizing that if I need help, there's people I can call to get help. And that's very, very important, something we've never had. Who so take us into specific conversations that you had. Like, who who did you speak to from the administration, and what did you tell them that you needed? Well, I'll be specifically frank. The new or the secretary of interior, Doug Burden, he and his assistant were there, and he stayed after the forum was over and was talking to people.

And, I went to him. We have an issue in Alaska, specifically related to the BLM, which is under his venue, and the Department of Transportation, which is not, but he has influence on. And it has to do with a a new property we bought in Alaska in January, and we're just getting pushback and, you know, slowness from local officials not understanding that that antimony that we're trying to bring out of this mine is needed by the federal government.

We have a $245,000,000 contract to fulfill the needs of the military, and we've got local people in Alaska holding things up. So I gave him the information. He took it down. He said, I'll be on it Monday, and I have no doubt he will be. So that's the kind of thing that, you know, we express to them. So when you think about, these conversations that you're having and you think about the future of antimony, you're pretty optimistic, it sounds like, coming off of that.

Anything other than that that you would say concrete that you are looking to see advancements on as it relates to relationships between your company and The US Federal Government? Well, we we won a $27,000,000 grant last year, and then we won the $245,000,000 contract. We've got, though, over $350,000,000 of additional grant requests in to various departments of the federal government to assist us, not only in antimony, but in tungsten and some other critical minerals we're involved in.

And what I'm kinda hearing through the conversations is that, the president really wants to go more to from a grant, which is basically a gift, to the companies to more of an equity component. In other words, we'll give you x amount of dollars, but we also want a piece of your company. He talked Mhmm. At this forum about the success he's had with Intel, the success he's had with MP Materials. And so there was a new fellow that I met there actually from Dallas that, is now, kinda key at the high White House in looking at these investments.

I also heard very loud and clear, they wanna do bigger deals, 500,000,000 minimum or bigger. And so we're looking at packaging some things. We're looking at, okay. We can step it up and look at bigger. So Okay. That's that's one of the things that we're doing. So it raises the question, how much of of your company would you be willing to sell to the US government? Well, that all depends on how much money they're willing to give me.

So, you know, we're a publicly traded company with a billion dollar market cap, so we'll have to look at it like any other investment. However, you know, if the government will give you certain additional incentives, say, price floors or minimum contracts or other things that would hit assist your business, you can look at maybe not only just equity, but some warrants that that are out of the money, other things that gives the the government incentives.

So we would look at it like any investment banking transaction, but, you know, peep if you'd asked me this six months ago, said, no. I'd rather have the grant. Obviously, the grant is non dilutive equity. But if you having the government as a shareholder, I would prefer not over 20%, would be fine. Mhmm. And broadening out just a bit, how quickly when we think about The US, domestically in terms of our critical mineral supply chain, how quickly do you think that we could actually push forward with those strategies, those plans, and is government support enough to make these come these projects economically viable?

Well, what's made them much more valuable today is the price of all these critical minerals and rare earths has gone up dramatically. Why has that happened? China, over the last thirty years, has gone around the world and tied up all these critical minerals. For antimony, they own 85% of worldwide reserves. For tungsten, it's close to 90% of worldwide reserves. We have sat and let our country stay behind the eight ball for thirty years while China has done this.

So we're playing catch up. No doubt about that. And it's gonna take time. We can't do it overnight. But having the regulations removed so that we can move quicker, you know, we've learned a lot from the past with the guardians to environmental issues. We are very big environmentalists in our company. You know, when we dig up something, we try to bury it again, you know, within weeks, not years down the road. So we've gotten some kudos from a lot of the the regulatory agencies that, hey.

You guys are really doing a great job. And so I'm a big conservationist. I love to hunt. I love to fish. I don't wanna leave what we do in in in ill repair. So we've we've made sure that we are the type of company that people will wish that we had come rather than somebody else. So Yeah. You know, that's very important.