https://www.financialsense.com/podcast/21322/robert-bryce-us-scre...

https://www.financialsense.com/podcast/21322/robert-bryce-us-screwed-rare-earths-and-chinas-not-letting-go

Robert Bryce: US Is Screwed on Rare Earths—And China’s Not Letting Go

June 27, 2025 – How could China’s grip on rare earths and strategic materials threaten America’s tech and auto sectors? Author and energy expert Robert Bryce joins Jim Puplava to reveal the hidden risks behind tariffs, global supply chains, and the West’s slow response to China’s decades-long resource dominance. They break down the rare earth crisis, looming copper shortages, the realities of nuclear expansion, and why short-term thinking could endanger the US economy. What will it take for America to catch up—and what are the costs of inaction? Listen now for an eye-opening discussion with real-world stakes with one of the world's leading experts in global energy and power. Have any feedback, breaking news, or comments about today's show, click here to send us a message.

Column: Robert Bryce | Substack
Website: Robert Bryce - Author | Journalist
Recent book: A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations
YouTube channel: Robert Bryce - YouTube
X: @pwrhungry

Highlights

China’s dominance of rare earths and strategic materials and its impact on U.S. automakers and tech companies.
Consequences of tariffs and trade wars for global supply chains.

Vulnerability of Western manufacturing due to China’s near-monopoly on mining, refining, and magnet production.
Environmental and regulatory challenges facing new mining and processing projects in the U.S. and allied countries.
Difficulty and long timelines for bringing new mines online (often decades).

Strategic risks for defense and national security linked to China’s control of key elements.
Copper supply concerns amid growing demand from AI, electric vehicles, and grid upgrades.
Barriers to rapid U.S. nuclear energy expansion, including costs, regulatory hurdles, and workforce shortages.
Short-term thinking among U.S. policymakers and corporate leaders versus China’s decades-long strategy.
Need for coordinated, long-term, and bipartisan government action to counter China’s resource dominance.

Transcript

Jim Puplava:
Well, everybody's talking about the news, the conflict in the Middle East. And then, of course, tariffs have sort of faded into the background. But there are some consequences of those tariffs that nobody's talking about. Let's get into that. Joining me on the program is author, journalist, and publisher Robert Bryce. And Robert, we were talking, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about Ford Motor talking about their almost operating week to week because they don't have enough rare earths, which China controls. Let's talk about that and the consequences.

Robert Bryce:
You know, this is something that has been in the works now, really, Jim, since 2019, when Trump first implemented tariffs against China during his first term. And there was an article in the People's Daily, People's Daily Online. In fact, it was May 31, 2019, just about 10 days after Trump implemented those tariffs. And here I'll read you the quote. It said, "There's no winner in a trade war. We advise the U.S. side not to underestimate the Chinese side's ability to safeguard its development rights and interests. Don't say we didn't warn you." And what we're seeing now, and what we've seen since April, is China choking off the supply of rare earth elements to the global marketplace. And Ford is one of many automakers, global automakers, who are now facing potential factory shutdowns because the Chinese are now slow-walking export permits and actual exports of rare earth elements and rare earth magnets. So, neodymium, iron, boron magnets, they're doped with dysprosium, terbium, and other rare earth elements. And these are critical to automotive production, whether it's the motors for the windows, motors for the wiper blades, or transmissions. These are ubiquitous in modern technology, modern society. And China controls about 90% of the global magnet market.

Jim Puplava:
And it's not just, you know, what's going to impact the automakers. Let's talk about the technology sector. I mean, you know, how do companies like Apple and all these companies that are making all these high-tech devices that require maybe just a small amount of these rare earths, but they're critical to their production?

Robert Bryce:
Well, yes, exactly. And the International Energy Agency published a very good report on this in May, and I wrote about it on my Substack, robertbryce.substack.com, in a piece called "Anti-Magnetic." And I looked at the IEA report, and they buried the lede right there. You know, it's a very political entity. But what they said in the report itself, which is about 150 or 200 pages, is that China not only has a commanding role or commanding position on the rare earth elements, but its dominance of the marketplace—whether it's mining, refining, or production of the magnets—is actually growing. So, it's not just the rare earths; it's 33 strategic elements, from antimony to yttrium. So, let's talk about antimony. Lead-acid batteries aren't thought of as high-tech, but they require the use of antimony. And antimony is also used to harden bullets and munitions. So, the West, Jim, as I look at this, the West has just sleepwalked into this supply chain situation where the Chinese government—I’m not going to say laid a trap, but they have had an industrial policy in place now for more than 30 years to control strategic elements. And now they're flexing their muscle, and there should be no surprise that they're doing so.

Jim Puplava:
And they're not just doing it with rare earths. You see them in Africa, you see them in South America, controlling a lot of the key strategic materials, whether it's copper, lithium, cobalt, all of these materials. They know that in many ways, Robert, they're becoming like the OPEC of strategic materials.

Robert Bryce:
Well, you know, it's funny that you make that comparison because, look, Jim, I'm just of average intelligence, okay? I don't claim to be the smartest pair of scissors in the drawer. But in my fourth book, Power Hungry, which came out in 2010, I looked at OPEC and the supply of oil. And I pointed out that, yes, OPEC has a big market share, but there are a lot of countries around the world that produce oil. China, even back in 2010, had a stranglehold on the rare earth elements. And I just noted in that book, kind of in passing, that, by the way, if there's a trade war, China has the ability to retaliate and control the export of rare earth elements. So, neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, yttrium—these are critical in all kinds of applications. But remember, it's not just those. And to go to the high-tech business, germanium and gallium—China has restricted exports of those, which are needed for semiconductor production. It's tungsten, copper, nickel, you know, the list goes on. And China's dominance in these markets, and in some cases monopolies, means there's nothing that the U.S. can do in the near term to counter this. It will take years of effort and investment and government backing to change this landscape.

Jim Puplava:
Well, it's even worse than that because we did have a rare earth company, I think it was in Nevada. And the Chinese flooded the market in 2010 when they basically did exclusions to Japan. We responded, right? Then they flooded the market, put the company out of business. And the irony is we sold it to the Chinese.

Robert Bryce:
I mean, yeah, I don't know about that one. But the one location in the U.S. now where we are producing rare earth ore is the Mountain Pass Mine. That's now owned by a company called MP Materials. It's publicly traded. I think its predecessor was called Molycorp. But that company went bankrupt. So, we can mine—we're mining some rare earth ore now in the U.S., but guess where the ore goes to be processed?

Jim Puplava:
China.

Robert Bryce:
So, you know, this is very concerning to me, Jim, and from a geopolitical standpoint, to me now, Trump, you know, I think he's done some good things, particularly on the energy front. But when it comes to the tariffs and China's position in the global market and the geopolitics of this, I don't think he even gave it a second thought. He just assumed, oh, well, we can bully China into any kind of trade deal we want. And in 1992, the historical aspect of this is really key. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping, who is the most consequential leader in China since Mao, took a tour called the Southern Tour, and he went to a rare earth production facility, and he said—and I can quote it almost exactly—"The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths. We're going to explore, exploit rare earths." And that's what they've done now for the last 30 years—a systematic effort to control the global supply of the lanthanides, also known as the rare earths, and that's what they have now. And so, the West, we've been back-footed, and suddenly, you know, all the global automakers are looking around saying, "Crap, we can't make the Chinese move faster." And the Trump administration, we've demanded the Chinese resume exports. And the Chinese—here's my parody of what they're saying: "Oh, you're demanding, are you? Oh, I love that word, demand. Yeah, say it again because we're really going to sit here and just wrap right up and do whatever you tell us." No, they're going to play hardball.

Jim Puplava:
You know, it's amazing when we think of what we live in, this high-tech society. Our iPhones, our iPads, electric vehicles, all the tech stuff in manufacturing, and dependent on these key raw materials. I don't think anybody's really thought this completely through.

Robert Bryce:
You know, I'm not the first one to say this, but all of these technologies that we hold dear required digging something out of the ground. And this was something—I was in Australia for two weeks, and I just got back last week, and I was talking to some mining guys. You know, the Australian mining sector is enormous and very powerful in a huge export market. And I was talking to one of them about rare earths and why the U.S. and the West won't be able to ramp up production. And he said, well, the problem is that the refining is a dirty process, and, you know, on the backside, yeah, you're going to get samarium and europium and gadolinium and dysprosium, all these things we need. But your waste stream is going to be radioactive, and that's problematic, right? Because anytime you say "radioactive," regulators and policymakers and the NGOs just absolutely go nuts. So, China has agreed, and has, as a policy for the last three decades, said, "We'll take the environmental hit to be the dominant player in rare earths." And the West—I think it's going to require a coordinated multinational effort by the U.S., Canada, and Australia in particular, because they have significant mining and rare earth deposits, to counter this. But it's going to be a very long effort, and it's going to require massive government investment.

Jim Puplava:
And this isn't something that's going to be done overnight. I just take a look at all the prerequisites, the environmental impact studies, if you want to open up a mine anywhere in the U.S. or, for that matter, in Canada. So, realistically, this is something that could take 10 years before we even get a handle on this.

Robert Bryce:
You're right. And what we've seen, in fact, S&P Global did a very important article or published a study just a few days ago, or last month, I guess in May, pointing out how much longer the time period is taking to bring mines from discovery into production. And it's gone from nine or 10 years to today about 18 or 19 years. And they're projecting that that could go as high as 25 years. So, you know, there's a big mine, a potential mine opportunity, owned by BHP and Rio Tinto in Arizona, called Resolution. It's a massive, massive copper deposit. They still haven't gotten a permit after, I think, 10 or 12 years of trying to get that to happen. So, you know, if the U.S. adopted a kind of war footing, like a wartime footing on this, and said, you know, we're going to give the permits, we're going to back this with whatever money we have, whatever's needed, I think it could happen in two, three, four years, something like that. But it's going to require this sustained effort. And here's the difficult part, I think, Jim—it's going to require this bipartisan, long-term view from politicians that are going to say, "We don't have a choice; we have to counter what's going on in China," and they're going to have to do it and make these investments at a time when the U.S. government doesn't have extra cash. I'm saying this in a very tongue-in-cheek way. We do not have a lot of extra money lying around.

Jim Puplava:
No. And the other thing, too, even if the administration were to come up with something like that, and let's say there's agreement, Robert, what's to stop some regional judge from putting a stop to it? Just like we've seen with a lot of the things that Trump's trying to do, you get a regional judge who says, "You can't send troops, you can't do this, you can't do that."

Robert Bryce:
Well, right, and who's going to file those lawsuits? The Sierra Club, Earthjustice, you know, the usual suspects, these NGOs that have, you know, effectively endless amounts of dark money. Natural Resources Defense Council, you know, this is what they do. This is their reason for being. But remember that, in addition, Jim, this isn't the rare earths alone. It's titanium, it's zirconium, it's molybdenum, tungsten, copper, and silver. Copper and silver are not as big of an issue, but definitely copper and nickel and zinc as well. And one of the things that's really concerning, and I wrote about this on my Substack a few days ago, robertbryce.substack.com, in this piece called "Anti-Magnetic," you have 33 strategic elements. And the other thing that the IEA pointed out—maybe I said this before—is that the concentration, that China's dominance of these critical elements, these strategic elements, in many cases, is increasing, not decreasing. So, the West, unfortunately, has just sleepwalked into this. The U.S. has sleepwalked into this, and there's nothing that is going to allow this or is any kind of a quick fix.

Jim Puplava:
You know, what's really amazing is that we have not been able to see this through in terms of planning. As you mentioned, China goes back three or four decades ago: "We're going to dominate this," and that's where they are today. They are the OPEC of strategic raw materials, everything. And it's not just what we want to do with industry; it's what we want to do with tech. It's what we want to do with AI—all these things. And you know what happens if, let's say, this doesn't work out, and they just withhold those? They could shut down our whole economy.

Robert Bryce:
Well, yeah, and that's a damn scary thought, isn't it? And don't think that the Chinese don't understand this. There's one other key quote from this Wall Street Journal article from June 24. It says the export licenses—here was the part that I was looking for. Yes, I think it was the Chinese Commerce Department. They said export license approvals for rare earth magnets haven't changed significantly despite the protestations by the automakers and others. And then here's another key quote: "It isn't quite day to day, but it's week to week," said an executive at one of the carmakers. Well, the global auto sector—do a back-of-the-envelope calculation—is a $1.8 trillion-a-year business. It's a massive sector, and China is producing cars. I was in Sydney; I rode in a BYD, the EVs that are coming out of China. An impressive car, a very impressive car. And the Uber driver, I said, "Tell me about this car." And he said—I think he was a Chinese guy, I didn't ask him—but he said, "Yeah, it was 45,000 Australian. The Tesla was 65,000." And he said, "This is a better car." So, China is now the world's biggest automaker. And, you know, the Chinese government is flexing its muscle. And in response to the Trump administration, I saw one article, maybe a couple of weeks ago—one of Trump's trade negotiators said that he's demanding China increase the speed of exports. And I'm wondering whether the Chinese are sitting there going, "Oh, you're demanding? Oh, we love that word, demanding. Yes, go, just demand some more after you slap us with tariffs, you're going to demand what we do." And I guess if I was going to boil this down, Jim, you know, I'm pro-free markets, I'm pro-capitalism, but this is a situation, as in the nuclear sector, where the market is not going to cure this. This is going to require government intervention and significant government intervention, government support, government money. But it's also part of this short-termism that plagues the U.S., right? We're thinking about the next quarter, the next biennium, the next congressional election, the next presidential election. And the Chinese are thinking in decadal terms.

Jim Puplava:
And this goes back to the automakers. It's week to week. How can you run production or a company when you don't know if you're going to be able to produce cars the following week? So, it's very disruptive and costly for car manufacturers on top of that.

Robert Bryce:
Well, and you know, this is part of the efficiency that has been wrung out of the system, right? The just-in-time delivery, which makes sense. If you want to reduce costs, you don't need to do warehousing. You bring the parts in, you bring them in one side of the factory on the same day, and you put them in the car right away. So, it's fat, smaller, faster, lighter, denser, cheaper—to use the title of my fifth book. And that makes sense. But if you are facing a situation where your chief geopolitical rival has control over those strategic commodities that you're going to need over the long term, that model doesn't work anymore. And so, you know, the other part that I think is key to understand here, Jim, is the defense-related aspect of this. So, I mentioned—I don't know if I mentioned antimony—but antimony is needed for lead-acid batteries. Well, that's critical for hardening of bullets and for munitions. So is bismuth. And so, you've got antimony, tellurium, bismuth, germanium, gallium. These other elements that we don't think about, like titanium, zirconium. These are all other elements that China has built up a strategic dominance of. And the challenge is not only on the geopolitical side—how do we address the trade part—but then, if we're going to counter this, it's going to require mining, and it's going to require mining at scale. And I was on a different podcast talking about this just recently, and they said, "Well, you know, the government can mobilize; look what we did with the vaccines." And I said, "Well, sure, the vaccines, that's fine, but you only need about this much vaccine. You need, let's say, a gallon or two gallons, or maybe you need a thousand gallons. Well, to effectively counter China on tungsten, titanium, copper, nickel, you have to move hundreds of millions of tons of rock." I mean, the physical scale of the problem—it's a mass problem. It's not just a capital problem; it's a mass problem. How do you handle this massive amount of material in order to refine the elements that you need? This is a staggering challenge, and China has been willing to take the environmental hit on this and has for decades. But it's going to be, as you pointed out, a long time for the U.S. and the West to effectively counter this.

Jim Puplava:
And what about—I mean, it's not just the fact that we have to start mining the rare earths, and let's assume that we could waive all regulations and do this in two or three years. You're also talking about the processing because China processes what, 90% of most strategic materials? So, you have to build processing plants in addition to getting the mines running.

Robert Bryce:
And you have to build the manufacturing to then take the—after you have extracted the elements and converted them into the actual functional magnets. So, you're right. So, you have the ore, then you have the refining into the specific lanthanides, let's say neodymium and praseodymium. These are two of the key ones for neodymium-iron-boron magnets. Okay, well, so now you've extracted the neodymium. Well, now you have to sinter it—S-I-N-T-E-R, sinter that into a magnet, and then that magnet will have a certain form factor, whether it's for an electric vehicle or a wiper motor or a transmission or a wind turbine. So, China has vertically integrated all of these, and the United States—we're at square one. We have effectively a little bit of mining, but none of the rest of the supply chain or the value chain. Whereas China has, over the past three decades, made this their entire business. And what are the automakers doing now, saying, "Oh, pretty please, send us more?" Or, what some of them have said and admitted in the press is that they're sending their parts to China for final assembly.

Jim Puplava:
Wow, it's amazing. We've been talking about rare earths; I want to move on to something that's a very strategic material, and that's copper. Because, you know, we're building these massive data centers, and when I say massive, these things are $10, $20 billion projects that require a massive amount of electricity. So, you have AI data centers demanding a lot of electricity. You've got an aging grid in the U.S. that needs to be rebuilt. You're talking about switching to EVs and replacing the gasoline engine. What does that imply? You're going to need charging stations—once again, more copper. So, let's talk about copper for a second because all of this talk, we want to win the race of AI, but AI takes raw materials.

Robert Bryce:
Yeah. You know, I'm glad you brought up the copper market because this is an area, you know, I write on Substack, and I'm fascinated by the copper market. I haven't written anything about it yet, but I've been sniffing around it, kind of collecting string on it for a long time. Talked to a bunch of miners when I was in Perth in Australia a couple of weeks ago about it, and one guy I talked to, I said, "Well, why is it easier to bring gold mines into production rather than copper mines?" Because he said, you know, copper mines are much more difficult to produce. And he said, "Well, it's because the value of the actual element you're producing is so much higher in gold." Right? It's $3,000 an ounce or whatever it is today, whereas copper is $5 a pound. So, you have to process a lot more ore in the copper mine to extract that valuable commodity than you do compared to gold. Now, sometimes they're found together, and you could get a twofer.

Jim Puplava:
Right.

Robert Bryce:
But, you know, I'm confounded, though, by copper, and I take all the points you've made. But I'm just looking at a price chart here, a five-year chart. Copper was at about $5 in early 2022. It's now at $4.90, something like that. So, despite all of the things you said—and I don't disagree with any of them—it seems that the investing class, the bankers, the futures investors, are saying, "Yeah, we don't necessarily believe there's going to be that much demand for copper; otherwise, the price would have been higher." That's my quick take, you know—otherwise, why isn't copper, why isn't the price higher?

Jim Puplava:
Well, you know, it's amazing because S&P Global did a look at copper discoveries in the last decade; there's just been a dearth of new discoveries in a lot of these copper projects. You're looking at Peru or some of the Chilean places like that. These mines have been in production 30, 40 years. So, you know, the ore grades are declining, so you have to mine more rock to get copper, which theoretically should be raising the price of production.

Robert Bryce:
Right, and that's a key point, Jim. It's exactly right. And, you know, I'm a reporter; I'm no expert on anything, right? I'm a generalist. But I was invited to speak at a mining conference in Chile last October, and I gave them my kind of overview and talked about some of these issues, as you've just discussed, about these projections. And Daniel Yergin a couple of years ago wrote a piece; I think he said, "Copper is the new oil." And there are all these beliefs that copper demand is going to skyrocket. We're going to need 1x, 2x more in the future than we do now. And I finished, and a Chilean guy—he was a mining guy—came up to me afterward, and he said, "I understand all the things you said," but he said, "Double production? Chile is the biggest producer of copper in the world by far. Double production?" He said, "We're running as hard as we can just to keep production flat." So, you know, Chile's output has not increased at all over the past ten years or so. You know, they're struggling to stay flat because of the point you made about declining ore quality. So, I just find it interesting on a whole lot of levels, you know, the physical level, as we've discussed, about declining ore quality. But why hasn't the market said, "Oh, we believe the story"? And maybe it's that they don't believe the China story, because here's the other key part: China consumes about half of the world's copper. So, if China catches a cold, the copper market falls apart.

Jim Puplava:
You know, but still, eventually, you start running out of this stuff. And I can't help but believe—and it reminds me of the 2000s decade when you had U.S. oil production. I think by 2010, we were only producing about 5 million barrels a day until we discovered fracking, horizontal drilling. And it took that to drive the price. I think it was the summer of 2008; we got up to almost $150 on oil. I really think it's going to take a supply shock to really wake the markets up because right now, they're sleepwalking. We're talking about AI, the AI race. Nobody is critically thinking this through. Okay, if we want to do this, what is it going to take to make this happen?

Robert Bryce:
Yeah, no, I agree. And I've been creating some charts for this because I'm going to write about it eventually on Substack. I've just been traveling so much, I haven't had time to settle down and really think it through. But one of the other fascinating things about copper is that when it comes to intensity, material intensity of the economy, you know, we see oil intensity, for instance, going down, you know, barrels per unit of GDP, etc. Other commodities, you know, declining. But copper demand and economic growth and copper supply—rather, copper use and GDP—go in lockstep. The other point, and I just looked at this S&P study that just came out here. I just pulled it up. So, this came out in April, and here's the key quote: "The average lead time for mines continues to rise, reaching 17.8 years for those that became operational between 2020 and 2024. This duration is nearly three times longer than the lead time for mines that began operation from 1990 to 1999." And here's the other part, Jim, to your point: from 2025 onward, they're projecting the number of years between discovery and production will be nearly 28 years. So, yeah, I agree with you. I hear the story, and this is the part that's the disconnect where I've kind of laid off this and haven't written about it yet, is because, yes, all the things you're saying are true, that, yes, we expect this big demand growth, whether it's EVs or electrification or data centers or whatever. But there's this disconnect between that story and the physical reality of what is happening in the commodity markets.

Jim Puplava:
Well, it's like that. Even if you look at electricity, and I want to get into nuclear power because you wrote an article on nuclear power. We want to increase nuclear power plants because it's the one thing that makes things work. You're not going to do that with wind and solar. But you talk about there being five realities that call that into question. Let's talk about that.

Robert Bryce:
Sure. Well, I wrote that piece in response to President Trump's executive orders on nuclear power and nuclear energy, which were very important, and I think they were in May. And they're the most important—you know, look, I'm critical of President Trump on some of the things he's done on the energy front, though I think his instincts are pretty much right on. And those four executive orders on nuclear energy are the most important endorsements of nuclear power by a sitting U.S. president since Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace speech in 1953. These are landmark deals, and especially his executive order regarding the Department of Defense to instruct the DoD to try and implement new nuclear on their bases, which means you don't have to deal with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The DoD can handle this how they want. But the ambition of the executive orders was, I think, just too high and disconnected from reality. When he said—I forgot what it was—double nuclear by 2050, it implied a build-out of 12 gigawatts a year every year over the next couple of decades. Well, no country in the world has ever done that. And so, that was one of the key reasons why I said, "Here's why this isn't going to happen," because we have too many reactor designs, which was one of the other reasons. But also, we have to look at history—there's no precedent for building 12 gigawatts a year. The French, between the '70s and the '90s, built about 3 gigawatts a year, and that's the fastest deployment we've ever seen. But the French concentrated on one design. They had a single reactor design that came from Framatome, a light-water reactor design, and then they built dozens of them. And that is one reason why France has been able to be the nuclear power that it is—they settled on one thing. We have way too many designs in the marketplace right now; that has to be winnowed down, and we're going to have to have the government get more active in backing nuclear fuel production—high-assay low-enriched uranium, you know—and we're relying now on the Russians for about 25% of our nuclear fuel now, and that supply is going to be shut off within the next year or two.

Jim Puplava:
And what about the fact that if you just take a look at nuclear power, all the things that have to go into it? This is stuff that doesn't happen overnight. And the Chinese are accelerating, aren't they? They have, like, a thorium reactor because the Chinese are building, I think they have, like, 24 or 25 nuclear power plants in the production line.

Robert Bryce:
They're now building 29 gigawatts of nuclear power. They're building more nuclear than any other country in the world by far. But to put that into context, they're building over 200 gigawatts of new coal. So, let's be clear and very sober about what's happening in China. Yes, China is leading the world in the deployment of new nuclear, but the amount of coal they're building—they're building six times more new coal plants on a capacity basis than they are new nuclear. But you're right about the supply chain issues. And so, fabrication, labor—labor is a key issue, and one I think we've talked about before, about demographics. The baby boom is over, and the number of incoming new college freshmen is declining. And so, there are issues, and I've heard this all around the country, with the availability of skilled labor—electricians, pipefitters, welders, electric linemen. This is an issue for industry all across the country. And being able to access that level of skilled labor to build these plants and the data centers and all the other things we're talking about now, you know, labor is a real constraining factor.

Jim Puplava:
Yeah, because, I mean, who wanted to go to school to become a geologist? I mean, you wanted to become a coder, a programmer, somebody in tech, or go into finance. What about some of the other issues that you have to deal with with nuclear? You talked about there being five factors you felt that would maybe cause this reality to be somewhat different.

Robert Bryce:
Sure. Well, now, see, I don't know how many articles ago that was, Jim; I'm going to have to look it up to remind myself of what I wrote about back then. But, you know, I think one of the key issues, of course, is going to be, as I said, the historical precedent for that kind of build-out. The administration says it wants to build 300 gigawatts of new nuclear, but there's no historical precedent for it. And the cost—this is another one of the reasons—the costs are still stratospheric. I'm pro-nuclear. I'm adamantly pro-nuclear. I've been saying the same thing for more than 15 years: natural gas to nuclear is the way forward. But Plant Vogtle, which is the nuclear plant in Georgia that is the most recent one to come online—the finished cost for that was about $36 billion for 2 gigawatts. So, about $17 million per megawatt. That's just too expensive. We need to bring that cost down. And then, you know, there's the federal support issue, and then there's the issue of reactor designs. There are now 51 companies that are trying to build and commercialize SMRs. And we need, you know, two or three companies. And then the other is the supply and fuel enrichment problem, which I've mentioned before. But we need dozens of tons of nuclear fuel production domestically, and we effectively have none. And last year, President Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, which bans imports of uranium products from Russia beginning this August, just in two months. And companies can apply for waivers through 2028. But, Jim, 2028 is next week in terms of these kinds of industrial projects. So, we’ve got to get in gear. The U.S., the people here, have to get in gear to understand the urgency of the critical supply chains for nuclear energy and rare earths and strategic elements. And we have to do it all at once. And I fear—I don't say this with any joy—that our political class doesn't have the bandwidth to focus on these kinds of issues because of this short-termism that's so dominant.

Jim Puplava:
And that was the other issue I was going to bring up. I can't think of any time, probably since the Civil War, where the political parties have been so divided.

Robert Bryce:
Yeah. The uncertainty now is enormous. And it's interesting on the natural resource front because I think you're familiar with Rosenberg and Goehring, right? The New York guys—they're very bullish on commodities. And natural gas prices are starting to move, right? But copper is still kind of lackluster. But, you know, if we face a more inflationary environment—and it certainly seems that that's a possibility and maybe the case already—then commodities start to look like a smart play. But which ones win? At what cost, you know, all the rest of it? And it's going to take sober political leadership. And that, unfortunately, is in extraordinarily short supply.

Jim Puplava:
Yeah. Once again, I think what gets politicians is when people get upset when the lights go out, you have power outages. That's what politicians listen to because people get angry. And, unfortunately, Robert, I think that's the direction we're going to have to go. We're going to see some kind of supply shock or, getting back to rare earths, what happens if there's a disagreement over tariffs, and China just says, "Okay, we're just going to cut shipments"? What would that do to our economy? But it's going to take something like that.

Robert Bryce:
Yeah. And does China decide, "Oh, Taiwan looks really interesting now, and we're going to go invade"? And, you know, I thought, after the bombing of Iran, maybe this is a strategic overstep, and yet look what's happened. There's a ceasefire, and apparently just because of Trump's force of personality, I don't know. I mean, so I can certainly see this worst-case scenario, but maybe, maybe—and I say this as a nonpartisan, I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat, I'm disgusted—but because the U.S. still has this swagger and economic might, maybe we come through this, and maybe China finally realizes its strategic interests lie with us. So, you know, I'm hopeful, but I also am very sober about what needs to happen. And I think on these strategic elements—calling them critical minerals is actually not the right term—these strategic elements, this is going to require a very long-term, sustained political effort by the U.S. government with a lot of federal dollars to turn this around. And it's going to require—I think this is the other challenge here—because Trump has not endeared Americans to the Canadians nor to the Australians. He refused to meet with Albanese at the recent meeting. But the Canadians and the Australians are our most important allies when it comes to these strategic elements because they have huge mining operations. They have the elements and the capacity to increase production. We're going to need them, but we're going to need them to agree, and we're going to need a political alliance. And Trump has done us no favors on that front either.

Jim Puplava:
Yep. You know, maybe it's going to take something like when he announced the tariffs, the next day, the bond market revolted, and all of a sudden, he said, "Oh, wait a minute, you know, we're going to postpone that."

Robert Bryce:
So, you know, it's all, "How do I feel today?" without this kind of long-term vision about where the U.S., where we want to go. And this is the part—I don't know, I've been talking a lot here—but, you know, Deng Xiaoping in 1992 said, "We're going to control rare earth elements." That's 33 years ago. The Chinese are looking at this play—the strategic commodity, strategic elements—they're looking at this in decadal timeframes, and we're looking to the next quarter, or in the case of Trump, maybe it's tomorrow, or maybe it's just this afternoon where he decides, "Oh, never mind, no tariffs," or, you know, "tax holiday." I don't know. It's going to require real sobriety and some real wisdom. And we have to start moving, and I think we can move there quickly, relatively quickly, on uranium because we're seeing bipartisan agreement there. The other critical elements, the strategic elements, are going to take longer, and I think they'll probably be more difficult.

Jim Puplava:
Yeah, unfortunately. Well, it's one of the reasons we're bullish on commodities. Like I said, 30% of my portfolio is in strategic materials, and we're starting a resource fund because I do think you're going to see these kinds of things develop, whether it's supply shocks, but I think that's what it's going to take to motivate people. And when people start experiencing power outages—they're talking about all kinds of power outages this summer as we replace reliable energy with unreliable energy, my own state being the prime example of that. But anyway, Robert, as we conclude, if our listeners—you put out such great stuff—talk for a minute on a couple of your key books and your videos that you've done, your documentary films.

Robert Bryce:
Sure. Well, here's my latest book. It's out now in paperback: A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors—you don't have to read it, you just have to buy it. And if you buy it on your Kindle, I make a better royalty. Our latest documentary, directed by my colleague Tyson Culver, is called Juice: Power, Politics, and the Grid. It's a five-part docuseries. It's free. It's available on YouTube. It's been viewed over 3 million times. You can see that at juicetheseries.com, but I'm writing almost exclusively now on Substack. So, robertbryce.substack.com. I love writing on Substack. I've been a reporter my whole career, Jim. Never had a real job, written for all the major publications. But I love Substack because I can write what I want, how I want, when I want, with the charts I want. And as I wrote in this piece on "Five Reasons Why," you know, several charts there, showing six charts, in fact, showing why, despite these ambitions, the U.S. won't be able to quadruple its nuclear capacity. And so, having those visual elements is key, I think, to making these issues understandable because they can be very abstract. So, how's that for the pitch?

Jim Puplava:
Well, I love following your stuff. You're probably one of the most knowledgeable people I know on electricity. And I'm always amazed at some of the stories that you come up with that we don't see in the legacy media. You know, they just don't want to cover it. It's not in their interest. And you're picking up on very crucial things that we really need as a country and as companies to start thinking strategically—not just the next quarter, the next election cycle, but longer-term, 10 years out, multiple decades out—and we need to start doing that now.

Robert Bryce:
Well, I agree with you, but, you know, this is one of the other things, you know, back to the short-termism. If you think about the corporate class, the leadership class in corporate America, you know, let's assume, Jim, you get to be the CEO of General Motors or Stellantis or, I don't know, you name a company—Rio Tinto, not an American company. But, you know, you're only going to be in that job for a few years, right? And so, with very few exceptions, these CEOs cycle through after three, four, five, six, seven years, right? And then they're out. And so, they're not paid to think in those longer terms. They're thinking about next year, the next two years—can I get the stock price up so I get a bonus before I leave? Whereas the Chinese government has very close ties with industry, and if the industry starts to flag, they'll subsidize them. And that's what we've seen over and over in China. And that's going to be a very difficult thing for the U.S. to counter. But there has to be some movement on this, and there has to be political support for it, and there has to be global geopolitical support for it. And this is where Trump—he's going to have to repair some of these relationships. But when it comes to these strategic elements, Canada and Australia are the key countries for us in terms of addressing this. And right now, they're not enamored with Trump.

Jim Puplava:
No, it's one of the—you know, I've only met one CEO who thinks in decades and long-term, and that's Warren Buffett. You know, you take a look at the companies he owns; he owns them strategically—American Express, Coca-Cola. I mean, he's owned them for three or four decades, so he thinks that way, but very few like him. Well, listen, Robert, as always, I appreciate your time. And once again, folks, if you really want to understand electricity, pick up one of Robert's books or go watch one of his documentaries. It's worth your while. Thanks so much, my friend.