Name: Burgum making deals in the Middle East
Uploaded: 2025-11-03T19:30:25.762Z
Duration: 7 min 34 s
Description: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum joins to discuss making deals in the Middle East, relations with China, rare earths, and more.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum joins to discuss making deals in the Middle East, relations with China, rare earths, and more.

Abu Dhabi

US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum spoke from Abu Dhabi at the world's largest energy conference, highlighting the presence of 248 US companies and the growing global demand for energy driven by artificial intelligence. Burgum announced a new US-led framework for a 'club of nations' to ensure fair trade and secure supply chains for critical minerals, with countries such as Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Australia, and Thailand already joining.

Burgum criticized China's export controls on rare earth minerals and stressed the need for the US and its allies to re-enter the mining and processing sector. He also noted recent agreements, including a memorandum of understanding with the UAE on energy and AI, and described US government investments in domestic mineral processing as part of an emergency program to reduce dependence on China.

Burgum making deals in the Middle East

Joining us this morning Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. Sir thank you so much for your time this morning. Janet great to be with you all the way from Abu Dhabi the largest energy conference in the world. But what a great American presence that's here. Two hundred forty eight U.S. companies here showing it at this incredible expedition. And as you say lots happening here. But one of the things that's biggest thing at the conference is that with the A.I. coming there's going to be a demand for more power. It's not about energy transition. That game is over. It's about energy addition. We need to add more energy in the U.S. We need to sell energy to our friends and allies so they can stop buying from our adversaries like Iran and Russia. And with A.I. we used to say that knowledge is power. That was a phrase in every language in every culture. But now power is knowledge. We need more electricity to power the A.I. revolution and win the A.I. arms race with China. It at the energy summit you were on stage this morning. You didn't waste any time as we're going to jump to question two. We'll come back to one here. You jumped right into it in your speech sir. With a global audience. Let's listen to what you had to say. It's just taking a completely different 180 degree change. We are we are for all forms of energy that are reliable affordable don't require subsidy and provide baseload whether that's geothermal whether it's nuclear all of these things. But part of what that takes is also it takes us to have critical minerals. And as you know there's been some some disruption and some threats to the supply chain of critical minerals. In the last few weeks the United States has announced a framework for creating a club of nations to be able to trade across that club of nation and fair trade to be able for refining and processing critical minerals. We invite any country that is interested in having a dialogue around that to join us. This effort began two weeks ago and we have six countries Japan Korea Malaysia Australia and others that have Thailand already signed up to do this because we need to make sure that we cannot advance the industries that we're talking about without making sure that that we all have access as a group of allies to those materials. Mr. Secretary I watched your whole speech this morning. That was really the the one minute you know that was the home run that you kind of delivered. You invited the entire world to basically partner with the United States. Well I would say everybody but China because China is the one that's that's holding with their export controls as they call them was really the largest intelligence gathering effort in the history of humanity. What they announced was that every company in the world that even if you had like point zero one percent of material that came from China you had to get permission from them to use it permission from them to sell it to another customer. And they wanted to know was it going to defense. Was it going to commercial. What were the specifications. How many units did you need. This would affect defense automotive. Every every industry in the world was affected by this. President Trump understood that. Scott Beset Howard Lutnick when they were last week in Asia signed the deals with Japan Malaysia Thailand. The week before that we had put together the framework with Australia and many more nations are interested because what China did was a threat to essentially all democracies. Everybody in the world because China. Well they are the most energy dependent country in the world. They import eleven and a half million barrels of oil a day. They have to import food every day. They have no food security no energy security. But strategically they decided hey we could control the processing of these rare earth minerals. We have those minerals in the United States. Our allies have them. But everybody got out of the mining business and thought oh we'll just let China do it. Some of that was because of the the the climate extremists that said mining is a business that we shouldn't be in. But when we push when we offshore something like that to an adversary versus doing it here it's bad for the world. It's bad for the economy. It's bad. It's bad for everything because the United States would do it cleaner safer and smarter than anyone else in the world. China is getting some of these minerals from places like the Congo in the middle of Africa or in Indonesia. And when they do it no regard for the environment no regard for human rights child labor prison labor no reclamation. We've got to bring these industries back to the United States. And one last thing I would just say Shannon is last year we graduated 36000 lawyers in America. We graduated 300 people in mining and metallurgical degrees. So when we say mine baby mine we're talking about getting back in the mining business as a country. President Trump opening up Alaska last week with some announcements that he made about the Ambler Road District. All of these things are just sending a signal to the world that we're going to get back you know get back in that business. And here in the Middle East a lot of interest signed an MOU with with with the UAE last night. These guys totally get the importance of A.I. They we've signed an MOU about energy and A.I. But those two industries also need these critical minerals. So again grateful for the partnership with a country like UAE who's been there with us on the defense side. Now they're with us there on critical minerals. And and what a conference they're hosting here. But nonetheless running up against this 90 percent of rare earths that China does control and the president had your back. Secretary as I'm sure you're not surprised. Of course he met with Xi. He's cut this one year deal but he was speaking. He had a sit down interview with 60 Minutes that aired last night. And I want to play this clip for you and come back on the other side. We're doing very well against China. And all of a sudden they said you know we have to fight back. And so they use their powers. The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they've been accumulating it and and really taking care of it for a period of 25 30 years. Other countries haven't. They use that against us and we used other things against them. For instance airplane parts. That's a big deal. Mr. Secretary what what is this emergency program that the president is talking about during this sit down interview. He spoke of this emergency program. We're not going to be relying on China. Well this is relates to what we're talking about here which is we've got to get back in the business of mining and processing these rare earth minerals. We and our allies need to do that together in unprecedented steps. President Trump supporting the fact that we're making as a country through the Department of War direct investments into rare earth mineral processors here in the United States. And when we do that we take a 15 or 20 percent stake. The value of their company goes up. That benefits everyone. The United States invests in one of these companies. It's like every one of your listeners now is a shareholder in a company that becomes stronger and worth more more about more value on the markets in China. If a company in the U.S. was gaining traction in rare earth minerals they would blow market price dump those materials onto the marketplace crash the price. And American country companies not not able to go get an IPO and not able to get a loan and literally going out of business. Part of this club of nations is saying we're going to stop that. We're going to make sure that we've got a trading where we've got fair trade among those countries that can allow companies outside of China to exist and create real markets so market forces can go back to helping to solve these problems eliminate that chokehold that China has. President Trump the dealmaker President Trump the businessman understands this. This is a brilliant response to China's threat. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum live from Abu Dhabi this morning. Thanks so much for giving us your time sharing your time with us. Good to see you sir. Thank you.

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