From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Nick Pope

China is planning to restrict exports of a key mineral needed to make weapons while a U.S. company that could be reducing America’s reliance on foreign suppliers is languishing in red tape, energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Chinese government announced on August 15 that it will restrict exports of antimony, a critical mineral that dominates the production of weapons globally and is essential for producing equipment like munitions, night vision goggles and bullets that are essential to national security, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Perpetua Resources, an American mining company, has been navigating red tape for years to develop a mine in Valley County, Idaho,  that could decrease reliance on the Chinese supply of antimony, but the slow permitting process is getting in the way, energy experts told the DCNF.

It can take years to secure all the necessary approvals and permits to develop a mine like the one Perpetua Resources is trying to operate. One of the key permitting laws in place is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which also applies to federal land management actions and the construction of certain public infrastructure projects like highways.

“After six years of planning and early engagement, we began the [NEPA] permitting process in 2016. We are now eight years into NEPA,” a Perpetua Resources spokesperson told the DCNF. The company is hoping to extract antimony from the largest known deposit in the U.S., and Perpetua Resources’ development could also produce millions of ounces of gold as well.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, argues that the Perpetua Resources mine poses real environmental considerations that should be addressed, but production in the U.S. is almost certainly cleaner than production that takes place in China. Moreover, depending on China for raw materials needed to produce key defense equipment poses a clear national security risk, Furchtgott-Roth said.

“The United States has the highest environmental standards in the world for its mines, as well as for some other things, too,” Furchtgott-Roth told the DCNF. “It’s a huge national security risk. Given what we’ve seen with Russia cutting off supplies of natural gas to Europe, we know that countries can cut off important supplies to other countries.”

“If the administration wants to pursue policies that push electric vehicles, green energy and other mineral-intensive technologies, it should look to streamline the permitting process across the board rather than selectively pursuing reform for some favored types of development and not for others,” Furchtgott-Roth added.

Steve Coonen, a former Department of Defense (DOD) official who focused on technology exports to China, agreed that relying on China for raw materials needed to produce crucial technologies presents a clear national security risk.

“The United States has all the rare earth elements it needs, not too dissimilar from its energy requirements,” Coonen told the DCNF. “However, Democrats have enchained U.S. industry by prohibiting the extraction of these materials for misplaced and ill-informed ecological reasons at a significant risk to national security and the United States’ long-term economic health.”

China is responsible for just under 50% of the world’s antimony production, and it is also the source of 63% of the U.S.’ current antimony imports, according to CSIS. The U.S., meanwhile, did not mine any “marketable” antimony in 2023, according to CNBC.

China’s recently announced export restrictions for antimony will take effect on Sept. 15, according to CNBC. To many in the industry, China moving to curb antimony exports would have come as a surprise just a few months ago, so the country’s decision to take action comes across as “quite confrontational in that regard,” Lewis Black, CEO of Canadian mining company Almonty Industries, told the outlet.

In addition to antimony, China has also flexed its muscles by restricting exports of other critical minerals that it dominates globally, like germanium and gallium, since 2023.

“The United States has some of the highest permitting standards in the world, and that’s something to be proud of. But NEPA gets criticism for being inefficient, and much of that criticism is justified,” the Perpetua Resources spokesperson told the DCNF. “When we are talking about minerals we need for America’s national and economic security — not to mention our clean energy future — we need an efficient regulatory process that still maintains robust protections for communities and the environment.”

The company is anticipating that the process — from initial deposit identification to the beginning of mineral extraction from the mine site — will take 18 years, the Perpetua Resources spokesperson told the DCNF. However, the spokesperson added that NEPA has been beneficial for transparency with the public and allowing stakeholder communities to weigh in about the project.

Nevertheless, Perpetua Resources “absolutely supports a commonsense, bipartisan approach to permitting reform” because “good projects should not wither in red tape.”

The antimony curbs may be even more pressing given existing concerns about the strength of America’s defense-industrial base amid wars in the Middle East and Europe, as well as rising tensions with China over Taiwan. Many experts have cautioned that the U.S. is allowing itself to become too dependent on an adversarial China’s mineral supplies at a time when those minerals are playing a much larger role in the American economy, thanks in part to the Biden administration’s massive green energy agenda.

“In the mid-twentieth century, domestic mining accounted for 90% of the U.S.’s antimony consumption. Today, the U.S. no longer mines antimony; instead, it relies on China, its chief geopolitical rival, for over 60% of its antimony imports,” Quill Robinson, an associate fellow in CSIS’ Energy Security and Climate Change Program, told the DCNF. “Effective China de-risking requires reducing reliance up and down the value chain.”

Independent West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso teamed up to introduce a major permitting reform bill in July, designing the package to simplify the regulatory hurdles that major infrastructure and development projects must clear and expedite timelines without totally defanging regulators’ ability to ensure that environmental concerns and considerations are addressed. That bill has not yet come up for a vote in the Senate.

“There are legitimate environmental challenges that need to be mitigated for projects like this,” Arnab Datta, the Institute for Progress’ director of infrastructure policy, told the DCNF. However, government agencies are more strongly incentivized to avoid legal challenges of their reviews from third parties than they are to thoroughly review the more significant environmental concerns, meaning that regulators tend to chew up lots of time on those minor points and ultimately extend the timelines for permitting, Datta explained.

“The uncertainty from permitting and litigation compounds the challenge of reaching production in what’s often a volatile and uncertain market environment for these commodities,” Datta, who also works for Employ America as a managing director of policy implementation, continued. “These companies need a process with certainty and reasonable timelines and also support that helps mitigate the volatility that arises from China’s actions in the market.”

Featured Image: Photo by Dominik Vanyi on Unsplash

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

In a new interview, retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor explains the escalation of tensions in Ukraine and in Israel as the result of deliberate attempts to destabilize Russia and the entire region of the Middle East.

In a new interview, retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, one of the founders of the rapidly growing organization Our Country, Our Choice, explains the escalation of tensions in Ukraine and in Israel as the result of deliberate attempts to destabilize Russia and the entire region of the Middle East.

“Insane as that sounds to most Americans,” warns Macgregor, these actions are undertaken at a time when the “U.S. is dangerously overstretched.”

So far, he says, “we are fortunate that worse things have not happened to us.”

Yet as Macgregor explains, what has happened as a result of the actions of Western regimes is so damaging, and dangerous, that the populations of “the Western hemisphere” must consider removing their own governments in order to survive them.

Macgregor’s video analysis, released on August 20, can be seen here:

Not only are the people of the West excluded from the decisions which are destroying their world, he says, but in the case of Israel, even the U.S. government itself is not deciding American foreign policy. This, he says, has to end – before everything else does.

A global(ist) crisis

The crises faced by the U.S. have stretched it to breaking point at home – and abroad.

“Everywhere you want to look – in Europe, in the Middle East, in the Indo-Pacific – our positions are worsening by the day,” he says.

“Americans don’t have any control over their government. They’re bystanders … they’re watching other people make policy decisions, in some cases life or death decisions, in the Middle East and Eastern Europe as well as here at home with the border. They’re never consulted. They’re never asked anything. They’re just told to shut up.”

Americans, says Macgregor, have tolerated this due to domestic prosperity – which has now vanished.

Macgregor says with falling living standards as a result of this industry of permanent war and a permanent state of emergency at home, “these days are over.”

He says of the U.S, “The world is sick of us,” saying this is why a parallel system to that led by the U.S. is emerging in the Chinese and Russian-led BRICS bloc.

Yet when Macgregor moves to analysis of U.S.-Israeli politics, he says that not only are the American people not in control of their government, but the U.S. government is itself not in control of its own foreign policy.

“The truth of the matter is that Mr. Netanyahu, not Mr. Biden or his administration, is in is in charge of what’s happening in the Middle East.”

Shockingly, Macgregor, a former adviser to the Trump administration, says this means Israel directs U.S. soldiers and its military into action.

“When I say ‘in the Middle East’ I mean he controls what we will or will not do militarily – we don’t,” he says. “Netanyahu has got control of Congress and we are going to unconditionally support him until somehow or another it harms us.”

“Only when it harms us in a demonstrable way – not a way in which it can be concealed.”

This is the reason, Macgregor says, for the focus of U.S. politicians such as Lindsey Graham on promoting a war in Iran, which is “not in the U.S. national interest.”

“This business of blaming Iran or for that matter anybody else in the Middle East for everything that’s wrong is not only misguided, it’s stupid. It’s bad policy, but we’ve adopted it [because] the Israelis have insisted upon it.”

Netanyahu, says Macgregor, does not want peace. Instead, the Zionist leader sees  “a once-in-a-century opportunity to annihilate everyone in the region who does not bend the knee to Israel.”

Moving to Ukraine, Macgregor bluntly explains why everything we are told about the Ukraine war is simply untrue.

“Mr. Zelensky realizes he is dealing with a lot of suckers in the West,” he said. “We are not getting the truth about Ukraine – or about anything our leadership doesn’t want us to know.”

Macgregor supports this viewpoint with reference to the recent incursion by Ukraine into the Russian region of Kursk, portrayed as a blow against Putin which could “change the direction of the war” in Western media.

“This was an idea cooked up at NATO. This made no sense. Worse than a gamble, it was a useless exercise to destroy some of your best remaining troops,” he says, adding that the British and Americans “had a big hand in pushing this.”

His remarks echo those of former U.K. Prime Minister and previous U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who stated on camera in May that Britain’s war policy on Ukraine is “fixed” and will not change with a new government.

Cameron also said that attacks on Russia will be intensified “over the summer” to give the impression that Ukraine is winning.

Macgregor says NATO troops were directly involved: “We are hearing reports up to 2,000 of these troops may have been British and Americans in Ukrainian uniforms.”

Macgregor speaks of “sheep dipping” NATO troops to present them as Ukrainian soldiers.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a statement included in the video that Zelensky would “never have dared” to launch the Kursk incursion into Russia “unless he was instructed to do so by the United States of America.”

Indicating the colossal damage the war has wrought beyond the borders of both Russia and Ukraine, Lavrov went on: “No one now has any doubts … the USA is behind the explosions of Nord Stream, which have left Europe without cheap Russian energy and consequently without a sustainable basis for economic development.”

Western media routinely labels noticing the obvious as a form of treason. To point out that the policies of the liberal-globalist governments of the West are suicidal is to repeat “Putin’s talking points.”

Instead, the mainstream media repeats the words of Zelensky. What does Macgregor have to say about that?

“Anyone who believes anything Zelensky says needs to see a psychiatrist. There is no truth in anything that man says, or for that matter, in anything he has ever said.”

Kursk: a Western media fiasco

Macgregor explains how the Kursk incursion has been a briefly successful media event bought at the cost of total disaster for the ground troops and their tanks and armor, which he says are now encircled and will be “completely annihilated.” Yet the militarily “disastrous” operation has further galvanized the Russian public, he warns. His report was issued as a massive drone attack has been launched on Moscow, a further provocation towards full-scale war between NATO and the Russians.

The Russian population is “enraged and furious,” says Macgregor, “much more than the people in the West understand.” They are demanding Putin “march West” and smash Ukraine totally, he says.

Putin, according to Macgregor, is opposed to this idea, being only concerned with securing the ethnic Russian population in the east of Ukraine.

“We have awakened a beast,” says Macgregor, reminding viewers the Russian government “does not want to govern Ukrainians.” He also insists a chaotic end is in sight for the Zelensky regime.

Despite what Zelensky says in public, says Macgregor, “privately we know his bags are packed.” With homes from Switzerland to Florida, he will be leaving “with cartloads of U.S. cash” as was seen in the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Macgregor explained, before darkly suggesting that “it may be Ukrainian soldiers … which ‘bump him off.’”

With the end of corrupt regimes in mind, Macgregor stated that the liberal-globalist regimes in the West are so dangerous to their own people that they must be replaced.

“I think it’s time for the governments in Germany and other ‘corrupt’ European states to ‘be removed,’” he said.

Citing the escalation driven by these regimes towards full-scale conflict with Russia, he said that if they aren’t removed, European and British populations “could end up in another accident which could be disastrous for Europe.”

Western peoples are being led into Armageddon, he claims, by an elite which seeks to provoke a war which could result in a nuclear exchange.

Macgregor’s warning is bolstered by independent reports of the extraordinary degree of British involvement in the war in Ukraine. Grayzone journalist Kit Klarenberg has written of Kursk being “a British operation” entirely, saying the U.K. is announcing itself with this operation as a “formal belligerent” in the war against Russia.

In a piece titled “Britain’s Kursk Invasion Backfires,” Klarenberg counts the cost of this “clear suicide mission,” which has seen the “Biden administration distance itself from the action” and has sabotaged  yet another move towards peace.

Echoing Macgregor’s warning to liberal-globalist governments across Europe, that of Germany has now dramatically reduced its support for the war, recognizing that the threat of full-scale conflict with Russia is leading populations to turn against regimes in support of escalation in Ukraine.

Klarenberg also notes the Wall Street Journal now claims Ukraine is solely responsible for the Nord Stream bombings – a framing which is unlikely to improve relations with Germans.

The Western alliance is fracturing, Macgregor suggests, as populations turn on the politicians which have led them to the brink of civilizational collapse.

Fighting back

In the service of the restoration of sanity to the political life of the West, Macgregor is promoting a network he compares to that which kept the American Revolution alive.

A new platform named “Republic,” says Macgregor, is going to be used by his organization Our Country, Our Choice, to provide real news and promote national and international cooperation across the West – along with legal and political tools for subscribers, including contact details for U.S. and European politicians and networks.

“This is like the committees of correspondents during the Revolutionary War. All of the revolutionary congresses or parliamentary bodies had committees, and these committees contacted each other kept each other informed and were part of the lifeblood that kept the American Revolution going through really hard times,” he said.

Macgregor states “this will not be canceled.” His case in defense of life, and that of the Western civilization he wishes to defend as a committed Christian soldier, is being made not only in words but in deeds

He says these measures will help to correct the deliberate exclusion of the American and Western peoples from the processes of power which threaten their very existence.

You can keep abreast of Macgregor’s initiative to “stop globalism” and “defend the U.S. from attacks on its borders, religious freedom, and from endless wars” at Our Country, Our Choice here.