When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he had four years to assess what went right and wrong in his first term before it was sabotaged by COVID-19. To counter the true “China virus” (hegemony over critical minerals), Trump promptly began imposing tariffs with a goal of taking away China’s pricing advantages built up in the wake of decades of globalist policies.

Somewhere during his interregnum – perhaps in discussions with industry leaders – Trump forged a master plan. Perhaps taking a cue from Ezekiel 37, Trump looked at the dry bones of American manufacturing and spoke their revival into existence. He deemed America’s heavy reliance on China for critical minerals a national security risk and that reshoring manufacturing would create good-paying jobs.

To implement the strategy, Trump issued Executive Order 14241, which sought to expedite minerals production project approval. He dusted off the Defense Production Act and other statutes and began throwing seed money into long-dormant industries – and, lo and behold, boatloads of cash began flowing back into American manufacturing.

Just last month, the administration announced plans to invest $3 billion in conditional loans to springboard new critical minerals and battery projects at a roundtable with more than 200 mining executives, educators, investors, and politicians. Among the targeted minerals are bauxite, boron, graphite, niobium, rare earths, scandium, tantalum, and tungsten.

The Center on Global Energy Policy lauded the action, which includes workforce development to offset a structural mismatch between the number of mining engineers, geologists, and metallurgists and the number that an........

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