Reshoring, Minerals, and Energy Security

Mike Blankenship: So the US and Department of Energy and the administration's talking a lot about reshoring and energy security, especially around critical minerals and uranium.

We, we know that minerals is a hot topic now with China and everything. So how do you see investor sediment changing around those themes and where do you think capital will float next? 

Chris Sorrells: As long as we're. Focused on reassuring, and we're focused on, domesticated energy security. I think you're going to see all of these areas revitalized, be it, the rare earth complex, the radium and other things that can be produced here have historically been produced here, but ultimately were abandoned at a different point in the cycle.

You are watching and witnessing the USA rare earth movement, grow pretty significantly and we've seen quite a bit of that activity already in the SPAC market and more to come. So I think investors are very keen on the Trump trade. And this is a key part of the Trump trade, how do we reshore, how do we make sure that the inputs we need, to drive all kinds of components of this economy is certainly in defense and ai and energy security are here.

So I don't at this point see. A big shift from that, and I think that probably carries over even to in a different administration. We watch Russia rattle that sword in Europe around gas supply, and I think it, we, you knew it existed, 30% of gas was coming from Russia. They're not the most stable partner.

But once they rattled the sword, it spooked the markets. And it, it certainly scooped countries and governments. We're seeing China do it with rare Earth now. Every month there's some rattling of we're not sending you rare Earth. And if that happens, we can't grow our defense segment, we can't grow our AI segment.

So it becomes a major competitive advantage. So I think there's real focus on these long-term projects and making sure that we can produce or mine process. The elements and commodities right here in the us.