On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stated that President Donald Trump plans to hold China accountable for its purchase of Russian oil the way he’s attempting to do with India “and we’ve got to work towards that. The key thing right now is to make sure that we decouple ourselves from China on critical and rare earth minerals.”
Host Maria Bartiromo asked, “Secretary, according to the German foreign minister, 80% of all military-useful equipment and technology supplied to Russia emanates from China, as [do] most of Russia’s oil and gas purchases. So, I know President Trump is walking a balance here because we are so tied to China with our supply chains, but will he actually make China accountable for buying all of that oil from Russia, the way he’s trying to make India accountable as well?”
Burgum answered, “I know that that’s the plan, and we’ve got to work towards that. The key thing right now is to make sure that we decouple ourselves from China on critical and rare earth minerals. That’s one point in these trade negotiations where they’ve got some cards, but the United States has got lots of other cards, and, of course, don’t forget, without China’s greenlighting, there wouldn’t be North Korean troops fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war as well. President Trump wants to make sure that we — Russia and China have been natural enemies over history, President Trump doesn’t want to do what Joe Biden did, which is drive them even closer together. So, I think, again, he’s navigating that. And I think when the Russia-Ukraine war ends — which, China doesn’t want it to end, they want to have our focus and Europe’s focus on that — but when President Trump brings that to an end, there’s going to be more focus on the China relationship. China is the most energy-dependent importing country in the world, 11.5 million barrels of oil a day they import. And, of course, on the race with AI, they opened up 94 gigawatts of coal-powered electricity last year. One gigawatt’s Denver. They added 94 Denvers of power. Under Joe Biden, we were shutting down our big, beautiful coal baseload here in this country. Under President Trump, we’re opening it up again.”
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