Gerard Barron

Congress to make funding available to do studies on processing here in the United States.

And so, you know, it's all of our stars aligned all of a sudden.

Well, as I mentioned, since 2002, we've lost so much of the manufacturing industry.

We've lost millions of jobs.

We've lost hundreds of billions of dollars of annual GDP.

And I think all of a sudden when you realize

The reason we've lost them is because we've exported those industries because it was very convenient to outsource to the developing world heavy industry because it was a little bit dirty and this was before some of the greener pollution controlling controls became statutory.

But it also makes you really vulnerable.

The fact that you can't build a ton of steel without manganese

means that, and the fact that we import 100% of our manganese puts you very vulnerable.

And I think it was a great initiative that the president wants to bring back shipbuilding.

And if you think about,

You know, what turned the Second World War was America's Navy, right, at the end of the day.

And they were able to build ships efficiently.

And now ships don't get built in America.

You know, they're built in other parts of the world.

And so I think national defense and national security is a very complex, intertwined thing.

you know, network of, you've got to have desire, you've got to have really strong partners.

And it so happens that because China dominates the, if they don't dominate mining, they certainly dominate all of the processing and refining.

So it means that, you know, I gave you that example of one town we visited where, you know, China went from zero to 70,000 people in less than a decade.