Duncan Wood: How would you summarize the administration's critical minerals strategy? 

Amanda van Dyke: The Trump administration's critical minerals policy is nothing short of amazing if you're going to compare it to any other Western world government. The only comparable critical minerals strategy would be that of China. China has an industrial policy in which critical minerals in mining and processing play an essential role. And for the last at least 25 years, nobody in the West has had one. 

Back in 2016, when he came to power, President Trump recognized that manufacturing and industry was essential to the American economy and that it had slowly and surely been offshored to China. But very early in his first administration, he also realized that one of the reasons that manufacturing had been offshored is because the critical inputs that were the basis of all manufacturing minerals had also been offshored. 

And he realized that he needed to start at the beginning and bring them back. And his first executive order on critical minerals was actually in 2017, designating them critical minerals and ensuring that they were an essential part of a national industrial strategy, which was frankly being reformed for the first time in 20 years.