00:00Thank you. Let me now recognize Representative from Florida, Moskowitz, since he was here first, with all due respect.
00:10Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Senator, good to see you again.
00:13Good to see you.
00:14So, some really good questions on this.
00:19I want to spend my five minutes with trying to break this down for the American people.
00:25Well, because being the Emergency Management Director during COVID in Florida, I saw how the lack of manufacturing in this country, the reliance on China, was a major detriment in a pandemic.
00:41I can't imagine, God forbid, we got into a war in the near future.
00:49The surprise that the American people would have of the things that we, A, don't make here anymore, or B, rely on other folks to supply us, supplies that could be cut off.
01:02How do we educate the American people?
01:05Like, I've got to be honest.
01:06When I started learning about antimony, I was like, is that adamantium and wolverine?
01:10Like, I had no idea.
01:11I had no idea what it was.
01:14And then I realized, oh, this is a real problem.
01:18China has us.
01:20And they know it.
01:21And, you know, so what I want to spend some time with you guys is how do we tell the American people, like, this is kind of wrapped up in the tariff issue with China.
01:30China is controlling exports, threatening to control exports.
01:34And our U.S. military literally relies on this stuff for some of the most critical weapons that we make.
01:42And so China has such a huge advantage.
01:47And I want to talk about the stockpile, because that was another lesson we learned during COVID, right?
01:52We went to the cupboard, and the cupboards were bare, right?
01:54That was what we heard.
01:56But it was true.
01:59It was true.
01:59The national strategic stockpile was empty.
02:01Now, they put $2 billion to build a stockpile, but that's not going to be enough.
02:07So I kind of want to open it up.
02:09How do we educate the American people on the national security risk and why this is so important?
02:18Senator, I'll give you the first bite of that.
02:20Well, thank you so much.
02:21And, you know, I would just take off of that.
02:24If history, knowing our history, if you want to read one book that tells you how we became the superpower of the world, how we won World War II, how we were able to be the armament of the world, we supplied the arms that were needed around the world.
02:37We outproduced everybody.
02:39Read Freedom's Forge.
02:41If you want to read one book that tells you exactly who we became and how we became who we are today, that would put everything in perspective what we need to do now because we're way behind the curve.
02:51And you went in eloquently and went into that.
02:54If we don't get back to producing, you know, well, you can go back to NAFTA and blame NAFTA.
03:00You can blame the SMC.
03:01You can blame anything you want.
03:03You can blame 1990s allowing China in a WTO.
03:06Everything that we allowed to happen, thinking that we could open up after the after the wall fell, you know.
03:13No, and that's exactly right.
03:15Like we could go back and we've been all that we've been lulled to sleep.
03:18We could figure out how we got here.
03:20Yeah.
03:20But how do we – the American people have a lot going on.
03:23There's a lot of incoming, a lot of –
03:24You've got to produce.
03:25A lot of distractions.
03:27In the rare earth space, especially in antimony, which I want to focus on, how do we cut through to the American people to make them understand how – what a dangerous situation, quite frankly, we find ourselves in in this rare earth space.
03:41I supported when the president wanted to sign a deal with Ukraine on rare earth minerals.
03:45Most Americans were probably thinking to themselves, why are we even talking?
03:48Why is that part of the equation?
03:50Yeah.
03:50Right?
03:51And so we're going to have to – we're never going to manufacture this stuff here, you know, with all the environmental rules.
03:59Or even if we try, it's going to be such a small amount.
04:01We're going to have to depend on allies to do that.
04:04And even if we can find the rare earth, we don't have the experience to manufacture it.
04:09I mean, the Chinese, it's literally a closely guarded secret.
04:12They got specific people with the specific techniques that's been passed down through generations of people.
04:18And they are not letting those people leave to go other places to show you how you refine this stuff.
04:24How do we explain this to the American people?
04:29Yeah, I think it's – I guess it's really a political question.
04:34Because how do you – which I think you're asking, Congressman, is how do you get the American people to buy in so that they are able to – because it's going to cost more eventually.
04:43To do things in a way that, as we discussed, does not offend human rights.
04:47But that's exactly right.
04:49I mean, like, look, the White House, I've seen them working on this.
04:52But they've got to work on the communications piece of this, to look the American people in the face and say,
04:57you want to know why the cost of military weapons are going up?
05:00Here is why we have to spend more money.
05:02You want to know why we're doing these tariffs with China?
05:05Here is why.
05:08Mr. Fernandez, I want to give you a chance before I run out of time.
05:10Look, I think we need a little bit of humility.
05:17We – it took us a long time to get – to dig this hole, and we are in a hole.
05:21I think you go – you take some examples.
05:25Two years ago, the PRC imposed restrictions on germanium.
05:29I'd never heard of germanium.
05:31But it turns out germanium is needed for semiconductors.
05:35At that point, we had a problem.
05:37We literally spoke to 100 countries and said, do you have any extra germanium you can sell to the world?
05:43We actually found some through the MSP.
05:4525% of the world's supply we were able to add.
05:49It was just hanging around a country that we'd never heard of.
05:51And so I think you've got to go example by example and do the same thing we did during COVID, which is, you know, we have a problem.
06:01We didn't have active ingredients in that supply chain, as you know.
06:04But you've got to go – you've got to take a couple of examples and say, we've got a problem.
06:09And it took us a while to get here.
06:11It'll take us a while to dig out of this hole.
