August 8, 2025 • 18 mins
For years, President Donald Trump has voiced his ambitions to expand the US presence in Greenland. But making that happen is easier said than done.
Bloomberg’s Joe Deaux traveled to the remote island this spring, alongside a former Trump administration official who’s hoping to build a rare-earths mine there — with the federal government’s investment.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Joe walks host David Gura through what he saw on the ground, what Greenlanders have to say about Trump’s rhetoric and what it would really take to establish a mines-to-magnets pipeline in Greenland.
Read more: Greenland’s Rare-Earth Dreams Are Luring Trump Allies
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Not a time effort, money that's been put into this strip.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Like my thought is getting anything is better than nothing.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
That's Drew Horn. He's the founder and CEO of a
company called green met. He was talking to my colleague
Joe Doe earlier this spring as the two of them
were getting ready to make a site visit. But this
was not your typical site visit. I confess I have
never been, and I'm genuinely curious what it takes to
get there.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
For the most part, it is you fly out of
Newark or JFK, you fly to Copenhagen, and then you
have to spend a day in Copenhagen because there's only
one direct flight to day from Copenhagen to Nook, the capitol,
the capital of Greenland, Greenland.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Joe and Drew were going there to check out what
could become a new mine that Drew was hoping the
Trumpet ben Is might invest in.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Drew Horn during the first administration was a part of
the team that we're supposed to focus on Greenland. So
Drew's been to Greenland like a half dozen or a
dozen times in his life.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Greenland as we've established is not easy to get to.
It's part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but it's north
of well, pretty much everything. It's east of the easternmost
part of Canada and west of Iceland. Most of Greenland
is covered with snow year round, and so after an
arduous forty eight hour journey to Nook, to Greenland's capital,
(01:34):
Jode and Drew Horn started their next leg to a
place called tan Breeze, named for some of the rare
earth elements it contains, tantalem niobium and zirconium.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Tan Breeze is a piece of mountain. It is fairly
widely accepted by geologists to be an incredible deposit of
rare earths if you can figure out how to get
it out of the ground and process it.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
Those rare earths are crucial to manufacturing automobiles, airplanes, defense technology,
and wind turbines. China is the number one source of
viable rare earth minerals in the world, and that's raised
national security concerns. For years. President Trump was eyeing Greenland
during his first term.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
President Trump has been considering the idea of buying Greenland. Essentially,
it's a large real estate deal, a lot of things
could be done.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
And since Trump returned to office, as the trade war
with China has escalated and because of Russi's aggression in Europe,
President Trump's interest in Greenland has intensified.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
We need Greenland very importantly for international security. We have
to have Greenland.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It's not a question of do you think we can
do without it.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Trump said he wanted the United States to take over
Greenland and that he won't rule out the use of
military force to do it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
The people around the president see the potential of more fisheries,
they see the potential of mineral resources, they see the
potential of power, hydro electric power. So I think they
look at all of that and say, you have a
robust commercial industry that you're starting to build out while
also using that business partnership to fulfill the actual national
(03:17):
security issues that you want to address.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
And I think we're going to get it.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
One way or the other.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
We're going to get it. But Greenland is not up
for grabs. And harvesting rare earth minerals there is extraordinarily difficult.
Just getting to the tanbreeze site proved almost impossible. Drew
and Joe were on a tight deadline. They flew into
Greenland on May first, and Drew was due at mar
(03:43):
A Lago about a week later. But when they landed
in southern Greenland en route to Tanbreeze, a dense fog rolled.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
In and our helicopter pilot, this French pilot came to
us first thing in the morning that we're supposed to
go and said all flights have been canceled in and
out of the region and so we're not flying. Oh,
that's a part of the game in flying in Greenland,
decision making because you don't want to be stuck out there.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
I'm David Gerrett and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today. On the show, the Trump administration has
big ambitions for Greenland, but what would it take to
achieve them and what does Greenland have to say about it.
Jo Doe has spent years covering medals for Bloomberg. Now
his beat is economic state craft, and he's been following
(04:35):
the growing interest in rare earth minerals closely.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
If you look at any electric engine in an automobile
or a wind turbine, you need permanent magnets to keep
the propeller or whatever it is the moving parts to
keep going in perpetuity.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
The rare earth minerals inside those magnets make them strong
and durable.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
They can withstand very high heat, and so that's why
they've always been critically important to the Defense Department, but
are now becoming increasingly critical to data centers and artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Two years ago, China announced it would be limiting exports
of certain elements that are used in things like electric
vehicles and fiber optic cables, and in April, in response
to Trump's Liberation Day tariffs, the country restricted the export
of several more rare earths, plus the actual magnets themselves.
All this sent shockwaves across the US because America and
(05:32):
the rest of the world rely on China for seventy
percent of the world's rare earth supply. In the scramble
to find these minerals elsewhere, one place quickly came to mind. Greenland.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Not a lot of people live there, and not a
lot of people have visited there, but there's a very
good understanding mapping of the geology of the island.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
As it turns out, that island of fifty six thousand
residents is also home to large untapped mineral reserves, gold, diamonds, uranium,
and rare earth metals. These natural resources buried under layers
of ice now stand to become more accessible due to
climate change. And that's where Drew Horn comes in. Drew
(06:15):
doesn't own the mind, but he's hoping to be a
sort of middleman, someone who can help stand up the
mining operation and keep the Trump administration's big picture vision
in focus.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
A lot of times it's not understood that this isn't
just like aerospace in space, like these materials like germanium,
for example, it's essential for our entire ground defenses as
well too.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Before Drew founded the Green met Minerals Company, he rose
up through the ranks of the military. He served in
the US Army Special Forces and then spent time working
in the Departments of Energy and Defense during President Trump's
first term. During that time, he learned a lot about Greenland.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I mean, I got to Greenland with him and he
goes cool. I know that first place we're going to
have dinner at, and throughout the trip he would constantly
order like the thing on the menu that you probably
wouldn't order. We got sushi, and part of the sushi
were whale and whale skin and he's like, oh, I
love it.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Drew's company, green Mett focuses on commodities and minerals.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
He understood that he could leverage his contacts at the
DOE and the DoD to marry investors and projects with
potential government help. And he knows how Washington operates, and
he's friends with Republicans and Democrats in Washington. He understands
(07:37):
Trump World very well. Do you think Trump would care
if there wasn't a defense aspect of this.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Ah, he might care. I don't know if he'd prioritize
it as much. When you have that sort of dual focus,
that's generally what brings his foreign policy and funding mechanisms
combined together in a way that moves the needle.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Indeed, the president's current interest in Greenland does stand beyond
rare earths. As ice sheets melt the Arctic Sea around
it could become a busier shipping route and a national
security interest for the US. America's competitors see that too.
Russia has increased its military presence in the Arctic in
recent months, and China has also tried to gain a
(08:19):
foothold there.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
It's also where we fly the missiles over if there
is a global escalation on the nuclear scale.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Despite these arguments in favor of expanding America's presence in Greenland, though,
Drew can see that the road ahead will not be easy,
and on his trip with Joe, he was running into
one of the biggest hurdles of getting a commercial venture going.
That's just getting to the mine itself.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
So if you're an investor right now and then you
potentially couldn't get out to see the site because we're
waiting on fogs and you're hearing the stories about you know,
how this happens all the time. Usually that's enough for
people to walk away and remember come in the first place.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
But Drew wasn't going to walk away that easily. When
the pilots said they'd have to scrap their plan to
do a flyover, he and Joe tried to get creative.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
We're gonna talk to talk to the boat guys if
there's an option to first starting today, we spent the
whole day trying to get a small fishing boat to
take us around to where the tanbreeze site was. It
sounded like a great idea. Is the boat even navigate
like I don't know like this is a serious question,
like with this kind of fun until the owner of
(09:29):
the tour ships called up his guy in the fjord
where we needed to go, which was a two hour
boat right away, and his guy said, well, the fjord
still frozen in, so even if you got on the boat,
we'd never be able to get anywhere close to the site.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
While they waited, unable to get to Tan Breeze, Joe
and Drew took an impromptu boat ride along the coastline
of one of Greenland's other fjords.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
This master, he is all utilite, and you can access
it right from the water.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
A lot of there, they could see with their his
own eyes, tons and tons of valuable minerals like utiolite,
which contains zirconium, a metal used in nuclear reactors and
jet engines.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
If you're thinking about this from like just a claimants
knuckle dragging procycled like mine, you see that read there,
that's like pure paid, that's pure heavy rarer.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
Or But for the Trump administration to turn those minerals
into something usable, or to establish a larger US presence
in Greenland, it's up against challenges far more daunting than
the weather. That's after the break.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
So people are going to have it, and I think
the people want to be with US.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
President Trump has spoken confidently about the relationship he wants
the United States to have with Greenland.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Says, you know this, they pick five there, they want
to be with us.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
He's talked about buying it or taking it by force,
but in any case, he wants Greenland to become part
of the US.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I don't know really what claimed Denmark, as it would
be a very unfriendly actor. They didn't allow that to happen.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Denmark does have a claim to Greenland because the island
is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It's a self
governing territory with its own parliament and prime minister, but
Denmark is still in charge of the island's foreign affairs
and defense that is part of Denmark. Greenland is also
a member of NATO, which means the US has had
a military presence there for decades. When Joe was in Greenland,
(11:28):
he had a chance to ask a few Greenlanders how
they react to President Trump's rhetoric. What did they tell
you about what they've heard from the president.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, they don't like that. A number of the people said, yeah,
we don't want to be owned by the United States.
We don't even like the rhetoric of the president, the
way he's kind of saying things. And a number of
these people said, I like Donald Trump or I like
the US, I just don't like the rhetoric that he's using.
And you know, it kind of makes sense, right, Like
(11:58):
you know if you suddenly heard the Prime Minister of
Canada saying the United States we should probably own the
entire northeast or whatever it is, but you probably wouldn't
take it.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Well.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Greenlanders on the whole, they don't want to be taken over.
They certainly don't want any sort of military intervention. And
to another point, there is a movement of folks who
want independence in Greenland right now. All the major parties
say at some point they want true independence. So the
idea that oh, well, the United States can come and
take you over, to many of them, is not that
(12:32):
different than their current situation that they want out of.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Kuno Fenker, who's a member of Greenland's parliament and vice
chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee, summed it up in February.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Your count purchase Greenland all rights yourself at a determination
as non negotiabook.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Tensions have only heated up. In March, Vice President JD.
Vance was scheduled to visit Greenland on what was initially
framed as a family excursion, but protesters there question the
true nature of the visit when it turned into a
sizable US delegation and ultimately the trip got scaled back
from a multi city visit to a shorter targeted trip
(13:09):
to one very remote US military base. During his time there,
Vance took aim at Denmark directly.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
You have not done a good job by the people
of Greenland.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
You have underinvested in the people of Greenland. Vance predicted
Greenlanders would seek independence from Denmark.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And I think that they ultimately will partner with the
United States.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
In response, the Danish Foreign minister posted a video on
social media.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
Of course we are open to criticism, but let me
be completely honest. We do not appreciate the tone in
which is being delivered. This is not how you speak
to your close allies.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
In the middle of all this, Greenland elected a new parliament,
and the coalition Greenlanders voted in is one that's planning
to resist US adventurism, even as the rhetoric suggests a stalemate.
Money is beginning to flow from the US government into
projects that look a lot like the ones they're eyeing
in Greenland. In early July, MP Materials, the only rare
(14:11):
earth producer in the United States, announced it had secured
a one billion dollar loan from two US banks. The
Defense Department promised to invest four hundred million dollars in
shares of the company.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Which will make the DoD the largest shareholder in IMP Materials.
Trump has been telegraphing that he wants to invest in
projects all over the world to bring rearers and all
the other stuff back to the United States. But the
fact that this is actually written on the page is
proof that he's serious about it. And this is just
(14:45):
the first thing, and it's a massive thing. I mean
four hundred million dollar dollar equity investment. I talked to
a number of sources, I said, does the DoD take
ownership stakes and companies like this? And they were like no.
In one of them, who's a former Defense Department source
of mind said this is a first in class that
I can remember.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
For Americans hoping to develop Greenland. This deal marks a
turning point when the government goes from talking the talk
to walking the walk. On rare earths. If it's willing
to invest this much in MP materials, the idea is
maybe something like the Tanbreeze mine is next.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Everybody who's been around this, like Drew Horn, have been
there in the expectation or the hope that eventually the
United States federal government in some form will put an
investment or give you money to help develop these projects
and it could end up being a bet that'll pay off.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
As for Drew Horn, he and Joe didn't make it
to Tan Breeze on the day they'd planned. The next
day was also foggy, but in the afternoon the fog
started to lift.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
The next three hours were us determining whether or not
we would fly out or not, and the pilot at
one point goes, yeah, there's an opening right now, but
snow clouds and fogg could come back in and cover
the airport and we would have to do some sort
of emergency landing elsewhere and potentially be stuck for the
night with what I don't want.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
He's being stuck in to meadow there.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I said, what are the chances that that would happen?
And he said, I would say there's maybe about a
seventy percent chance that we'd get back today. Well, and
I just was like, Okay, I'm out.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
But Drew, no surprise was in Joe says. Drew was
visibly beaming when he touched down after his helicopter ride
over Tan Breeze. In all those trips he'd made to Greenland,
somehow this was the first time he'd been able to
see the site for himself, and the first hand view
came in handy at his mar A Lago meeting. When
he got back to the States that week, Drew told
(16:48):
Joe that being able to describe what Tan Breeze looks
like and why he believes his plan there will work
completely changed the conversation with the President's advisors.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Within weeks after Drew Horne went to mar A Lago,
Tambreeze received a non binding letter of interest from the
United States Export Import Bank for a fifteen year loan
to begin work on its pilot project there. Now, the
key here is it's just a letter of interest, and
(17:17):
that doesn't necessarily mean anything will come of it, but
at the very least it indicates that the project is
on the radar of the US government.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
The show is hosted by Me, Sarah Holder, Wanha and
Seleiah Mosen, Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Patty Hirsch,
Rachel Lewis, Krisky, Naomi Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shaven,
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the show. To get more from the Big Take and
(17:51):
unlimited access to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today
at Bloomberg dot com Slash podcast offer. Thanks for listening.
We'll be back on Monday.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
He
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Not a time effort, money that's been put into this strip.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Like my thought is getting anything is better than nothing.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
That's Drew Horn. He's the founder and CEO of a
company called green met. He was talking to my colleague
Joe Doe earlier this spring as the two of them
were getting ready to make a site visit. But this
was not your typical site visit. I confess I have
never been, and I'm genuinely curious what it takes to
get there.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
For the most part, it is you fly out of
Newark or JFK, you fly to Copenhagen, and then you
have to spend a day in Copenhagen because there's only
one direct flight to day from Copenhagen to Nook, the capitol,
the capital of Greenland, Greenland.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Joe and Drew were going there to check out what
could become a new mine that Drew was hoping the
Trumpet ben Is might invest in.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Drew Horn during the first administration was a part of
the team that we're supposed to focus on Greenland. So
Drew's been to Greenland like a half dozen or a
dozen times in his life.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Greenland as we've established is not easy to get to.
It's part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but it's north
of well, pretty much everything. It's east of the easternmost
part of Canada and west of Iceland. Most of Greenland
is covered with snow year round, and so after an
arduous forty eight hour journey to Nook, to Greenland's capital,
(01:34):
Jode and Drew Horn started their next leg to a
place called tan Breeze, named for some of the rare
earth elements it contains, tantalem niobium and zirconium.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Tan Breeze is a piece of mountain. It is fairly
widely accepted by geologists to be an incredible deposit of
rare earths if you can figure out how to get
it out of the ground and process it.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
Those rare earths are crucial to manufacturing automobiles, airplanes, defense technology,
and wind turbines. China is the number one source of
viable rare earth minerals in the world, and that's raised
national security concerns. For years. President Trump was eyeing Greenland
during his first term.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
President Trump has been considering the idea of buying Greenland. Essentially,
it's a large real estate deal, a lot of things
could be done.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
And since Trump returned to office, as the trade war
with China has escalated and because of Russi's aggression in Europe,
President Trump's interest in Greenland has intensified.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
We need Greenland very importantly for international security. We have
to have Greenland.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It's not a question of do you think we can
do without it.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Trump said he wanted the United States to take over
Greenland and that he won't rule out the use of
military force to do it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
The people around the president see the potential of more fisheries,
they see the potential of mineral resources, they see the
potential of power, hydro electric power. So I think they
look at all of that and say, you have a
robust commercial industry that you're starting to build out while
also using that business partnership to fulfill the actual national
(03:17):
security issues that you want to address.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
And I think we're going to get it.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
One way or the other.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
We're going to get it. But Greenland is not up
for grabs. And harvesting rare earth minerals there is extraordinarily difficult.
Just getting to the tanbreeze site proved almost impossible. Drew
and Joe were on a tight deadline. They flew into
Greenland on May first, and Drew was due at mar
(03:43):
A Lago about a week later. But when they landed
in southern Greenland en route to Tanbreeze, a dense fog rolled.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
In and our helicopter pilot, this French pilot came to
us first thing in the morning that we're supposed to
go and said all flights have been canceled in and
out of the region and so we're not flying. Oh,
that's a part of the game in flying in Greenland,
decision making because you don't want to be stuck out there.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
I'm David Gerrett and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today. On the show, the Trump administration has
big ambitions for Greenland, but what would it take to
achieve them and what does Greenland have to say about it.
Jo Doe has spent years covering medals for Bloomberg. Now
his beat is economic state craft, and he's been following
(04:35):
the growing interest in rare earth minerals closely.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
If you look at any electric engine in an automobile
or a wind turbine, you need permanent magnets to keep
the propeller or whatever it is the moving parts to
keep going in perpetuity.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
The rare earth minerals inside those magnets make them strong
and durable.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
They can withstand very high heat, and so that's why
they've always been critically important to the Defense Department, but
are now becoming increasingly critical to data centers and artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Two years ago, China announced it would be limiting exports
of certain elements that are used in things like electric
vehicles and fiber optic cables, and in April, in response
to Trump's Liberation Day tariffs, the country restricted the export
of several more rare earths, plus the actual magnets themselves.
All this sent shockwaves across the US because America and
(05:32):
the rest of the world rely on China for seventy
percent of the world's rare earth supply. In the scramble
to find these minerals elsewhere, one place quickly came to mind. Greenland.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Not a lot of people live there, and not a
lot of people have visited there, but there's a very
good understanding mapping of the geology of the island.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
As it turns out, that island of fifty six thousand
residents is also home to large untapped mineral reserves, gold, diamonds, uranium,
and rare earth metals. These natural resources buried under layers
of ice now stand to become more accessible due to
climate change. And that's where Drew Horn comes in. Drew
(06:15):
doesn't own the mind, but he's hoping to be a
sort of middleman, someone who can help stand up the
mining operation and keep the Trump administration's big picture vision
in focus.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
A lot of times it's not understood that this isn't
just like aerospace in space, like these materials like germanium,
for example, it's essential for our entire ground defenses as
well too.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Before Drew founded the Green met Minerals Company, he rose
up through the ranks of the military. He served in
the US Army Special Forces and then spent time working
in the Departments of Energy and Defense during President Trump's
first term. During that time, he learned a lot about Greenland.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I mean, I got to Greenland with him and he
goes cool. I know that first place we're going to
have dinner at, and throughout the trip he would constantly
order like the thing on the menu that you probably
wouldn't order. We got sushi, and part of the sushi
were whale and whale skin and he's like, oh, I
love it.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Drew's company, green Mett focuses on commodities and minerals.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
He understood that he could leverage his contacts at the
DOE and the DoD to marry investors and projects with
potential government help. And he knows how Washington operates, and
he's friends with Republicans and Democrats in Washington. He understands
(07:37):
Trump World very well. Do you think Trump would care
if there wasn't a defense aspect of this.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Ah, he might care. I don't know if he'd prioritize
it as much. When you have that sort of dual focus,
that's generally what brings his foreign policy and funding mechanisms
combined together in a way that moves the needle.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Indeed, the president's current interest in Greenland does stand beyond
rare earths. As ice sheets melt the Arctic Sea around
it could become a busier shipping route and a national
security interest for the US. America's competitors see that too.
Russia has increased its military presence in the Arctic in
recent months, and China has also tried to gain a
(08:19):
foothold there.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
It's also where we fly the missiles over if there
is a global escalation on the nuclear scale.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Despite these arguments in favor of expanding America's presence in Greenland, though,
Drew can see that the road ahead will not be easy,
and on his trip with Joe, he was running into
one of the biggest hurdles of getting a commercial venture going.
That's just getting to the mine itself.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
So if you're an investor right now and then you
potentially couldn't get out to see the site because we're
waiting on fogs and you're hearing the stories about you know,
how this happens all the time. Usually that's enough for
people to walk away and remember come in the first place.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
But Drew wasn't going to walk away that easily. When
the pilots said they'd have to scrap their plan to
do a flyover, he and Joe tried to get creative.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
We're gonna talk to talk to the boat guys if
there's an option to first starting today, we spent the
whole day trying to get a small fishing boat to
take us around to where the tanbreeze site was. It
sounded like a great idea. Is the boat even navigate
like I don't know like this is a serious question,
like with this kind of fun until the owner of
(09:29):
the tour ships called up his guy in the fjord
where we needed to go, which was a two hour
boat right away, and his guy said, well, the fjord
still frozen in, so even if you got on the boat,
we'd never be able to get anywhere close to the site.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
While they waited, unable to get to Tan Breeze, Joe
and Drew took an impromptu boat ride along the coastline
of one of Greenland's other fjords.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
This master, he is all utilite, and you can access
it right from the water.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
A lot of there, they could see with their his
own eyes, tons and tons of valuable minerals like utiolite,
which contains zirconium, a metal used in nuclear reactors and
jet engines.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
If you're thinking about this from like just a claimants
knuckle dragging procycled like mine, you see that read there,
that's like pure paid, that's pure heavy rarer.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
Or But for the Trump administration to turn those minerals
into something usable, or to establish a larger US presence
in Greenland, it's up against challenges far more daunting than
the weather. That's after the break.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
So people are going to have it, and I think
the people want to be with US.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
President Trump has spoken confidently about the relationship he wants
the United States to have with Greenland.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Says, you know this, they pick five there, they want
to be with us.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
He's talked about buying it or taking it by force,
but in any case, he wants Greenland to become part
of the US.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I don't know really what claimed Denmark, as it would
be a very unfriendly actor. They didn't allow that to happen.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Denmark does have a claim to Greenland because the island
is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It's a self
governing territory with its own parliament and prime minister, but
Denmark is still in charge of the island's foreign affairs
and defense that is part of Denmark. Greenland is also
a member of NATO, which means the US has had
a military presence there for decades. When Joe was in Greenland,
(11:28):
he had a chance to ask a few Greenlanders how
they react to President Trump's rhetoric. What did they tell
you about what they've heard from the president.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, they don't like that. A number of the people said, yeah,
we don't want to be owned by the United States.
We don't even like the rhetoric of the president, the
way he's kind of saying things. And a number of
these people said, I like Donald Trump or I like
the US, I just don't like the rhetoric that he's using.
And you know, it kind of makes sense, right, Like
(11:58):
you know if you suddenly heard the Prime Minister of
Canada saying the United States we should probably own the
entire northeast or whatever it is, but you probably wouldn't
take it.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Well.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Greenlanders on the whole, they don't want to be taken over.
They certainly don't want any sort of military intervention. And
to another point, there is a movement of folks who
want independence in Greenland right now. All the major parties
say at some point they want true independence. So the
idea that oh, well, the United States can come and
take you over, to many of them, is not that
(12:32):
different than their current situation that they want out of.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Kuno Fenker, who's a member of Greenland's parliament and vice
chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee, summed it up in February.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Your count purchase Greenland all rights yourself at a determination
as non negotiabook.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Tensions have only heated up. In March, Vice President JD.
Vance was scheduled to visit Greenland on what was initially
framed as a family excursion, but protesters there question the
true nature of the visit when it turned into a
sizable US delegation and ultimately the trip got scaled back
from a multi city visit to a shorter targeted trip
(13:09):
to one very remote US military base. During his time there,
Vance took aim at Denmark directly.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
You have not done a good job by the people
of Greenland.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
You have underinvested in the people of Greenland. Vance predicted
Greenlanders would seek independence from Denmark.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And I think that they ultimately will partner with the
United States.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
In response, the Danish Foreign minister posted a video on
social media.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
Of course we are open to criticism, but let me
be completely honest. We do not appreciate the tone in
which is being delivered. This is not how you speak
to your close allies.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
In the middle of all this, Greenland elected a new parliament,
and the coalition Greenlanders voted in is one that's planning
to resist US adventurism, even as the rhetoric suggests a stalemate.
Money is beginning to flow from the US government into
projects that look a lot like the ones they're eyeing
in Greenland. In early July, MP Materials, the only rare
(14:11):
earth producer in the United States, announced it had secured
a one billion dollar loan from two US banks. The
Defense Department promised to invest four hundred million dollars in
shares of the company.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Which will make the DoD the largest shareholder in IMP Materials.
Trump has been telegraphing that he wants to invest in
projects all over the world to bring rearers and all
the other stuff back to the United States. But the
fact that this is actually written on the page is
proof that he's serious about it. And this is just
(14:45):
the first thing, and it's a massive thing. I mean
four hundred million dollar dollar equity investment. I talked to
a number of sources, I said, does the DoD take
ownership stakes and companies like this? And they were like no.
In one of them, who's a former Defense Department source
of mind said this is a first in class that
I can remember.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
For Americans hoping to develop Greenland. This deal marks a
turning point when the government goes from talking the talk
to walking the walk. On rare earths. If it's willing
to invest this much in MP materials, the idea is
maybe something like the Tanbreeze mine is next.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Everybody who's been around this, like Drew Horn, have been
there in the expectation or the hope that eventually the
United States federal government in some form will put an
investment or give you money to help develop these projects
and it could end up being a bet that'll pay off.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
As for Drew Horn, he and Joe didn't make it
to Tan Breeze on the day they'd planned. The next
day was also foggy, but in the afternoon the fog
started to lift.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
The next three hours were us determining whether or not
we would fly out or not, and the pilot at
one point goes, yeah, there's an opening right now, but
snow clouds and fogg could come back in and cover
the airport and we would have to do some sort
of emergency landing elsewhere and potentially be stuck for the
night with what I don't want.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
He's being stuck in to meadow there.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I said, what are the chances that that would happen?
And he said, I would say there's maybe about a
seventy percent chance that we'd get back today. Well, and
I just was like, Okay, I'm out.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
But Drew, no surprise was in Joe says. Drew was
visibly beaming when he touched down after his helicopter ride
over Tan Breeze. In all those trips he'd made to Greenland,
somehow this was the first time he'd been able to
see the site for himself, and the first hand view
came in handy at his mar A Lago meeting. When
he got back to the States that week, Drew told
(16:48):
Joe that being able to describe what Tan Breeze looks
like and why he believes his plan there will work
completely changed the conversation with the President's advisors.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Within weeks after Drew Horne went to mar A Lago,
Tambreeze received a non binding letter of interest from the
United States Export Import Bank for a fifteen year loan
to begin work on its pilot project there. Now, the
key here is it's just a letter of interest, and
(17:17):
that doesn't necessarily mean anything will come of it, but
at the very least it indicates that the project is
on the radar of the US government.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
The show is hosted by Me, Sarah Holder, Wanha and
Seleiah Mosen, Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Patty Hirsch,
Rachel Lewis, Krisky, Naomi Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shaven,
Alex Sekura, Julia Weaver, Young Young and Takei Yasuzoa make
the show. To get more from the Big Take and
(17:51):
unlimited access to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today
at Bloomberg dot com Slash podcast offer. Thanks for listening.
We'll be back on Monday.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
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