00:00Marco, please.
00:01Thank you, Mr. President.
00:02Thank you for coming to the State Department.
00:04We like this room a lot, too.
00:06And, obviously, don't look back.
00:07There's a painting up here.
00:10Uh-oh.
00:12That's a good one.
00:14I'm taking it with me.
00:17I shouldn't have said anything.
00:18But, anyway, Mr. President, thank you for being here.
00:20Thank you for your leadership on this topic.
00:22It's a challenge we face in this domain
00:24that actually goes to the very survival of the country.
00:27And thank you for giving it a priority in your presidency.
00:29This has been going on for 25 years.
00:31We've been walking away from the importance of this.
00:33And now we're trying to make up for 25 or 30 years of mistakes
00:36under your presidency.
00:37So we appreciate your presidency valuing this
00:40when other presidents did not.
00:41The group of people that are here today
00:43represent the whole-of-nation effort that's involved in this.
00:45It's because at the core of this is our industrial strength,
00:48but also our national sovereignty,
00:50that we never depend on other countries for things we need
00:52to prosper and to defend ourselves as a people.
00:55And so you'll see here today, as you've already pointed out,
00:57we have leaders not just from government,
00:58but from universities, from private industry,
01:00from students who are going to be the future of this industry.
01:04I wanted to briefly, very briefly,
01:06touch on what the State Department's done.
01:07You know, earlier this year we had a critical minerals ministerial.
01:10We brought in countries from all over the world
01:12and announced the creation of something called FORGE,
01:15which is an international partnership chaired by us in the United States
01:18to leverage public finance and coordinate diplomatic support
01:21to secure these supply chains around the world.
01:24At that meeting, we signed 11 new critical minerals agreements with countries,
01:29adding to the ones that already existed.
01:31Today, under your administration,
01:32we've already signed 27 critical mineral agreements with other countries.
01:37We also, under the leadership of someone who needs to be recognized,
01:40our Under Secretary Jacob Hellberg.
01:42I don't know if Jacob is here, but Jacob has been phenomenal.
01:45He came up with something called Paxilica,
01:46and it's an initiative that leads our efforts to partner with the private sector
01:50and invest in mining and refining and in processing,
01:53as well as the end-use applications of that.
01:55There's still a lot of work left to do,
01:57but we at the State Department are willing to utilize our unmatched global presence,
02:01our presence all over the world, to ensure that we're working on this.
02:04And we're committed to working with industry, with universities,
02:07with all the elements of our national power to bring this about.
02:11And so thank you, Mr. President, for prioritizing this.
02:13And I think we all look forward to working, not just nationally,
02:17but with our allies around the world,
02:18to ensure that we have supply chains that are diversified and reliable,
02:22and no country can ever hold us over our head and threaten us in the future.
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