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Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has called on the Trump administration to move faster to secure the supply chains of critical minerals, warning that shortages could pose a threat to national security.
The comments by Pompeo, who sits on the board of London-listed copper miner ACG Metals and is an adviser to Nasdaq-listed USA Rare Earth, highlight growing concern in the west about China’s stranglehold on minerals that are key to the energy transition and defence systems.
“The Chinese Communist party is watching this, and they can see America’s focus on this, is something they will have to counter,” he told the Financial Times. “Collectively we have to get this right, to do everything we can.”
Pompeo, a former head of the CIA who served as secretary of state during the first Trump administration, said the world was entering “a new geopolitical epoch, not seen since the second world war” and that it was imperative for the US to secure critical minerals from “allied sources”.
During his time in the government, Pompeo was involved in minerals talks with Greenland and a rare earths partnership with Australia.
Since Donald Trump returned to office in January, he has sought to counter China’s dominance in the production and processing of critical minerals such as rare earths, copper, aluminium and niche metals including germanium and tungsten.
The measures include tariffs on imports of some metals, and government support for companies that produce and process minerals domestically — including investing $400mn to become the biggest shareholder in rare earths company MP Materials.
While Pompeo praised many of Trump’s recent mining initiatives, he stressed the importance of working with allies such as Canada, South Korea and Japan — many of whom have been alienated by Trump’s tariff wars and quick-changing policies.
“This will not be a solely US phenomenon, it will be an ex-China phenomenon,” he said.
“You can see the US government is taking this seriously, you can see these things are so critical to the US industrial base,” he added. “I think you will see expansion opportunities for the operational side of mining and the processing, the smelting, the industrialisation process as well.”
Pompeo, who ran an aerospace manufacturing company before going into politics, said he expected more mining groups to list on US exchanges and raise capital in the country, drawn partly by government support and its “deregulatory mindset”.
London-listed copper producer ACG Metals, where Pompeo is a director, has started trading in the US “over-the-counter” market OTCQX.
“The vision is to create a globally competitive, significantly scaled copper asset, that is delivering copper and its associated metals to the US,” said Pompeo.
ACG, founded by former Rusal executive Artem Volynets, owns a copper mine in Turkey and is seeking to make further acquisitions, according to the company. It has a market capitalisation of £190mn in London.
