The U.S. has received US100 million ($127 million) worth of gold from Venezuela in efforts to reduce reliance on China for key resources.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox News Sunday that Venezuela’s richness in critical minerals is key to winning the AI race with China.
“Venezuela’s got 500 billion dollars of resources of gold but they’ve also got other critical minerals, bauxite for aluminium, which we need for defence and for consumer goods,” he said.
“They’ve got coal resources that can be used to help generate power, again to help us win the AI arms race with China.”
So they’re rich, rich, rich in minerals,” Burgum added.
The first shipment of gold came as the U.S. issued a licence that allows American firms to work with a Venezuelan state-run gold miner Minerven.
The licence was issued after Burgum’s meetings last week with Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez and more than two dozen U.S. mining executives.
Under the licence, American firms can work with Minerven and bar foreign adversaries including Russia, Iran and North Korea from doing business with them.
The critical minerals are used in everything from defence systems to everyday modern phones and electric vehicles.
The move is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to counter China’s dominance in critical minerals.
Many of these American companies had worked with Venezuela’s state-owned mining entities, including gold projects in the past.
The relationships were often disrupted by nationalisation policies and legal disputes during the presidency of Hugo Chávez after he increased control over natural resources.
Chávez ruled Venezuela from 1999 to 2013 and developed very close economic and political ties with China, becoming one of Venezuela’s most important partners.
The most significant cooperation was oil-for-loans agreements where Chávez launched socialist economic programs funded largely by oil revenue.
The Chinese Communist Party lent tens of billions of dollars to Venezuela through China’s state policy bank, China Development Bank.
By the early 2010s, Chinese loans to Venezuela had reached over US$50 billion ($64 billion), one of China’s largest overseas lending programs.
Venezuela repaid the Chinese loans with shipments of crude oil that helped Venezuela obtain cash without borrowing from Western financial markets.
