Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has had enough of what he calls the “Muppets” from the Joe Biden administration taking shots at the Trump 47 presidency, especially when it comes to Chinese dominance of supply chains for rare earth minerals.
As the Supreme Court continues to ruminate on President Donald Trump using his authority to levy tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Bessent hit on a topic of great concern to America’s future.
In an interview with Politico’s Dasha Burns published Friday, Bessent slammed Biden underlings for taking shots now after they failed to act on the matter for four long years.
“If I hear another one of these Muppets from the Biden administration, say, ‘Oh, we should have, we knew about this critical minerals problem.’ But why the hell didn’t they do anything?” Bessent asked, adding, “They had four years, and they sat on their hands.”
He isn’t wrong. As I’ve pointed out here in the past, China’s dominance of supply chains for rare earths and the manufacturing of high-intensity magnets and semiconductor chips made with them have been a known U.S. national security threat for years. In June 2021, in fact, President Joe Biden read a speech from his TelePrompTer in which he detailed the issue and promised to mount what he called a “whole-of-government” effort to address the matter.
But no such effort materialized over the subsequent three and a half years, leaving the crisis for Trump and his appointees to address. Noting that the country was “days away with these rare earth magnets from substantial shutdowns in our auto assembly lines” in May and June of 2025, Bessent praised Trump for moving quickly to use his IEEPA authority to avert a national emergency.
“President Trump is using the IEEPA tariffs. And the negotiations, especially with the government of Taiwan, to reshore the semiconductor industry,” Bessent told Burns. “So that is what I mean by the emergency: It’s making sure we don’t have an emergency. Because I can tell you, you do not want to see what happens if somehow those semiconductors stop flowing.”
Comparing the current situation with the gasoline shortages caused by the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s, Bessent said “It’s a distant memory now. That was a single point of failure, but we became energy independent because of that. But we had to go through that traumatic time in the 70s and that traumatic inflation.”
“I can tell you, I think a bigger single point failure right now is that 97% of the [semiconductor chips] are made in Taiwan. If there were a blockade, if there were a discontinuance of supply, it would collapse the global economy.”
Bessent focused on semiconductors in his remarks, but it’s important to point out that ample supplies of rare earths are critical to almost all modern weapons systems, aircraft, and ships deployed by the U.S. military. A major disruption of rare earth minerals supplies would be more than a major energy crisis: It would be a national security crisis, too.
China has continued to elevate its restrictions on exports of rare earths and magnets in recent months, most recently last October when the Xi government attempted to cut off exports of Chinese-made products by third-party nations. In addition to Trump’s strategic use of tariffs, the administration has responded by speeding permitting for mines to access domestic supplies of rare earths, entering into a strategic alliance with Australia, having the federal government assume equity interests in U.S. rare earth refining and magnet-making operations and other moves designed to rapidly end America’s foolish reliance on Chinese largesse for its energy security.
Without the swift action taken by Trump using his IEEPA authorities last year, the world could well have become mired in the greatest energy crisis since the Arab oil embargoes and one of the most severe geopolitical crises in modern times. This is a big piece of what is at stake in the looming Supreme Court decision on presidential tariff authority.
It’s all interrelated, proving yet again that energy security is inseparable from national security.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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