Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Breitbart Business Digest in an exclusive interview that the Trump administration is determined to end America’s dangerous dependence on China for critical materials and pharmaceuticals, describing the effort as “taking back our sovereignty.”
Speaking with Breitbart Business Digest co-authors Alex Marlow and John Carney in the historic Cash Room of the Treasury Building, Bessent laid out a strategy of “de-risking, not decoupling” from China across strategic industries including rare earths, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, steel, and shipbuilding.
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How America Lost Its Rare Earth Industry
“It’s inexcusable,” Bessent said of America’s current vulnerability. “This is back to this unfettered free trade idea. The technology, especially in rare earth magnets, that’s being used against us — it was U.S. technology.”
The Treasury Secretary pointed out that the key technology in modern rare earth magnet production was invented by General Motors but was then later sold to a Chinese firm. The Chinese company was required to keep the business in the United States for five years. As soon as that period was over, they left the U.S. altogether.
“In a day, they moved it to China,” Bessent said. Since then, China deploys predatory dumping tactics whenever American companies attempt to establish rare earth facilities. “The Chinese come in, they flood the market with unfair competition, and no administration has done anything about it,” Bessent explained.
That cycle — Chinese dumping, followed by U.S. inaction — became a built-in deterrent to American investment. As a result, it became almost impossible to attract investment for rare earth production in the U.S. Would-be investors rationally feared the U.S. government would do nothing while the Chinese regime cooperated with Chinese rare earth makers to dump product on the global market at prices below the cost of production and bankrupt competitors in free market economies.
President Trump tried to address the issue in his first administration, Bessent noted, but environmentalists blocked the effort.
First Rare Earth Magnet Made in South Carolina in 25 Years
Now the administration is seeing breakthrough results. Bessent highlighted a facility in Sumter, South Carolina, where the first rare earth magnet manufactured in the United States in 25 years was recently produced. The plant represents 300 jobs, with 800 construction jobs created during its build-out. Bessent said the facility could expand to ten times its current size, potentially creating 3,000 jobs.
The Sumter story exemplifies what Bessent called “reindustrialization” in action. Sumter’s largest private sector employer had been Caterpillar, but that factory closed years ago. Now the former Caterpillar employees are being brought on board for rare earth magnet production.
“I asked the plant manager, how did you decide who you’re going to hire?” Bessent recounted. “He said, if some of these folks had been at Caterpillar for 10 or 15 years and they’d stuck with them, it was an easy hire.”
The Treasury Secretary will attend the plant’s grand opening early next year.
China Controls 100 Percent of Key Antibiotic Production
Bessent described an even more acute vulnerability in pharmaceuticals. Between 70 and 90 percent of the precursor chemicals for U.S. pharmaceutical products come from China, he said. Precursor chemicals are the essential building blocks for drug manufacturing. Without them, even domestic plants cannot produce finished pharmaceuticals.
The situation is particularly stark with amoxicillin, the common antibiotic given to children with fevers. “They control 100 percent of that,” Bessent said. “We are incredibly vulnerable.”
While China has used rare earths as leverage—Bessent referred to the “rare earth choker collar”—he noted that Beijing has maintained a certain level of restraint on pharmaceutical precursors. But the threat remains. “What they haven’t done is threaten us on the precursor chemicals because they have maintained a certain level,” he said.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sits for an interview with Breitbart’s Alex Marlow and John Carney on November 21, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo: The Alex Marlow Show)
Derisking, Not Decoupling
The point of the administration’s strategy is not to cut all trade ties to China but to take away China’s monopolistic leverage. “We don’t need to decouple from China. We just have to derisk,” Bessent said.
The focus is on strategic industries where Chinese control creates national security vulnerabilities.
The administration has delivered an ultimatum to pharmaceutical companies: bring production back to the United States. This represents the kind of difficult policy work that previous administrations avoided. If U.S. companies resist, they would likely face increased tariffs, although Bessent did not explicitly define the consequences of refusing to reshore pharma production.
“No one was willing to de-risk because it’s hard. It’s not easy,” Bessent said. “But President Trump has told the pharmaceutical companies, you’re bringing the production here.”
The Treasury Secretary also cited progress at Boeing’s Charleston plant, which is expanding its Dreamliner facility by 50 percent, creating 1,000 high-paying jobs with good benefits.
Looking ahead, Bessent expressed confidence about managing the relationship with Beijing. “I think we’re in a good place for the next year with the Chinese. I think we can have some equanimity in the relationship, and then we are running forward as hard as we can.”
Rebuilding What Was Lost
The rare earths and pharmaceutical initiatives fit into Bessent’s broader economic philosophy, which he’s described as ensuring that both Wall Street and Main Street can succeed. But the current focus is on working Americans who have been left behind by decades of trade policy that prioritized abstract economic theories over national interest.
Throughout the wide-ranging interview, Bessent returned repeatedly to themes of sovereignty and the need to rebuild America’s industrial base in strategic sectors. The rare earth facility in Sumter and the pharmaceutical reshoring effort represent early examples of what this administration sees as a fundamental restructuring of America’s economic relationship with China—not out of hostility, but out of necessity.
“We are taking back our sovereignty,” Bessent said. After decades of policy that made America dependent on a strategic competitor for everything from antibiotics to the magnets that power advanced military systems, the Trump administration is betting that American workers and American facilities can rebuild what was lost.
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