Biden admin. is creating challenges for metal demand, miners

Precious metal commodities, like gold (GC=F) and copper futures (HG=F), have seen record run-ups in 2024 alone. Barrick Gold (GOLD) CEO Mark Bristow comments on how the Biden administration has limited the growth of mining operators through regulatory constraints, saying "they've made it a lot more challenging" for the industry. He goes on to discuss the global picture for metals demand.

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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video transcript

Has the Biden administration been friendly to your operations?

Or or have they added more?

I guess regulatory constraint, uh, to your business and your industry.

No, I think that they've made it a lot more challenging.

And I, you know, the United States is a big supplier.

I mean, a big consumer of all metals.

And in fact, Barrack is one of the largest miners in the United States, and it's difficult today.

You know, we have to work with more than 20 different departments within the federal government just to get our job done every day.

Mark.

When it comes to what exactly this means for your business, you talk about how big of a catalyst this is going to be for your industry, just in terms of the timeline of being able to scale your business, how long that takes and what exactly that ultimately looks like.

When we talk about the supply versus demand picture, what do you see as some of those longer term implications?

And then you have the politics side of it.

That sounds like it's complicating that, at least to some extent.

Yes, I think that's true, and that's the challenge for mine is we've be We've got to embrace our our real stakeholders.

And they are our host countries and the communities around our mines and of course, the shareholders as well.

And so, um, and it takes somewhere between 10 and 20 years to discover and develop a large copper mine and NN not much.

Uh uh, less time for a gold mine.

And that goes for all mines around the world.

And so miners, for for them to really benefit from this increasing demand they're gonna have we are all gonna have to learn to work in more complicated jurisdictions.

And I think that's important overall, because sometimes within the United States, we we sort of really inward looking and, uh, and for this planet to be a better planet for all, uh, for future generations, we need to uplift everyone across the globe and not just focus on our sort of provincial, uh, environment.