Again, is the US Gov now in the mining and smelting business
You're one of the first people that I've seen mentioning this. Otherwise, people from both sides of the political spectrum seem to accept it as logical for the US government to be acquiring mineral licenses. The debate is instead about the morality of such a move. Nobody talks about the practical implementation.
I don't understand how it's supposed to work.
1) Will the US government create some Chinese-style state mining company, 100% owned by the USG, and just mine the minerals itself? It can call the company "The Ukrainian-American State Mining Corporation". The profits from these operations to be distributed to us taxpayers as dividends?
2) Alternatively, will the US government instead act as reseller of these licenses to American mining companies which will pay the US government 50% of the sum owed for the licenses (the other half going to Ukraine)? This seems like a perfect recipe for corruption. After Iraq, Bush and Cheney's best buddies at Bechtel and Halliburton got the fattest contracts from the occupation government. This time, it will be Trump's buddies from the mining world acquiring choice pieces of Ukrainian subsoil rights for knockdown prices from the us government.
The first option seems ridiculous. The US government has no business being a mining company. It doesn't work well in countries like Mexico and Venezuela, and only seems to work in China (half the time). This mining company will never turn a profit, but will have 80,000 employees and 120 investigations simultaneously open at the Dept. of Justice.
The second option is just openly predatory. Why introduce some middleman, in the form of the US government, to sell Ukrainian mineral licenses to American mining companies? Providing nothing of value, but still skimming 50% of the state revenues that Ukraine would have realized from the sale for itself. Is it not enough that American companies are being given priority, or even exclusive access to Ukraine's mineral riches?