A last-minute provision inserted into President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” budget reconciliation bill would allow Chile’s wealthiest business magnate — and former landlord to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump — to begin mining operations on protected federal lands. Mining at the proposed Minnesota site poses irreversible environmental risks to nearby bodies of freshwater, according to a federal environmental review.
The mining company that stands to benefit, Antofagasta, is owned by the Chilean billionaire Andrónico Luksic, whose family-run conglomerate, the Luksic Group, is the largest business empire in Chile. The parent company operates everything from food processing businesses and banking companies to energy and mining operations.
From 2017 to 2021, Luksic rented out a $5.5 million mansion he owned in Washington, DC, to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, the latter of whom was serving as a senior adviser to Trump at the time. While he was renting to the Trump family, Luksic was also suing the US government to move forward with the Minnesota mining leases. A year after Luksic’s new tenants moved in, the Trump administration approved the leases — which were subsequently held up in court.
Lifting restrictions on the proposed development, known as Twin Metals, is earmarked in the budget reconciliation package passed by the House and now headed to the Senate. The project would involve a nearly $2 billion nickel and copper mining operation on federal land in northeastern Minnesota.
In hopes of approving the mine, Antofagasta retained the lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where Trump’s former secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt, now works. In 2019, while he headed the…
Auteur: Luke Goldstein
