Top Line: The Trump administration believes that unless it can be sold or collateralized, it has no value.
Figure 1. The 55th secretary of the interior, the Honorable Doug Burgum. Source: Wikipedia.
When our new secretary of the interior sees public lands, he sees only money. Former North Dakota governor Doug Burgum became a billionaire by selling his software company to Microsoft. Though now the statutory steward of more than 2 billion acres of public lands and waters, Burgum still thinks and acts like the entrepreneur/capitalist/corporatist/oil-state politician that he primarily identifies as. Burgum has not risen to this occasion.
Public Lands as Financial Assets
The New York Times reported on January 30, 2025:
During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Burgum said he viewed America’s public lands and waters as part of the country’s financial “balance sheet,” with potentially trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas and minerals waiting to be extracted beneath the surface.
“We have all this debt,” Mr. Burgum said. But “we never talk about the assets,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to get a return for the American people.”
“Not every acre of federal land is a national park or a wilderness area,” Mr. Burgum said, adding, “Some of those areas we have to absolutely protect for their precious stuff, but the rest of it, this is America’s balance sheet.” [emphasis added]
In a speech to the National Congress of American Indians on February 12, 2025, Burgum said:
If we’re going to pay down the $36 trillion debt, then we gotta figure out a way to not just focus on our liabilities—that’s the $36 trillion—but we got a bunch of assets. We might have $100 trillion in assets. Those assets are out there in public lands . . . I’m talking about the fact that we have 500 million acres of land that are in public hands that were put away for the benefit and use of the American public. . . . Some of that land is inhospitable or unoccupied, but underneath that it has value to allow us . . . whether it’s critical minerals, energy resources, using that for wind or solar—whatever—almost equivalent to a quarter of the lower 48 is public lands, and yet our return on that investment right now is almost nothing. It’s one of the ways we can create the funding for everyone. [emphasis added]
One could also pay down the national debt by raising taxes, but I digress.
Me fears that the Burgum Balance Sheet will be rife with voodoo accounting and part of a grander scheme to collateralize the public lands, so the nation can go even further into debt.
Government as a Business
John T. Harvey, Hal Wright Professor of Economics at Texas Christian University, wrote this in Forbes in October 2012:
The idea that government should be run like a business is a popular one with both Republicans and, albeit to a lesser extent, Democrats. But this betrays a basic misunderstanding of the roles of the private and public sector. We should no more want the government to be run like a business than a business to be run like the government.
Harvey further noted:
[T]o ask that the government be run like a business is tantamount to asking that the government turn a profit. The problem in a nutshell, is that not everything that is profitable is of social value and not everything of social value is profitable.
Reality TV, pornography, fashion, sports, and gambling are all of questionable social value, but each is quite profitable and exists in the private sector. Meanwhile, few would argue that the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, police department, fire department, libraries, parks, and public schools are of no social value, and yet they could not exist if they were required to be profitable. [emphasis in original]
Secretary Burgum—as well as Elonia Musk—appears to view all expenditures as costs. (Realizing that one has to spend money to make money, Elonia also recognizes that it’s best to spend the government’s money to make your money.) In fact, Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid expenditures are benefits, not costs. So are keeping the national parks open, funding roads, funding the air traffic control system, funding research on new medical cures, funding nascent technologies, delivering the mail, regulating the food supply, keeping our enemies at bay, and subsidizing the creation of clean energy. All are unprofitable financially even though our society profits greatly from them.
What’s on Burgum’s Balance Sheet?
Fortunately, national parks and wilderness areas are not on Burgum’s balance sheet, as these are among the areas he says “we have to absolutely protect for their precious stuff.” We can hope this category also includes such areas with “precious stuff” as national monuments, national wildlife refuges, national scenic areas, national recreation areas, national conservation areas, and other national whatever areas including wild and scenic rivers, national trails, and the like. (Burgum would probably not consider the national forests to be “precious stuff,” but the National Forest System is not under his jurisdiction.)
Certainly on Burgum’s balance sheet (pronounced “hit list”) are those of the public’s lands that are “inhospitable or unoccupied” (coming from North Dakota, he would know best). Assuming that Burgum will not put the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System onto his balance sheet, that leaves those 247.3 million acres of the public’s lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). More than 38 million acres of BLM lands are in the National Landscape Conservation System (where Burgum’s ability to play is severely limited because Congress has deemed these lands as having “precious stuff”), but that leaves more than 209 million acres of BLM land in some jeopardy.
Assuming Burgum has priced the assets underlying the public’s lands and waters in his domain correctly at $100 trillion (although the source of that number appears to be his rectum), there is no question that the public’s lands and waters are financially under performing.
But it’s worth noting that the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) that Burgum’s publicly traded software company adhered to require valuing assets at the cost of acquiring them, not their market value. For example, that would be two cents per acre for every acre of public land in Alaska, and according to GAAP, for purposes of valuation one cannot adjust those 1867 two-cent pieces (an actual coin of the realm back then) for inflation (they’re each worth forty-three cents today). If one is going to run government like a business, one must account for government like a business.
For Burgum to be able to sell large areas of BLM land to add cash to his balance sheet, the BLM would first have to amend its management plans. Fortunately, the way Elonia Musk is firing government employees, the BLM won’t have the staff to do it. Alas, I fear Burgum is more interested in selling out public lands by monetizing or collateralizing them (see below) than in selling off public lands.
Figure 2. The value of commodities sold by the Department of the Interior during Trump’s first term (2017–2020) and Biden’s only term (2021–2024). Source: USDI Office of Natural Resources Revenue.
In 2024, Interior collected ~$13 billion, mostly in offshore and onshore coal, oil, and gas royalties. That’s a return on asset value (RAV) of a mere 0.014 percent (about what I’m getting on my health savings account). The Biden administration produced more fossil fuels (both in quantity and value) on public lands than the first Trump administration (as Figure 2 attests), and the second Trump administration promises to produce even more fossil fuels on public lands. But without a corresponding increase in demand, an increase in supply merely means lower prices.
The facts of supply and demand are that the market (let alone the atmosphere) cannot absorb more fossil fuel production from US public lands or elsewhere. Globally, oil is in surplus. The Trump tax-cut bill of 2017 forced the Biden administration to attempt to sell oil and gas from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in early 2025. No bids were received. If supplies increase, prices will decline with static or falling demand.
Burgum doesn’t know his balance sheet from a hole in the ground. He stacks up the nation’s $36 trillion of debt against his estimate of $100 trillion of assets. Then he talks not of selling the people’s public lands to satisfy the people’s debt—and not of selling more lithium, or gold and similar minerals—because the US collects no royalties on those “hardrock” minerals–but of selling more oil, gas, coal, grass, and timber.
(By the way, Mr. Secretary, you don’t need to sell more forage for livestock grazing but could charge more money, as the grazing fee is ridiculously below market value. It costs more to feed a house cat than to graze a 1,000-pound cow on public lands.)
If federal fossil fuel receipts increased tenfold (a miracle possible only if fossil fuel demand rose and supply were limited), Burgum’s RAV would boom to 0.14 percent. Clearly, the only effective way to monetize (rhymes with privatize) the public’s lands and waters is to collateralize them.
Generating a Sovereign Wealth Fund by Selling Out Public Lands
The Center for American Progress (CAP) notes that “President Donald Trump’s executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund [SWF] requires that the United States come up with heaps of cash quickly, which may make selling out and selling off public lands irresistible.” The headline of the CAP article, “Trump Quietly Plans to Liquidate Public Lands to Finance His Sovereign Wealth Fund,” misses the mark. The Trump administration doesn’t want to liquidate public lands by selling them off (too much opposition); rather, it wants to make public lands more liquid by selling them out.
There are creditor nations (and states) and debtor nations. Creditor nations and states that have SWFs include Norway, Saudi Arabia, China, Alaska, and Texas. The US is a debtor nation. Only creditor nations have the cash flow to invest in an SWF. Any honest balance sheet would suggest that the federal government should pay off its $36 trillion debt before investing in an SWF.
Given that Congress has been increasing spending while simultaneously reducing taxes and appears to still be on the path, creating an SWF the traditional way would mean the nation going deeper into debt. The United States borrows huge amounts of money by selling bonds. The promise to pay back the loans is not secured by any collateral but merely the full faith and credit of the US. For a very long time now, entities buying US treasury instruments have believed they will be paid back, because the US has long honored its debts. If the US were to default on its debt, there would be no recourse for the lender as the debt is not secured by any collateral.
However, what if a revised balance sheet for the United States of America reflected hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of either new or repriced assets? Then that $36 trillion debt (currently 126 percent of US gross domestic product or GDP) appears far less troubling.
The US Treasury Department will soon issue a report that will show how Trump’s proposed SWF could be capitalized. “We’re going to monetize the asset side of the US balance sheet for the American people,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. “There’ll be a combination of liquid assets, assets that we have in this country as we work to bring them out for the American people.” This secretarial utterance is likely missing a conjunctive and where the comma is, and it raises the question: Just what are these non-liquid assets that the Trump administration will “work to bring . . . out”? Out of what? I fear out of thin air, but I fear even more out of the ground, aka fossil fuels beneath the nation’s public lands and waters.
Monetizing relatively liquid assets might include moving the nation’s gold reserve into an SWF. The book value ($42.22/ounce) of the nation’s gold is $10.5 billion, while the market value ($2,905/ounce) is $725.2 billion (or $0.7 trillion). That alone could create the world’s eighth largest SWF. However, I’m sure Trump will want the US SWF to be the largest, which means it needs to be about $1.8 trillion to edge out Norway. Of course, since the US population is fifty-seven times that of Norway’s, Trump’s SWF size goal is likely fifty-seven times Norway’s: $102 trillion. Hmmm. (Just because I’m paranoid, it doesn’t mean I’m not being followed.) If one adds the market value of our gold reserve to Secretary Burgum’s guesstimate (don’t forget to consider where Burgum got his number), that’s ~$101 trillion. Pretty close.
As a developer, Trump sees land merely as leverage (think Gaza Las Vegas Strip). The idea would be that the assets of an SWF—in this case the nation’s public lands—would be used as collateral to secure loans to make grand investments controlled by the president. If the investment goes bad, the lenders could be repaid directly with public land, not unlike a mortgage company taking a house in foreclosure.
What Could Possibly Be Wrong with This Scheme?
Monetizing the nation’s public lands is ill-conceived, imprudent, ill-advised, inappropriate, injudicious, and impertinent (and those are just the descriptors beginning with the letter i).
One should never, ever collateralize assets so precious that their loss would be catastrophic, irretrievable, and irreversible if the deal goes bad. An individual or corporation risking property through collateralization is one thing. Such is central to capitalism and property rights. Risking the people’s public lands and waters is quite another. Such is a violation of the public trust.
The United States is not so poor that it must monetize the nation’s public lands, nor so rich that it can afford to.
As that great environmentalist Oscar Wilde said, “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Billionaire Burgum is certainly as cynical a secretary of the interior as we have ever had (and we’ve had some doozies). Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, the nine most terrifying words a secretary of the interior such as Burgum can utter are: “I’m from Big Business and I’m here to help.”
Bottom Line: Public lands provide goods and services that private lands are unable or willing to provide. Public lands should be protected from the whims, foibles, and greed of markets by isolating them from markets.
For More Information
Alloway, Tracy, and Joe Weisenthal. February 25, 2025. “Jim Bianco on What a ‘Mar-a-Lago Accord’ Could Mean for the Economy.” Odd Lots (podcast), Bloomberg.
Friedman, Lisa. January 30, 2025. “Doug Burgum Is Confirmed by Senate as Interior Secretary.” New York Times.
Haggerty, Mark, and Jenny Rowland-Shea. February 20, 2025. “Trump Quietly Plans to Liquidate Public Lands to Finance His Sovereign Wealth Fund.” Center for American Progress.
Harvey, John T. October 5, 2012. “Why Government Should Not Be Run Like a Business.” Forbes.
International Energy Agency. June 12, 2024. “Slowing Demand Growth and Surging Supply Put Global Oil Markets on Course for Major Surplus This Decade.” iea.org.
Saul, Derek. February 24, 2025. “Trump Says He’s Going to Check If ‘Somebody Stole’ Fort Knox $400 Billion Gold Supply. What We Know.” Forbes.
Thompson, Jonathan P. February 21, 2025. “Friday Mish-Mash.” The Land Desk (“Western lands and communities—in context”). (I just subscribed to this Substack newsletter and recommend it.)
