in World News Critical Minerals and Rare Earths Mines Begin Popping Up Outside China After Trump’s EOs
California firm reopens processing capacity and makes important deal with Saudi Arabia for more development, American investors are expanding Brazil’s capacity, and intriguing Pacific Ocean deposits are detected.
In late March, I reported that President Donald Trump signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate domestic production of critical minerals and rare earths.
The initiative, aimed to reduce American reliance on foreign imports, particularly from China, which now dominates the global supply chain for many essential minerals such as rare earths, uranium, copper, potash, and gold.
In April, it was paired with another executive order, entitled “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources.” This directive instructed federal agencies to expedite the exploration and extraction of critical minerals from U.S. offshore seabed areas and to establish international partnerships for deep-sea mining in foreign waters.
Parts of the Pacific Ocean and elsewhere are estimated to contain large amounts of potato-shaped rocks known as polymetallic nodules filled with the building blocks for electric vehicles and electronics.
More than 1 billion metric tons of those nodules are estimated to be in U.S. waters and filled with manganese, nickel, copper and other critical minerals, according to an administration official.
Extracting them could boost U.S. GDP by $300 billion over 10 years and create 100,000 jobs, the official added.
“The United States has a core national security and economic interest in maintaining leadership in deep-sea science and technology and seabed mineral resources,” Trump said in the order.
How are things going so far?
There are some promising signs. To begin with, Brazil has emerged as a promising new supplier, with projects like the Serra Verde mine that American investors back. The South American nation is poised to become the only significant producer of some rare earth elements outside Asia.