President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at boosting the deep-sea mining industry, the latest attempt to boost US production of nickel, copper and other critical minerals used widely across the economy.
The broad order avoids a direct confrontation with the United Nations-backed International Seabed Authority and seeks essentially to jumpstart the mining of US waters as part of a push to offset China’s sweeping control of the critical minerals industry.
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 US waters and filled with manganese, nickel, copper and other critical minerals, according to an administration official.
For the rest of this article: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-expected-sign-deep-sea-mining-executive-order-thursday-sources-2025-04-24/