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United States Mining

Trump recognizes that domestic mining is a national security issue – by Sara Vakhshouri (The Hill – April 12, 2025)

https://thehill.com/

President Trump’s executive order to increase domestic critical mineral production has been interpreted as a pro-industry move or a nod to traditional energy sectors. It is both — but more importantly, it is a long overdue national security play.

In the modern geopolitical chess game, America’s mineral vulnerability is not just an economic liability but a strategic one. The order activates the Defense Production Act to boost domestic mining and processing of minerals like lithium, rare earths, nickel, cobalt, copper and uranium.

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China Halts Critical Exports as Trade War Intensifies – by Keith Bradsher (New York Times – April 13, 2025)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Beijing has suspended exports of certain rare earth minerals and magnets that are crucial for the world’s car, semiconductor and aerospace industries.

China has suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, threatening to choke off supplies of components central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world.

Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been halted at many Chinese ports while the Chinese government drafts a new regulatory system. Once in place, the new system could permanently prevent supplies from reaching certain companies, including American military contractors.

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Just How Badly Does Donald Trump Want Access to Critical Minerals? – by Nicolas Niarchos (New Yorker – April 15, 2025)

https://www.newyorker.com/

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has some of the largest deposits on Earth. Its President wants to sell them—and win a war.

On a recent episode of Fox News’ “Special Report,” the host, Bret Baier, turned his attention to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country that doesn’t frequently make headlines in the United States. Using a map of the country, which is two-thirds the size of Western Europe, to educate his viewers, Baier began by outlining the regional conflicts in which the D.R.C. has been engaged, dating back to the refugee crises triggered by the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

He added that “Congo is considered the world’s richest country in terms of natural resources,” containing untapped supplies worth “an estimated twenty-four trillion dollars, with a ‘T.’ ” Those resources include gold, diamonds, and so-called critical metals, such as cobalt and lithium, which are used in rechargeable batteries.

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Rio Tinto hopes Trump will clear path for Resolution copper project – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – April 9, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

Rio Tinto is optimistic that US President Donald Trump will expedite the final permits approval for its long-delayed Resolution copper project in Arizona. Speaking at the CRU World Copper Conference in Santiago, Rio Tinto’s copper chief executive Katie Jackson said growing US interest in strengthening the copper supply chain could help advance the stalled mine.

“We hope that will be part of getting projects like Resolution to move because it has historically been a long process,” she told attendees. The mining giant has spent more than a decade navigating a complex permitting process.

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America Together, or America Alone? A mining to metals viewpoint – by Lyle Trytten (The Oregon Group – April 6, 2025)

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Lyle Trytten (The Nickel Nerd) has 30 years of experience in the base metals and fertilizer industries, working on projects across multiple continents, technologies, and roles, from R&D and engineering to commercialization and operations.

This is an article that I – a Canadian – never thought I would have to write, but these are strange times. With the capricious nature of the current US administration – breaching signed treaties and contracts, threatening and imposing tariffs that change every week, annexation threats, and dramatic escalation in the restrictions and burdens placed on immigrants and visa holders – one country is trying to radically reshape the integrated nature of the global economy.

Is re-shoring entire manufacturing chains feasible or desirable?

The USA has been a manufacturing and innovation powerhouse for more than a century. The availability of vast amounts of resources – land, energy, minerals, and hard-working people from across the world – has created a country that leads the world in many important areas.

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Column: China primes rare earths weapon as trade war escalates – by Andy Home (Reuters – April 10, 2025)

https://www.reuters.com/

As U.S. President Donald Trump turns up the tariff heat on China, Beijing is targeting ever more of the United States’ critical material supply chains.

Weird and wonderful metals such as antimony, gallium and germanium have already been sucked into the escalating trade war with China restricting exports and banning sales to the United States. Beijing has just raised the mineral threat another level by adding seven rare earths to its dual-use list of restricted exports.

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Trump order seeks to tap coal power in quest to dominate AI – by Ari Natter and Jennifer A. Dlouhy (Bloomberg News – April 8, 2025)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

President Donald Trump is moving to expand the mining and use of coal inside the US, a bid to power the boom in energy-hungry data centers while seeking to revive a declining US fossil fuel industry. In an executive order Trump is set to sign Tuesday afternoon, the president will direct a number of steps by the federal government meant to reinvigorate coal said a senior White House official.

The actions including emphasizing the US is back in the business of selling coal mining rights on federal land and ordering the rock be designated as a critical mineral. Other steps include accelerating the export of US coal and related technologies.

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Lakota artist smudges the former gold mine inside the Black Hills – by Graham Lee Brewer (Toronto Star/Associated Press – April 5, 2025)

https://www.thestar.com/

When Lakota artist Marty Two Bulls Jr. looks at the Black Hills of South Dakota, he doesn’t just see its natural beauty. He also sees a scar cut deep into the heart of the universe.

The mountain range is central to the origin story of several tribal nations, including his, and it has become an international symbol of the ongoing struggle for Indigenous land rights and the destruction of sacred sites. To the Lakota, Mount Rushmore is the most visible scar on the mountains. The former gold mine beneath is another, and that’s what motivated Two Bulls to use his performance art to cleanse it.

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China deploys rare earths as weapon in trade war with Trump (Bloomberg News – April 7, 2025)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

China has expanded its use of critical minerals as a trade weapon with curbs on exports of rare earths, threatening to shake-up the global supply of key materials used widely in high-tech manufacturing from electric vehicles to weaponry.

As part of its retaliation to President Donald Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs on imported Chinese goods, Beijing said Friday it will tighten controls on exports of seven types of rare earths. The country is by far the world’s biggest supplier of the minerals, which comprise 17 elements in the periodic table.

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An American mine still has millions of tons of copper, if companies can get to it (Bloomberg/Mining Weekly – April 2, 2025)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

Carved into a mountain range in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, where temperatures often reach 118F (48C), a vast mining complex more than a century old is on the front lines of a race to unlock millions of tons of copper.

After 154 years of digging at Morenci, all the easily recoverable copper has been mined. Left behind are towering piles of waste rock that hold nearly ten-million tons of the metal seen as critical to global electrification. It’s a cache that could prove key to President Donald Trump’s ambition to boost US production of critical minerals.

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China hits back at US tariffs with rare earth export controls – by Amy Lv, Lewis Jackson and Eric Onstad (Reuters – April 4, 2025)

https://www.reuters.com/

China placed export restrictions on key rare earth elements on Friday as part of its sweeping response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, potentially squeezing supply to the U.S. and the West of minerals vital to everything from defense to electric cars.

China produces around 90% of the world’s refined rare earths, a group of 17 elements used across the defense, electric vehicle, clean energy and electronics industries. The United States imports most of its rare earths, and most come from China.

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On Minnesota’s Iron Range, Trump’s Tariffs Could Be Boom or Bust – by Charles Homans (New York Times – March 30, 2025)

https://www.nytimes.com/

A region near the Canadian border, whose mines provide most of the new ore used in producing domestic steel — and cars — has a lot at stake as trade wars intensify.

Once a week, most weeks, the ground in Chisholm, Minn., shudders underfoot. “When they blast over here, we can feel it in town over there,” Jed Holewa, a City Council member, explained as he looked out over the pit of the Hibbing Taconite mine, a machine-made canyon of flint-colored earth extending to the hills just southwest of town.

The low rumble of controlled explosions is reassuring in an area where few livelihoods are more than a couple of degrees removed from the mines. But this month the ground beneath the Iron Range has begun to shift in a very different way.

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Prospect of U.S. tariffs haunting Canadian copper sector – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – March 2025)

https://financialpost.com/

Could send shockwaves through eastern part of sector and ultimately benefit China

United States President Donald Trump is laying the groundwork for tariffs on copper that could send shockwaves through the eastern part of Canada’s sector and ultimately benefit China. Canada in 2023 produced 2.2 per cent of global mined copper, less than half of what’s produced in the U.S., which accounted for five per cent.

Nonetheless, more than half the copper produced in Canada, mainly from the eastern part of the country, was shipped to the U.S., making up a large portion of the imports there.

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The US Uranium Dilemma: Domestic Production Challenges in an Era of Growing Nuclear Energy Demand – by Scot Anderson (Womble Bond Dickinson.com – March 20, 2025)

https://www.womblebonddickinson.com/

At present, Kazakhstan, Canada and Namibia account for nearly two-thirds of global uranium production. The United States produces less than one percent of the world’s uranium, and most of the uranium used in the United States is imported, primarily from Canada. As discussed elsewhere in this series, there is increasing commitment to nuclear energy as a fundamental component of domestic and global energy production.

Despite its emphasis on the development of fossil fuels, the Trump administration is likely to support more nuclear energy development, especially in the form of small modular reactors. The Executive Order on “Unleashing American Energy” includes a direction to the U.S. Geological Service to consider adding uranium to the list of critical minerals.

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Trump to expand critical mineral production using wartime powers – by Ari Natter and Joe Deaux (Bloomberg News – March 20, 2025)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

President Donald Trump is invoking emergency powers to boost the ability of the US to produce critical minerals — and potentially coal — as part of a broad effort to ramp up the development of domestic natural resources and make the country less reliant on foreign imports.

An executive order signed by the president Thursday taps the Defense Production Act as part of an effort to provide financing, loans and other investment support to domestically process critical minerals and rare earth elements, according to a White House official. The US International Development Finance Corporation, working with the Department of Defense, will provide financing for new mineral production projects.

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