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United States Mining

Utah leaders praise Trump’s fast-tracking of a ‘vital’ uranium mine. Environmentalists say the move ‘beggars belief.’ – by Anastasia Hufham (Salt Lake Tribune – May 16, 2025)

https://www.sltrib.com/

State leaders have nothing but praise for the Trump administration’s decision to significantly shorten the environmental review process of a southeastern Utah uranium project.

Earlier this week, the Department of the Interior announced it was fast-tracking the permitting process for Anfield Energy Inc.’s plans to reopen the Velvet-Wood uranium mine in San Juan County. The environmental assessment for the project must be completed by the Bureau of Land Management in just 14 days — as opposed to the prior timeline of months or years.

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Expert tells U.S. senators Canada is a key ally on critical minerals – by Kelly Geraldine Malone (Canadian Press – May 14, 2025)

https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/

WASHINGTON – An expert in critical minerals told U.S. senators Wednesday that Canada will be a key ally in efforts to reduce America’s reliance on Chinese supply — after President Donald Trump spent months claiming the United States doesn’t need anything from its northern neighbour.

Gracelin Baskaran, director of critical minerals security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., told the Senate finance committee that the U.S. only has 1.3 per cent of the world’s rare earths. “The uncomfortable truth is we are not going to do this alone,” she said.

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Trump keeps saying the U.S. doesn’t need Canada’s stuff. We asked experts if he’s right – by Jordan Gowling (Financial Post – May 13, 2025)

https://financialpost.com/

Here’s a look at eight Canadian exports and whether they are essential to America

In his Oval Office meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney last Tuesday, President Donald Trump repeated his refrain that the U.S. doesn’t need or want anything Canada produces, listing off a litany of goods he said his country would rather make itself. But can the U.S. really do without our stuff?

We checked with economists and industry experts to see just how much the U.S. relies on eight of our biggest exports, and whether Trump is right in thinking they can go it alone. rump made it clear during his meeting with Carney that the U.S. does not want Canadian-made vehicles. “We want to make our own cars, we don’t really want cars from Canada,” said Trump. “At a certain point, it won’t make economic sense for Canada to build those cars.”

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Could Trump use wartime emergency law to boost Montana metals mining, curtail Russian imports? – by Mike Sunnucks (Fairfield Sun Times – May 12, 2025)

https://www.fairfieldsuntimes.com/

President Donald Trump invoked a wartime and emergency law in March to bolster critical materials and rare-earth metals mining production in the U.S.

“The Defense Production Act (DPA) will be used to expand domestic mineral production capacity,” reads the order, referring to the federal law that was established during the Korean War, invoked during the Cold War to help bolster U.S. aluminum and titanium industries, and most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic to increase manufacturing of masks and ventilators.

Now, there could be an effort by Trump to use his emergency powers under the DPA to bolster platinum and palladium mining in Montana and curtail Russian imports of the precious metals. Montana is the only state where platinum and palladium (the latter used mostly in catalytic converters for cars and trucks) is mined.

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A Toxic Pit Could Be a Gold Mine for Rare-Earth Elements – by Jim Robbins (New York Times – May 13, 2025)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Mining continues at the Continental Pit. Nearby is the Berkeley Pit, a site for acid mine drainage that poses an opportunity for extracting valuable metals.

There’s a tale told about a miner who found copper cans in his garbage dump in the early days of mining. Wastewater from copper mining had flowed through his land, he said, and turned steel cans into copper. The story might be apocryphal, but the process is real, and it’s called cementation. Montana Resources, the mining company that took over from the Anaconda Copper Company, still uses this alchemical trick in a process at its Continental Pit mine in Butte, Mont.

Next to the mine is the Berkeley Pit, which is filled with 50 billion gallons of a highly acidic, toxic brew. Montana Resources pipes liquid from the pit, enabling it to cascade onto piles of scrap iron. The iron becomes copper and is gathered for production.

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Syrian leader al-Sharaa may propose Ukraine-style mineral deal to Trump – by Kateryna Danishevska (News Ukraine – May 13, 2025)

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/

Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa may offer Washington access to the country’s oil and gas fields, inspired by the recent mineral deal between Ukraine and the United States, according to Reuters and The Times. According to Western media, the Syrian leader may also propose building a Trump Tower in Damascus in honor of the US president.

Additionally, al-Sharaa’s strategic plan reportedly includes efforts to ease tensions with Israel. Several sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that these proposals are part of the Syrian leader’s broader attempt to secure a face-to-face meeting with US President Donald Trump during his upcoming trip to the Middle East.

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US set to fast-track Utah uranium mining permit in push for domestic energy supply – by Neetika Walter (MSN.com – May 12, 2025)

https://www.msn.com/

Even as the U.S. and China slashed tariffs amid a 90-day trade truce, critical minerals were conspicuously missing from the deal — a silence that reflects their growing strategic weight. With China tightening its grip on rare earth exports, the U.S. is doubling down on efforts to secure domestic supplies of materials vital to clean energy, defense, and tech manufacturing.

As part of this push, the Trump administration announced on Monday that it will be fast-tracking environmental permitting for Anfield Energy’s proposed Velvet-Wood uranium mine project, slashing the review timeline to just 14 days.

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How the United States Lost the Rare Earth Materials War to China – by David S. Abraham (The New Republic – May 5, 2025)

https://newrepublic.com/

Chinese dominance in this critical sector of the economy did not happen by accident—it was a policy choice.

Last month, in response to President Donald Trump’s tariff regime, China imposed new export controls on rare earth materials and magnets. Officially, these aren’t bans—but practically, shipments have stopped. This is no small issue: America’s tech leadership, military readiness, and clean energy ambitions all rely on rare earths.

This latest disruption exposes a strategic vulnerability—one that we, not China, created through years of strategic neglect. Without immediate action to rebuild our industrial base, spur innovation, and train a skilled workforce, we will lose our economic and military advantage.

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Uranium crunch: the race to fuel the West’s nuclear energy revival – by Heidi Vella (Mining Technology – May 6, 2025)

https://www.mining-technology.com/

Amid Russian sanctions and China’s foothold over current uranium supply, how will the West secure the reserves it requires?

The devastating accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in March 2011 triggered a global reassessment of nuclear power, radically reshaping and diminishing the industry, with reactors shut down and national bans brought in.

Yet, in what could be seen as an extreme volte-face, investment in the industry for the first time in many years is climbing. Driven in large part by decarbonisation targets meeting the reality of rising energy demand amid slow renewable energy roll out, the World Nuclear Association (WNA), perhaps unsurprisingly, is touting nuclear as the solution to securing future carbon-free electricity – but this time it is backed by financiers, countries and major companies such as Meta, Google and Amazon.

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WDC Appeals to US Govt to Exempt Diamonds from Tariffs – by Leah Meirovich (Rapaport Maagazine – May 5, 2025)

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The World Diamond Council (WDC) is calling on the US government to provide a dispensation for the diamond industry when implementing tariffs, noting the levies would put more than 200,000 jobs at risk.

While the council — which represents the international natural-diamond value chain — acknowledged the government’s stance on fair and reciprocal trade, it emphasized that diamonds are not produced in the US but are “vital to the health of the American jewelry industry,” the WDC said Monday. It also pointed out they were an essential contributor to the national economy.

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OPINION: Donald Trump’s Ukraine minerals deals looks to be more about oil and gas than rare earths – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – May 3, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

On the morning of Pope Francis’s April 26 funeral, U.S. President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, sat alone on two red chairs, facing one another, in the largely empty St. Peter’s Basilica. At the time, the topic of the impromptu mini-summit amid the baroque opulence of the Vatican was not known.

Less than a week later, all became clear. The two leaders were wrapping up the fraught Ukraine-U.S. minerals deal, discussions of which had sometimes been ill-tempered and explosive since Mr. Trump’s election campaign in the fall. On Thursday, in his evening address from Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky said, “In fact, now we have the first result of the Vatican meeting, which makes it truly historic.”

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After Ukraine deal, US turns its critical minerals gaze to Africa – by Andy Home (Reuters – May 6, 2025)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, – Away from the headlines around the minerals deal with Ukraine, the United States has pursued a potentially even more significant critical metals deal in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo reached out to the Donald Trump administration with a Ukrainian-style proposal in February in response to the rapid advance of the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group in the east of the country.

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With Minerals Deal, Trump Ties Himself to Future of Ukraine – by Kim Barker (New York Times – May 1, 2025)

https://www.nytimes.com/

The text of the agreement, made public by Ukraine’s government, made no mention of the security guarantees that Kyiv had long sought.

The minerals deal signed by the United States and Ukraine on Wednesday could bring untold money into a joint investment fund between the two countries that would help rebuild Ukraine whenever the war with Russia ends. But Ukraine’s untapped resources that are the subject of the deal will take years to extract and yield profits. And those could fail to deliver the kind of wealth that President Trump has long said they would.

It is not yet clear how the nine-page deal, the text of which Ukraine’s government made public on Thursday, will work in practice. Many specifics need to be worked out, but the deal will set up an investment fund, jointly managed by Kyiv and Washington.

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Pentagon’s AI metals program goes private in bid to boost Western supply deals – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters – May 2, 2025)

https://www.msn.com/

(Reuters) -A U.S. government-created artificial intelligence program that aims to predict the supply and price of critical minerals has been transferred to the control of a non-profit organization that is helping miners and manufacturers strike supply deals.

Launched in late 2023 by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Open Price Exploration for National Security AI metals program is an attempt to counter China’s sweeping control of the critical minerals sector, as Reuters reported last year.

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Things to know about the US coal industry and proposed changes under the Trump administration – by John Raby and Leah Willingham (Associated Press – April 27, 2025)

https://apnews.com/

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed several changes that would affect the struggling U.S. coal industry. Trump issued executive orders this month to allow mining on federal land.

He has used his emergency authority to allow some older coal-fired power plants set for retirement to keep producing electricity to meet the rising demand amid the growth in data centers, artificial intelligence and electric cars.

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