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US President Donald Trump’s executive order to expedite permitting for critical minerals — including multiple base metals and battery raw materials — drew mostly appreciation from metals stakeholders, though some expressed doubts about its practical implementation.
Affected markets include the 50 critical minerals listed by the US Geological Survey, plus copper, potash, gold and “any other element, compound or material as determined by the chair of the National Energy Dominance Council,” according to the order on Thursday March 20.
The president has directed federal agencies to coordinate on the following deadlines and requests for information in coordination with the National Energy Dominance Council, specifically:
Industry feedback also is sought on regulatory bottlenecks and other recommended strategies for increasing domestic mineral production.
The National Energy Dominance Council was established in February “to make America energy dominant.” It is chaired by the Secretary of the Interior and vice chaired by the Secretary of Energy, with the council including at least 17 members from other designated agencies.
“The United States was once the world’s largest producer of lucrative minerals, but overbearing federal regulation has eroded our Nation’s mineral production,” the president said in the executive order. “Our national and economic security are now acutely threatened by our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production. It is imperative for our national security that the United States take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent.”
Some domestic metal market participants have applauded the executive order.
Erez Ichilov, a US critical minerals expert and founder of Cedrus Arbor, told Fastmarkets that the executive order is “comprehensive” and addresses nearly all the choke points that need to be unclogged.
“The onus is now on all of us that are active in this sector to let go of the ‘let’s wait and see’ approach and jump in to assure its robust implementation and rapid deployment,” he said. “It is clearly evident that a lot of thought, preparation work and broad consultations went into this order.”
Ichilov commended the order for the inclusion of the Supply Chain Resiliency Initiative.
“Although the order focuses of revitalizing domestic minerals production, due to the geological reality that not all the critical minerals are abundant in the US itself, bilateral and multilateral commercial alliances with friendly foreign nations and investments into foreign upstream are also required to achieve our goals,” he said. “Therefore initiatives such as the Minerals Security Partnership will become even more important as we ramp up our midstream processing capacities and will need to secure more feedstock.”
John Gross, metals industry consultant and publisher of The Copper Journal, told Fastmarkets the order is a “big step in the right direction” though it implementation will take some time.
“In the meantime, supply chains are currently facing confusion regarding tariffs,” he added. “Also, it is important for copper to be put on the critical minerals list.”
Aluminum Association president and chief executive officer Charles Johnson welcomed the action, saying it will improve US self-sufficiency and minimize the need for imports from “non-market or adversarial countries.”
“As one of only 11 mineral commodities included on the Department of Defense and all other government critical materials lists, aluminum is essential to modern life – in everything from cars and cans to tanks and fighter jets,” Johnson said in a statement on Friday March 21.
Some metal market participants outside of the US also lauded the order.
Australian Strategic Materials (ASM) praised the order for aligning with the group’s expansion into the US. ASM claims that it operates one of the few production facilities outside of China with the capability to take light and heavy rare earth oxides through to metal and alloy and plans to replicate it in the US. It is pursuing a “mine to metals” strategy to extract rare earths at its Dubbo project in Australia.
“The US government has made a clear commitment to reducing reliance on critical minerals and metals supplied by ‘hostile foreign powers,’ and to incentivize domestic manufacturing capabilities,” CEO Rowena Smith said in a statement on March 21. “ASM has a strategic advantage in supporting this objective through the replication of our successful Korean metals plant on US soil.”
“It looks like President Trump is throwing everything at the critical minerals supply chain, breaking as many logjams as he can,” William Adams, Fastmarkets’ head of base metals research said. “If it does not get bogged down in legal pushbacks, then the president looks set to be super-charging the producer response to security of critical minerals supply, and by the looks of it, he is throwing money at it too maybe this is Trump’s version of the Inflation Reduction Act.”
However, not all market participants viewed the order as positively.
A base metals trader said the order was not realistic.
“The administration believes that the signing of an executive order carries with it some kind of immediate results,” a base metals trader said. “Assuming the US even has all the raw resources to self-source 100% critical minerals domestic demand… the infrastructure just isn’t there and probably won’t be for another 5-10 years.”
“Certainly, designating these projects as critical could cut back some of the permitting and regulatory red tape, but all these projects will still take years to complete,” Marex analyst Ed Meir said. “More importantly, companies have to decide whether or not to embark on these projects given what they think the market and prices will do. Permitting is a secondary choice in the calculations.”
Rae Boyadjis in New York contributed to this report.
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