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Over the week ended Friday March 21, the Trump administration made further moves to progress its earlier executive orders to make the United States the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals to restore the nation’s mineral dominance and enable expedited permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska.
The March 20 executive order on immediate measures to increase American mineral production highlights that US’ national and economic security are threatened by reliance on potentially hostile foreign powers’ mineral production and that the US must take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum extent possible.
The order is intended to boost American mineral production, streamline permitting and enhance national security.
Similar to previous executive orders concerning minerals and natural resources, the latest order again highlights critical battery raw material mining and processing to be of key importance. Within the order, various government agencies have 10-30 days from March 20 to identify priority projects, possible sites on federal land, and facilitate government loans and identify pairings of private capital with commercially viable domestic mineral production projects.
Agencies are instructed to compile a list of all mineral production projects that have submitted a plan of operations, permit application or any other approval request in order to expedite the review and advancement of projects in coordination with the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC).
Mineral production activities will be prioritized ahead of other types of activities on federal lands that hold critical mineral deposits.
The Department of Defense (DOD) will take a leading role in the action, with the Trump administration focusing on national security and essentially qualifying critical minerals mining and processing as wartime production efforts, potentially reducing typical government bureaucracy delays.
The Defense Production Act (DPA) will be used to expand domestic mineral production capacity, with financing, loans and investment support to be provided for new mineral production projects, including a dedicated critical minerals fund established through the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) in collaboration with the DOD.
This would represent a significant shift in priorities for the DFC away from traditional international infrastructure and aid programs to the domestic critical minerals mining sector. The Export-Import Bank will also be a potential source of capital for developing the critical minerals sector.
The US has been reported to have the second-longest permitting process in the world, taking an average of nearly 30 years to complete a new mine in the country. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that it takes an average of two years for mine plans to be approved by the federal government and the projects are then often subject to additional delays for other federal, state and local permits.
Although the Trump administration continues to distance itself from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), much of the underlying themes are consistent, particularly with regard for the need to develop resilient domestic supply chains for critical minerals.
Trump’s latest moves should be reassuring for the battery raw materials sector, helping to assuage some of the uncertainty that has been pervasive since the start of Trump’s presidency.
However, despite indications of positive action by the US government to promote development of US critical minerals production and processing, the reality of chronically low minerals pricing and a subsequent lack of interest from private investors, long lead times for mining projects and extended qualification times for processed anode and cathode materials will remain significant roadblocks to the rapid development of US mining and processing capacity.
There is a limited amount of progress that can be made in the US mining sector in a four-year presidential cycle.
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