President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a multipronged executive order that paves the way for U.S. companies to begin exploring and plumbing offshore waters for critical minerals like cobalt, nickel and manganese — a move that’s poised to trigger far-reaching legal and political debate.
The Trump administration is ultimately hoping to ratchet up competition with China, reel in up to 1 billion metric tons of mineral-rich nodules and boost a multibillion industry — tied to both imports and exports abroad — over the next decade, senior administration officials told reporters on a call before the directive was signed.
“This will allow the U.S. industry to bring in these materials for additional imports, but also allow us to export these materials over time,” said one administration official.
The order sets off a series of permitting moves, mapping and reports aimed at boosting companies’ ability to explore the ocean floor for potato-sized nodules that contain minerals needed for batteries, defense, aerospace and advanced manufacturing.
The order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to establish a process for reviewing, approving permits and granting licenses within the U.S. outer continental shelf.
Administration officials said the order also instructs the secretary of Commerce to expedite the process for reviewing and issuing exploration and commercial recovery permits under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, or DSHMRA. According to a fact sheet from NOAA, the act establishes an interim regulatory procedure for ocean mining activities conducted by U.S. nationals that will be “superseded” when a law of the sea treaty enters into force for the United States.
The order amounts to a win for Canada-based Metals Co., which recently approached the White House about using the 1980 law to move forward with deep-sea mining in international waters.
Tapping into the law allows TMC and other companies to sidestep a process unfolding before the International Seabed Authority, which is tasked with overseeing mining in international waters under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. ISA has for years been negotiating a set of international regulations. The U.S. is not a party to the treaty.
But the move is already facing pushback.
Leticia Carvalho, the secretary-general of the ISA, has said the U.N. Convention is the “only universally recognized legitimate framework” for deep-sea mining and that any unilateral action would constitute a “violation of international law.”
Senior administration officials said Trump’s executive order also directs the secretaries of Commerce and Interior to generate a report that explores private sector interests and opportunities for seabed mineral exploration, mining and monitoring on the outer continental shelf and opportunities to process those materials domestically.
Secretaries are also required to develop a plan for mapping “priority areas” of the seabed and collect more information about the nation’s defense stockpiles and how they can tap into the Cold War-era Defense Production Act to bolster production and processing.
The order also calls on Energy Secretary Chris Wright to establish a critical materials review board to analyze what materials can be collected from the seabed and next steps, while the heads of the International Development Finance Corp., Export-Import Bank and U.S. Trade and Development Agency have to report back on what to support domestic and international seabed exploration and production.
Reporter Robin Bravender contributed.
