Vowing to “counter China’s growing influence over seabed mineral resources,” the Trump administration is opening a new front against America’s chief geopolitical rival.
“Vast offshore seabed areas hold critical minerals and energy resources,” an April 24 presidential executive order states. “These resources are key to strengthening our economy, securing our energy future, and reducing dependence on foreign suppliers for critical minerals.”
The timing of the executive order is no coincidence. Though President Trump and his advisers recognized the strategic importance of rare earths and other critical minerals as early as his first term, the matter has become even more urgent. In retaliation for U.S. tariffs, China recently restricted the export of rare earths to the United States. And Beijing has leverage.
China is the source of 90 percent of the world’s rare-earth minerals. It extracts them at sites around the world and refines them at facilities in China. This vertical control of the global rare-earth supply chain gives Beijing a near monopoly over minerals that go into “everything from satellites and jet fighters to CT scanners and iPhones,” The Wall Street Journal notes.
When rare earths are combined with Beijing’s formidable position in the mining and processing of other critical minerals — such as nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese — China enjoys a wide lead that will not be easy to narrow.
How will the Trump executive order on seabed mining address this? The strategy has six components:
—Develop domestic capabilities for exploration, characterization, collection, and processing of seabed mineral resources.
—Support development of deep-sea science, mapping, and technology.
—Enhance coordination among federal agencies with respect to seabed mineral development.
—Establish the U.S. as a global leader in responsible mineral seabed exploration, development technologies and practices, and as a partner for countries developing seabed mineral resources within their national jurisdictions, including their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ).
—Create a robust domestic supply chain for critical minerals derived from deep-sea resources to support economic growth, reindustrialization, and military preparedness, including through new processing capabilities.
—Strengthen partnerships with allies and industry to counter China’s growing influence over seabed mineral resources and ensure that U.S. companies are well-positioned to support allies and partners interested in developing deep-sea mineral resources within their national jurisdictions, including their EEZs.
While the resource potential of the seabed is significant, and the Trump plan is nothing if not ambitious, serious challenges remain. The executive order devotes much attention to polymetallic nodules, which exist throughout the ocean floor.
“To date, no country has extracted these resources at a commercial scale,” said Gracelin Baskaran and Meredith Schwartz in an analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The ocean region that has garnered the most attention is the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a 1.7 million square-mile patch of ocean in international waters between Mexico and Hawaii. The zone contains the largest known nodule field on the globe, estimated at 21.1 billion tons.”
As an indication of the challenge facing the administration, Baskaran and Schwartz said that the United States “currently lacks the processing infrastructure needed to process polymetallic nodules at-scale.”
Another complication, one ripe with the potential for international conflict, arises from jurisdictional issues surrounding deep-sea mining. Extracting minerals from the ocean floor within the U.S. EEZ is one thing, but mining minerals in waters beyond American jurisdiction is quite another. The Senate, dating back to the Ronald Reagan era, has refused to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was adopted in 1982 and went into force in 1994.
The Law of the Sea Treaty, as it is commonly known, established the International Seabed Authority (IS A), the U.N. body that governs deep-sea resources, largely through licenses it issues to eligible countries (169) that have ratified the treaty.
Baskaran and Schwartz point out that the executive order “essentially bypasses the ISA to allow U.S. companies to gain access to resources in international waters without consultation or permission from the U.N. body.”
For the “America First” administration, bypassing a U.N. body is second nature, completely consistent with its withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement or the World Health Organization. Qualified American companies eager to engage in deep-sea mining can count on having the Trump White House at their backs. They can also form partnerships with companies from allied countries that have ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty, even if that ruffles a few feathers at the United Nations.
Seabed mining is environmentally risky with the ever-present threat of a spill that can lead to significant liability. Further, creating domestic processing facilities will require an expedited permitting process and a labor force sufficiently trained to meet the task. The U.S. cannot afford to stand aside and leave the field to China.
The game is on.
This article originally appeared at DC Journal
If the likes of Mad Ed Miliband did not cling so blindly to their faith in net zero and their irrational reasoning for it, thereof, would we even be talking about mining the seabed? Would it be necessary? My guess is no.
“…mining of the deep sea, at depths of 2,000 metres and greater, is increasingly being considered as a potential solution to the expected global shortage of so-called ‘transition-critical’ raw materials needed for the manufacture of batteries and other technologies that will be key to meeting targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “
https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/explainers/what-is-deep-sea-mining-and-how-is-it-connected-to-the-net-zero-transition/
I think given the state of play, off world mining would be a better bet. The dolphins might agree.
In either case, these industries don’t get off the ground without hydrocarbon energy and materials.
They don’t even exist without hydrocarbon energy, nor could they function without it (frequency management and backup).
The idea of a “transition away from fossil fuels” is pure delusion.
Amazing. In the mid 1970’s, for a Marine Geology grad studies course, a fellow student and I prepared a seminar on the feasibility of deep sea manganese-nodule mining using the data produced by the Glomar Explorer cover story for what later became known was actually Project Azorian. We researched this pretty thoroughly, assembling (on paper) all equipment and techniques required. Due largely to the ability of being able to buy mothballed military marine hardware for low prices (with the provision that modifications were conducted in US facilities) we found that it was actually economically and technically feasible; we had been able to design a methodology that would work.
The only unknown was in the Law Of The Sea Conference legalities, negotiations for which were ongoing but would not produce a legal framework ‘for one or two years’. That was 50 years ago, meaning that at least two entire career generations have been ‘negotiating’ this Law Of The Sea framework since then. No permit for actual mining has yet been granted, only for exploration.
Much like nuclear fusion success being continually a decade away, a final decision from the UN for deep sea mining law is still ‘one or two years away’, just like it was 50 years ago.
It should be possible to develop a method to selectively pick up nodules by size off the seafloor without doing much disturbance to the ground beneath them. That would reduce sediment disturbance and distribution while leaving a lot of nodules for the micro-life that lives on them.
The major issue with seabed mining would be blocking lawfare by green groups.As they oppose mining anywhere (under US control), their bad faith efforts should be dealt with.
China would likely win that mining war because they wouldn’t give 2 Carps about any “accidental” spillage of anything…and they wouldn’t respect any mining area sovereignty just like they don’t respect fishing sovereignty or any other countries rights in the South China Sea.
Deep sea mining appears to be scooping up metallic nodules off the bed of some part of the world’s oceans. So, the reference to “threat of a spill” is baffling. Other than nodules, what might be spilled {or spilt}. Dumping hundreds of EVs and their carrier into the ocean seems like more of a threat.
Yeah the use of the word “spill” seems odd … almost like the author doesn’t understand the process …
O/T: UnSustainable housing
Landlords are bracing for pricier energy performance certificate (EPC) checks and stricter rules under Ed Miliband’s Net Zero drive, with fears that tougher standards could make thousands of homes impossible to rent. The Telegraph has the details:
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/06/15/landlords-face-higher-bills-as-new-net-zero-rules-kick-in/
It will get done by China, outside the jurisdiction of all powerful US district Court judges. They will also have the world’s largest fleet of aircraft carriers and support ships to take the rest of the region.
They have 1 carrier that has never gone anywhere …
The real problem here is the EPA and the Federal Courts which have been just as effective in destroying mining and refining in the US as a fleet of four engine bombers. Kind of makes you wonder whose side they are on and who is their daddy.
China has been strip mining the seas for a long time. Dragging the bottom destroys innumerable ocean habitats. For the Chinese the side benefit is the torn coral is a source of material for creating fake islands to advance their expansionist ambitions in the South China Sea.
China has no respect for the environment. They posture, they create Potemkin villages, but it’s all for show.
The ‘trick’ to mining polymetallic nodules will be to develop a mining vehicle that can selectively pick up nodules in a specific size range without having to dig or scoop beneath them. Some small deep sea life, including microbes, lives on the surfaces of the nodules.
Various tests in the 60’s and 70’s used devices that plowed and scooped up everything, leaving tracks that are pretty much barren of life since. A mining system that could pluck up only 30% of the nodules, without doing major disturbance to the ground beneath, would avoid that. In nodule fields where they almost completely cover the seabed, the resulting open spots could provide spaces for life that’s inhibited by the nodules covering of the surface.