The year the US doubled down on critical minerals

President Donald Trump has spent most of 2025 hacking much of the federal government. His administration has laid off, furloughed or ousted hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Entire agencies have been destroyed. By many indicators, this year in politics has been defined more by what was removed than by what was added.

One very small aspect of regulation, however, has expanded under Trump: the list of critical minerals. Most people probably hadn’t heard of “critical minerals” until earlier this year, when the president repeatedly inserted the phrase into his statements, turning this once-obscure policy area into a household phrase. In November, the U.S. Geological Survey quietly expanded the list from 50 to 60 elements, adding copper, silver, uranium and even metallurgical coal to the list. On Monday, South Korean metals processor Korea Zinc announced that the federal government will invest in a new $7.4 billion zinc refinery in Tennessee, in which the Department of Defense will have an ownership interest.

But what is a critical mineral?

The concept dates back to the first half of the 20th century, specifically World War II, when Congress passed legislation to stockpile materials vital to the well-being of the United States. President Trump established the list of critical minerals in 2018, with the determining criteria being that any mineral included be “essential to the economic and national security of the United States” and that a supply chain be “vulnerable to disruption.”

As Grist explained in his recent mining issue, critical minerals shape everything from geopolitics to water supplies to oceans and recycling systems. If there is to be a truly clean energy transition, these elements are key. Metals such as lithium, cobaltAnd nickel form the backbone of the batteries that power electric vehicles. Silicon is the main component of solar cells and the rare earth magnets that help power wind turbines. Not to mention computers, microchips, and the multitude of other things that depend on critical minerals.

Currently, the vast majority of critical minerals used in the United States come from China – around 80 percent. During his first term, Trump attempted to increase domestic production of these minerals. “The United States must not remain dependent on foreign competitors like Russia and China for critical minerals needed to keep our economy strong and our country secure,” he said in 2017. Ensuring a domestic supply was also a cornerstone of former President Joseph Biden’s landmark climate bills, the bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Now, as Trump has returned to office, he has made critical minerals an even more central part of his policy agenda. We’re here to demystify why this year was a banner year for critical minerals in the United States – and where the industry could go in the future.

A very unusual strategy

In March, Trump issued an executive order aimed at restarting production of essential minerals. “It is imperative for our national security that the United States takes immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production as much as possible,” he said. The executive order was just the first step in a coordinated effort by the Trump administration to strengthen U.S. control over existing supply chains for copper, lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel and dozens of other critical minerals and to galvanize new mines, regardless of concerns raised by indigenous peoples. The Trump administration has sought to achieve these goals both by reducing regulatory barriers to production and by investing in companies willing to do so.

Since then, Trump has signed agreements with several countries to increase investment in critical minerals and strengthen supply chains. Most recently, the United States reached a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo, which holds more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt. He has pushed federal agencies to make it easier for mining companies to apply for federal funding and is inviting companies to apply to continue deep-sea mining around American Samoa, near Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, around the Cook Islands and in international waters south of Hawaii – sparking global outrage and opposition from Native Hawaiian, Samoan and Chamorro/CHamoru peoples. At the same time, Trump’s volatile tariff policies have made it harder for U.S. companies to source minerals, and cuts in federal funding have hurt mining workforce training programs and critical minerals research.

Read next

How the planet fared in 2025: the good, the bad and the ugly

While the Biden administration provided grants and loans to various mining companies, Trump is deploying a highly unusual strategy of purchasing stakes in private companies, tying the financial interests of the U.S. government to the interests and success of these commercial mining operations. In recent months, the Trump administration has spent more than $1 billion in public money buying minority stakes in private companies like MP Minerals, ReElement Technologies and Vulcan Elements. In Alaska, that strategy involved investing more than $35 million in Trilogy Metals to acquire a 10% stake in the company, which is a major backer of a copper and cobalt mining project in Alaska.

In September, the Trump administration finalized another deal with Canadian company Lithium Americas behind Thacker Pass in Nevada, which is expected to become the largest lithium mine in the United States. The Biden administration approved a $2.23 billion loan to Lithium Americas in October 2024; the Trump administration then restructured the loan and secured a 5% stake in the project as well as another 5% stake in Lithium Americas itself. (A senior Interior Department official has since reportedly benefited financially from the project.) This is despite allegations that the mine violates the rights of neighboring tribal nations and is taking place without their consent, which Lithium Americas has denied.

The outlook for critical minerals

Historically, the federal government has only taken stakes in troubled companies, such as through the Troubled Asset Relief Program that aimed to stabilize the auto industry and U.S. banks during the financial crisis of 2008. “What we’re talking about here is something very different, it’s an industry that hasn’t been launched yet,” said Beia Spiller, who leads work on critical minerals at the nonprofit research group Resources for the Future.

“I think it’s unlikely that it will work,” Spiller continued. “The best way to make an industry work is to have policies that move things forward for everyone, not just pick winners. »

Referring to Lithium Americas, Spiller said: “If you really look at the cost fundamentals, it’s not a very competitive business. » Lithium Americas extracts the metal from clay, an ancient process that requires a lot of land, surface mines and heavy machinery, while some newer operations use direct lithium extraction, which is more profitable in the long run. “So we just took a stake in a company that is going to face cost headwinds – now the American public is facing that downside.”

Read next

2025: The year the United States abandoned the climate issue and the world abandoned us

It’s also worth emphasizing that the Trump administration’s rapid efforts to strengthen U.S. control over critical minerals are not intended to move the country away from fossil fuels. Instead, the entire effort appears to be primarily geared toward military uses. Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” allocated $7.5 billion for critical minerals, $2 billion of which will go directly to the national defense stockpile. An additional $5 billion has been allocated to the Department of Defense to invest in critical minerals supply chains.

In October, a former Defense Ministry official told the Financial Times that the agency was “incredibly focused on stockpiles.” “They are certainly looking for more, and they are doing it in a deliberate and expansive way, and looking for new sources of different minerals needed for defense products,” the anonymous official said.

Last week, the administration announced that it plans to take stakes in more mining companies next year. It’s possible, Spiller said, that these investments will extend to companies that pilot deep-sea mining. That brings a new set of risks, as many banks refuse to insure deep-sea mining operations, it’s unclear whether seabed mining operations will even be able to get off the ground before Trump’s term ends, and the legal repercussions associated with undermining the law of the sea could shatter stability among world powers — and make global climate action even more difficult.