On April 23, President Donald Trump shook up the critical minerals landscape by signing an executive order to fast-track deep-sea mining permits under the Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Resource Act and beyond U.S. waters, an explicit bid to break China’s stranglehold on nickel, copper, manganese and other metals vital to electric vehicles, renewable energy, and defense technologies.
With more than 1 billion metric tons of polymetallic nodules lying off the U.S. continental shelf, the move could boost GDP by $300 billion and create 100,000 new jobs over the next decade, if companies can navigate the regulatory and environmental hurdles ahead.
