Trump’s Push for Deep-Sea Mining
This Pentagon-managed body steers non-dilutive federal funding to critical minerals suppliers, pitching its deep-sea nickel, cobalt, and manganese as a domestic supply the government should help pay to develop.
The
Metals Company has a problem. It cannot survive without governmental handouts.
The company’s 2025 financial update reveals a net loss of roughly $319.8
million, $0.83 per share, on essentially no revenue.
“If deep-sea mining is truly the next big thing its backers
claim, why can’t The Metals Company attract investors — and why do they expect
taxpayers to foot the bill? This isn’t about security; it’s about propping up a
speculative industry that risks irreversible harm to the deep ocean for
corporate profit,” said Jackie Dragon, Greenpeace USA Senior Oceans Campaigner
The push for deep-sea mining comes from the top. In April
2025, Trump signed an executive order to “accelerate the responsible
development of seabed mineral resources.” In other words, he directed federal
agencies to accelerate the development of deep-sea mining because the nation
needs more critical minerals for its electronics. Trump’s proposed 2027 budget includes funding for critical
minerals across the departments of Energy, Interior, Defense, and State.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced in a press release a new hydrographic survey project to map and characterize more than 30,000 square nautical miles of federal waters off American Samoa. Developing deep-sea mining is the reason for the project. The federal agency stated that access to critical minerals “is a key factor in the resilience of U.S. supply chains.”
The Problems With Deep-Sea Mining
The deep sea is the most extensive habitat, supporting
high diversity, covering more than 90 percent of the world’s biosphere.
Deep-sea habitats already face threats from climate change, pollution, and
trawling. Deep-sea mining would worsen
those problems and create a few of its own.
Mining would harm that habitat,
killing off some organisms if equipment is put on the seabed. Sediment created
by that equipment would smother other organisms. Marine
life would die from overheating and poisoning from warm mining
wastewater. Mining activities could disrupt the feeding and reproduction of
species because of noise and light pollution in a place that is dark and
silent. Because the ocean is the largest carbon sink, absorbing 25 percent of
all carbon emissions, biodiversity loss could release carbon.
A Circular Economy Is the Answer
Around 1% of rare earth metals in discarded electronics are
recovered and reused, meaning the supply for the mineral recycling industry is
being wasted in landfills. Scaling up mineral recycling could reduce the need for
virgin minerals by 40 percent for copper and cobalt and by 25 percent for
lithium and nickel. The market value of recycled minerals is estimated to grow
fivefold, reaching $200 billion by 2050.
Creating a circular economy for the minerals used in
electronics and other products would prevent companies from harming habitats
with deep-sea mining. Currently, the U.S. relies on imported minerals.
Recycling would stop that dependency by creating a domestic supply chain.
The choice, then, is not between critical minerals and none
at all; it is between two ways of getting them. One tears up an ecosystem we
barely understand and locks in a supply chain that depends on selling investors
a promise the market has yet to buy. The other mines what we have already
pulled from the earth, keeping minerals in circulation and jobs at home. The
device in your hand already holds most of what a cleaner supply chain needs.
The question is whether we recover it or bury it on the seafloor along with
everything that lives there.
Gina-Marie
Cheesemanhttp://www.justmeans.com/users/gina-marie-cheeseman
Gina-Marie Cheeseman, freelance writer/journalist/copyeditor
about.me/gmcheeseman Twitter: @gmcheeseman
