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Donald Trump has invoked wartime powers as part of a sweeping effort to increase American minerals production and curb the country’s reliance on China for critical resources.
The president signed an executive order on Thursday directing the use of the Defense Production Act to mobilise industry and expand domestic minerals output on national security grounds.
The order also instructs the government to streamline project permitting and provide loans to boost the domestic mining industry.
Speaking from the White House on Thursday, Trump said the order would “dramatically increase production of critical minerals and rare earths”.
The directive, which was foreshadowed in Trump’s address to Congress this month, comes as part of a broad push by the president to wean the US off reliance on China, which dominates the supply chains for many of the critical minerals that western governments are racing to secure.
The Trump administration has already entered talks with the Democratic Republic of Congo over access to its minerals and the president’s threats to annex Greenland are driven in part by a desire to tap its rare earths.
Trump said on Thursday that a stalled deal to gain access to Ukrainian minerals would be signed “very shortly”.
“It’s a big thing in this country, and as you know we’re also signing agreements in various locations to unlock rare earths and minerals and lots of other things all over the world, but in particular Ukraine,” he said.
The president was speaking ahead of signing a long-promised executive order to “begin eliminating” the US education department.
The US is a major importer of metals, including copper and aluminium, which have a broad range of uses, from construction to energy and technology, as well as lesser-known ones such as rare earths, which are used in the defence and automotive sectors.
Thursday’s order directs federal agencies to compile a list of projects awaiting approvals “in order to expedite (their) review and advancement”, according to a White House official. It will also allow them to prioritise federal lands for mining over other uses and to provide loans for new projects through the US International Development Finance Corporation.
By invoking the Defense Production Act, passed in 1950 after the outbreak of the Korean war, the president can mobilise domestic industry to supply materials deemed critical for national defence.
Trump had previously suggested that the law was anti-business but invoked it on multiple occasions in his first term. After pressure from lawmakers and health officials, he used it to accelerate the production of ventilators and personal protective equipment in March 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic but was criticised for not using its powers sooner.
Former president Joe Biden also invoked the act on multiple occasions, including to address a shortage of infant formula and increase the extraction of minerals critical to the green energy transition.
The announcement was welcomed by the US mining industry. Rich Nolan, president of the National Mining Association, said it recognised that expanding the industry had become a “national security imperative”.
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“By encouraging streamlined and transparent permitting processes, combined with financing support to counter foreign market manipulation, we can finally challenge China’s mineral extortion,” he said.
China holds a dominant position in many mineral supply chains. Even where China does not dominate the mining of a metal, it is often a big player its processing — as with lithium, which is used in batteries.
The US imports about 80 per cent of its aluminium needs, much of which comes from Canada, according to JPMorgan. It also imports almost half of the copper it consumes, according to ING Bank.
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