President Donald Trump spent most of 2025 hacking away at large parts of the federal government. His administration fired, bought out, or otherwise ousted hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Entire agencies were gutted. By so many metrics, this year in politics has been defined more by what has been cut away than by what’s been added on.
One tiny corner of regulation, however, has actually grown under Trump: the critical minerals list. Most people likely hadn’t heard of “critical minerals” until early this year when the president repeatedly inserted the phrase into his statements, turning the once obscure policy realm into a household phrase. In November, the U.S. Geological Survey quietly expanded the list from 50 to 60 items, adding copper, silver, uranium, and even metallurgical coal to the list. On Monday, South Korean metal processor Korea Zinc announced that the federal government is investing in a new $7.4 billion zinc refinery in Tennessee, in which the Department of Defense will hold a stake.
But what even is a critical mineral?
The concept dates back to the first half of the twentieth century, especially World War II, when Congress passed legislation aimed at stockpiling materials vital to the United States’ well being. President Trump established the critical minerals list in 2018, with the defining criteria being that any mineral included be “essential to the economic and national security of the United States” and a supply chain that is “vulnerable to disruption” Being on the list can convey a slew of benefits to anyone trying to extract or produce that mineral in the U.S., including faster permitting for extraction, tax incentives, or federal funding.
As Grist explored in its recent mining issue, critical minerals are shaping everything from geopolitics to water supplies, oceans, and recycling systems. If there is to be a true clean energy transition, these elements are key to it. Metals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel form the backbone of the batteries that power electric vehicles. Silicon is the primary component of solar cells and rare earth magnets that help make wind turbines function. 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 — some 80 percent. In his first term Trump tried to increase domestic production of these minerals. “The United States must not remain reliant on foreign competitors like Russia and China for the critical minerals needed to keep our economy strong and our country safe,” he said in 2017. Securing a domestic supply was also a cornerstone of former President Joseph Biden’s landmark climate bills, the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Now, as Trump has taken office again, he’s made critical minerals an ever more central part of his policy platform. We’re here to demystify why this has been a blockbuster year for critical minerals in the United States — and where the industry may go in the future.
A highly unusual strategy
In March, Trump issued an executive order meant to jumpstart critical mineral production. “It is imperative for our national security that the United States take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent,” 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 accomplish these goals by both reducing the regulatory barriers to production and by investing in the companies poised to do it.
Since then, Trump has signed agreements with multiple countries to increase investments in critical minerals and strengthen supply chains. Most recently, the U.S. made 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 pursue seabed mining in the deep waters around American Samoa, near Guam and the Northern Marianas, around the Cook Islands, and in international waters south of Hawaiʻi — prompting 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 American companies to source minerals, and cuts to federal funding have harmed mining workforce training programs and research into critical minerals.
While the Biden administration provided grants and loans to various mining companies, Trump is deploying a highly unusual strategy of buying stakes in private companies, tying the financial interests of the U.S. government with the interests and success of these commercial mining operations. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has spent more than a billion dollars in public money to buy minority stakes in private companies like MP Minerals, ReElement Technologies, and Vulcan Elements. In Alaska, that strategy has involved investing more than $35 million in Trilogy Metals to buy a 10 percent 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 the Canadian company Lithium Americas behind Thacker Pass in Nevada, which is expected to be the largest lithium mine in the U.S. The Biden administration approved a $2.23 billion loan to Lithium Americas in October 2024; the Trump administration then restructured the loan and obtained a 5 percent stake in the project and another 5 percent stake in Lithium Americas itself. (A top Interior Department official has since been reported to have benefited financially from the project.) That’s despite allegations that the mine violates the rights of neighboring tribal nations and is proceeding without their consent, which Lithium Americas has denied.
The outlook for critical minerals
Historically, the federal government has only taken equity stakes in struggling companies, such as through the Troubled Asset Relief Program that sought to stabilize the auto industry and U.S. banks during the 2008 financial crisis. “What we’re talking about here is something very different, which is an industry that has not yet launched,” said Beia Spiller, who leads critical minerals work at the nonprofit research group, Resources for the Future.
“Whether that’s going to work, I think is unlikely,” Spiller continued. “The best way to get an industry up and running is to have policies that raise the tide for everyone, not just choosing winners.”
In reference to Lithium Americas, Spiller said, “If you actually look at the cost fundamentals, it’s not a very competitive company.” Lithium Americas mines metal from clay, an old process that requires a lot of land, open pit mines, and heavy machinery — whereas some newer operations use direct lithium extraction, which is more cost effective in the long term. “So we just took an equity stake in a company that is going to face headwinds in terms of costs — now the American public faces that downside.”
It must also be stressed that the Trump administration’s rapid push to shore up the U.S.’s control over critical minerals isn’t about transitioning the country away from fossil fuels. Instead, the whole effort seems to mostly be 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. Another $5 billion was allocated for the department of defense to invest in critical mineral supply chains.
In October, a former official at the defense department told the Financial Times that the agency is “incredibly focused on the stockpile.” “They’re definitely looking for more, and they’re doing it in a deliberate and expansive way, and looking for new sources of different ores needed for defence products,” the unnamed official said.
Last week the administration announced that next year they plan to take equity stakes in more mining companies. It’s possible, Spiller said, these investments could extend to outfits that are piloting deep sea mining. That carries a new set of risks, as many banks refuse to insure deep sea mining operations, it’s unclear whether seabed mining operations will be able to even get off the ground before the end of Trump’s term, and the legal repercussions associated with undermining the Law of the Sea could fracture the stability among global powers — and make global climate action that much harder.
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