This article was originally published as a commentary by the Stimson Center.

If anyone needed a signal of global interest in critical minerals and supply chains, the events in Washington D.C. earlier this month offered a clear one. In the midst of questions about the reliability of U.S. partnerships, uncertain tariff policy, and rhetoric around annexing Greenland, 54 countries and the European Union came together in D.C. at the Critical Minerals Ministerial to seek deeper collaboration to secure critical minerals supply chains and de-risk from China’s influence. The meeting and related announcements also provide an important signal for those engaged in the debates about mining minerals from the seafloor. Long-standing issues around deep-sea mining (DSM) are now squarely situated in a moment that features critical minerals, economic security, and national security as geopolitical priorities spurred by a U.S. government looking to disrupt the status quo.

Decades of Polarized Debates

Since their discovery, questions about ownership and access to seabed minerals have been raised. These questions were a catalyst for the negotiation of a treaty that ultimately became the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which created the International Seabed Authority (ISA) as a multilateral body governing seabed minerals in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). Industry and government attention on these minerals within exclusive economic zones (EEZ) or ABNJ has ebbed and flowed over time, and growing concerns about the impact of DSM over the last several years have led 40 countries to support a moratorium or precautionary pause to stop mining until there is greater understanding of deep-sea ecosystems and impacts.

The issues related to DSM are complicated and nuanced, but the main tension points can arguably be grouped into three categories: the environmental impact, the need for minerals, and the economics.¹Each category can be reduced to binary perspectives from DSM opponents and proponents. For opponents, there is not enough scientific information to assess the long-term impacts of mining, demand projections for seabed minerals aren’t valid, and it is an industry with a track record of failure that is not economically viable.  For proponents, there are decades of data that can help make informed decisions about mining and impacts can be managed, there is a demand for minerals for a broad range of economic and national security sectors, and industry will determine the economic viability question.  

These opposing positions complicate deliberations on this issue, and while the debates continue with no consensus in sight, two of these tension points — the need for minerals and the economics — are rapidly being shaped by geopolitics and the current U.S. administration.

The (Current) Critical Minerals Moment

Governments have long prioritized access to minerals deemed to be essential and that have high economic vulnerability and supply chain risk. Countries may develop their own definition of “critical” and process for making that determination, which often results in the creation of critical mineral lists.² Critical minerals support a wide range of sectors from high-tech industries, aerospace, defense, automotive, manufacturing, and energy, underpinning why they are deemed to be a strategic asset that must be secured domestically or along with partners.

While details may differ, there is often alignment around the critical minerals on these lists, with a subset of minerals called rare earth elements universally acknowledged as high priority. Cobalt, nickel, and manganese are on the lists of various countries (e.g., Australia, the EU, Canada, and Republic of Korea) and happen to be found in polymetallic nodules scattered on the seafloor. While there are other types of seabed mineral deposits, the abundance of these nodules in regions like the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean, their relative ease of extraction, and their comparatively high grade have put them in the spotlight. 

Geopolitical interest in critical minerals revolves around the raw minerals themselves, their processing and refining, and China’s dominance in both. On the latter, the last few years have offered hard lessons about the need to secure key resources and address chokeholds in their supply chains as China has leveraged its position in the market to pursue retaliatory actions or to bolster economic and diplomatic relationships with countries. This has outsized impact because China has an average market share of 70% in refining capacity for 19 out of 20 important strategic minerals as defined by the IEA and 91% market share when considering rare earths. In just the last three years, in response to various triggers from the United States and others, China has restricted exports of at least 11 minerals and rare earths, resulting in price hikes and supply shortages, including for minerals needed for magnets that are integral for industry and national security. Beyond just China’s actions, sources of instability range from extreme weather to political instability in pivotal land-based mining countries. The high potential for volatility is driving governments to proactively work with like-minded partners to address vulnerabilities before they become a problem, and diversification of access to resources offers a clear solution.

The Trump administration quickly advanced an all-of-the-above approach to critical minerals, starting with the March 2025 Executive Order on increasing U.S. mineral production, and its rationale was most recently bolstered through a Department of Commerce assessment that the United States is too reliant on foreign sources of imports of processed critical minerals and their derivative products. Pursuing seabed minerals, now framed as offshore critical minerals, is a key part of this strategy and is described in an April 2025 Executive Order that outlined a comprehensive approach for developing seabed mineral resources within the U.S. EEZ and beyond, establishing domestic processing capacity, and expanding international collaboration aligned with these objectives. The decision to unilaterally pursue mining in areas governed by the ISA leaves legal questions about the implications as non-parties to UNCLOS. Its push for activity within domestic waters via U.S. Pacific territories has resulted in opposition from local officials and public concern, and the plans for addressing substantial bottlenecks in processing and refining are unclear. Yet, progress is advancing rapidly with deep engagement with industry, streamlined regulations, exploration of new potential lease areas, including in Alaska and Virginia, new framework agreements with international partners, and potentially others with interest to expand existing cooperation to seabed minerals. 

The scope, speed, and way that the U.S. government has pushed its seabed mineral interests is striking, but it’s not alone in seeing the potential. At least 16 countries currently sponsor exploration leases in the ISA, though mining itself is on hold while the multilateral body negotiates its Mining Code.  Norway recently began a process to offer leases for mining activity in its EEZ, which is now under a four-year pause. The Cook Islands have long looked to harness abundant minerals within its EEZ, though its existing leases are currently paused from moving beyond exploration. This month, Japan took the first step to retrieve rare earths from mud found at over 6000 meters depth (a world’s first) outside of an island in their EEZ. And China has prioritized deep sea science and technology for years, has proven its ability for long-term strategic planning, holds the most leases of any country in the ISA, and is seeking seabed mineral partnerships with other countries in the region (i.e., the Cook Islands, Kiribati).

The (Current) Industrial Policy Moment

Similar to critical minerals, the perspectives and positions about the economics of DSM are widely divergent, but for the most part, they are grounded in market predications in the absence of government intervention. These assumptions may no longer hold in the same way. 

After several decades of rejecting government-led efforts to play a larger stabilizing role in industry and the markets, industrial policy efforts in the United States began again in the Biden administration, which used the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, and CHIPS Act to drive clean energy, manufacturing, and semiconductor priorities. The Trump administration has taken a different approach but has made several moves to bolster specific U.S. companies that it deems to be in the national interest, such as investing billions in Intel for a 10% owner stake or allowing NVIDIA and AMD to get around export controls in exchange for revenue of the sales.  For critical minerals, the government received a 15% stake in the rare-earth mining and processing company MP Materials though a $400 million investment by the Department of Defense and a 5% stake in Lithium Americas, the company developing a lithium project in Nevada. 

A willingness to think differently was on full display on February 2, when the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) launched Project Vault, an effort to establish a U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve located in secure facilities across the United States with a financial commitment of $10 billion, combined with nearly $2 billion of private capital. This stockpile could have wide implications for providing price stabilization and strategic autonomy, but it is also directly relevant for advancing a U.S.-based DSM industry. There is no domestic capacity to do any processing or refining of seabed minerals, and estimates are that it will take at least 5 years to build relevant processing capacity. This lag introduces a challenge in the DSM economic calculations in the near term, but stockpiling as envisioned in Project Vault, has been the main solution advocated by industry. 

These market-shaping strategies extend beyond just actions that the United States is doing alone.  One deliverable of the Ministerial was the creation of a new Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE) as the successor to the Biden-era Mineral Security Partnership, which would explore coordinated policy and projects to strengthen diversified, resilient, and secure critical minerals supply chains, seeking to create a trade zone insulated from external market disruptions. There is ongoing discussion about coordination on price floors that would give more assurance to industry about the value of any minerals, another key concern of industry actors interested in pursuing seabed minerals.

Combined with the overarching America First objective of opening the doors wide for U.S. business, it is worth watching what might be next that could lower the bar for entry for advancing a seabed mineral industry.

Conclusion

Uncertainty will continue to define the issues around DSM, whether its information on impacts of mining on ecosystems and fisheries, when the ISA’s Mining Code will be completed in the near term, or how demand projections for seabed minerals might shift with technological advancements or recycling. There is no guarantee that the FORGE or Project Vault will live up to their stated ambitions or that the administration’s focus on seabed minerals will actually lead to commercial-scale mining.

The meetings in Washington this month demonstrate that the United States is not alone in seeking to reshape a world where economic security is national security, and reliable access to secure supply chains of critical minerals is a matter of both. Under these conditions, there is certainty that efforts to expand the quest for minerals into the abyss will persist, and the DSM debates will need to operate in this context for the moment.