CRITICAL MINERALSIn Its Hunt for Critical Minerals, the U.S. Is Misconstruing What Is and Is Not America’s
The minerals on the U.S. seabed are America’s. The minerals on the international seabed are not “America’s.” The administration plans to authorize companies to mine in international areas, nonetheless.
Americans have a reputation for being bad at world geography, and the current U.S. administration is no exception, particularly when it comes to correctly identifying what is – and is not – part of the United States of America.
President Donald Trump’s April 2025 executive order “unleashing America’s offshore critical minerals” provides an example. It purports to “unleash” seabed minerals both within and far outside U.S. jurisdiction.
The minerals on the U.S. seabed are America’s. The minerals on the international seabed are not “America’s.” The administration plans to authorize companies to mine in international areas, nonetheless.
I have studied the international agreements and customary rules governing the oceans since the Law of the Sea Convention entered into force in 1994. The Trump administration’s attempt to unilaterally exploit the seabed resources of the global commons will severely undermine part of the rules-based international order that the U.S. built and of which it has been the main beneficiary.
The Scramble for Critical Minerals
The U.S. has been trying to secure access to critical minerals that are essential for modern technology. These materials include nickel, manganese and cobalt for large batteries and copper for the power grid. All can be found on land, but some can also be found at the bottom of the sea.
Of particular interest are polymetallic nodules – agglomerations, typically smaller than a potato, containing manganese and other metals and found in the silt of the deep ocean floor. An Australian mining executive described these nodules as “an EV battery in a rock.”
The Clarion Clipperton Zone, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, contains one of the highest concentrations of polymetallic nodules. But whose nodules are they?
My Ocean
In September 1945, President Harry Truman claimed for America a large part of the seabed extending from its shores, areas that, before Truman’s claim, were shared by the international community.
In reaction, countries around the world spent the next five decades hammering out a system to limit how much of the seabed that coastal countries could claim, and establishing rules that would govern the remaining shared areas of the oceans.
The resulting arrangement, finalized in 1994, gives countries that border the ocean authority over the resources in the water and seabed within 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) of their coasts, known as “exclusive economic zones,” and, for some countries, additional areas of seabed beyond that limit.
