There Be Treasure in the Depths, Matey Array ( [cookie] => a6ec3e-dee21b-d31038-62a433-8838bd [current_usage] => 2 [max_usage] => 2 [current_usage_crypto] => 0 [max_usage_crypto] => 2 [lock] => [message] => [error] => [active_member] => 0 [subscriber] => 0 [role] => [visitor_id] => 212651 [user_id] => [reason] => Usage under limits [method] => ) 1 and can accesss 1

“Knowledge of the oceans is more than a matter of curiosity. Our very survival may hinge upon it.” – President John F. Kennedy, 1961

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Good morning!

As we have written about on numerous occasions, China enjoys a dominance in the supply and processing of such materials that gives the Middle Kingdom a powerful lever to use against most other countries – including the U.S. A critical part of the U.S.-China trade détente announced last week involved an agreement by China to suspend the restrictions on the export of rare earth metals and magnets that it had previously imposed as trade tensions escalated.

Unsurprisingly and like Joe Biden before him, President Donald Trump has devoted a significant share of his attention to strengthening U.S. access to critical minerals and metals, hoping to neutralize the potency of China’s leverage. This has been an explicit and implicit part of Trump’s recent moves with regard to Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Greenland, as well as recent proposals regarding minerals processing on U.S. military bases – to list just a few examples. 

Trump has now expanded that front to the oceans. On April 24, he signed an executive order directing the U.S. government to facilitate the deep-sea mining of critical metals, including in international waters. The administration believes that such efforts could yield a supply of nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, titanium, and rare earth elements. The order calls for streamlined permitting for “prospecting and granting leases for exploration, development, and production of seabed mineral resources.”

That’s a proposal that has obvious potential advantages. “With the same energy, we can get more materials: nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese,” according to Daisuke Sasaki, a spokesperson for Japanese metals processor Pacific Metals. He also told the Financial Times that deep-sea mining is “more economic and environmental than land-based mining.”

There are a lot of environmental advocates who disagree with that last assessment, however, and their arguments have convinced the governments of at least 33 countries to call for at least a temporary moratorium on the practice, including many U.S. allies. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), a United Nations-affiliated entity that claims “the legal mandate to regulate mineral-related activities” in international waters (though the U.S. is not a signatory to the U.N. treaty that created the ISA), has consistently denied applications for such activities in international waters, and China’s reaction to Trump’s executive order cited the regulatory body. “No country should bypass the ISA or international law to unilaterally authorise exploration and development activities in the international seabed area,” its Foreign Ministry said.

Is it a coincidence that China is the largest financial backer of the ISA? Is it a coincidence that China has long been actively engaged in the deep-sea minerals exploration of the type that Trump wants to expedite for the U.S. and the private sector (with five out of the 31 contracts the ISA has awarded for mining-related deep-sea exploration)? 

Perhaps that question isn’t important – at least, not important enough to override the reality that both the U.S. and China need these materials badly, and neither are likely to let regulations stand in the way of their pursuit. Despite legal and environmental concerns, and despite the physical risks and engineering challenges of working in the ocean depths (anywhere from 0.5 miles to 4 miles underwater), the quest for the ocean’s riches are, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration put it after Trump’s announcement, “the next gold rush.”

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