New Executive Order regarding Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production
9 min read
The mineral production Executive Order focuses on increasing funding and decreasing regulatory hurdles for mining and critical mineral projects in the United States.
The Executive Order
On March 20, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order regarding Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production, aimed at facilitating increased production of critical minerals on an accelerated timeline. The Executive Order calls upon multiple agencies (including the Department of Defense (DOD) and its Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), Department of the Interior (DOI), Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Energy (DOE), United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and the Small Business Administration (SBA), among others) to support new development and improvement of critical minerals production. Relatedly, the Executive Order expands the definition of “critical minerals” so that for the purposes of the actions mandated by this Executive Order, all relevant lists now include uranium, copper, potash, gold and any other element, compound, or material as determined by the Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC), formed by Executive Order of February 14, 2025.
Immediate Action on New Development
The Executive Order sets forth a series of rapid deadlines through the next few weeks, requiring various federal agencies to take specific actions to aid domestic mining and minerals projects as follows:
The designated agencies must provide a list of all mineral production projects for which a plan of operations, a permit application, or other application for approval has been submitted (by March 30, 2025) and identify priority projects for immediate approval / permit issuance; take all necessary or appropriate actions to expedite and issue the relevant permits and approvals (by April 9, 2025).
The Chair of the NEDC must (in consultation with relevant agency heads) submit to the Executive Director of the Permitting Council mineral production projects to be considered as “transparency projects” on the Permitting Dashboard established under the FAST Act of 2020 (by April 4, 2025). Within 15 days of receiving a submission, the Executive Director of the Permitting Council must publish any projects selected and establish schedules for expedited review. The NEDC must also solicit feedback from industry participants on regulatory bottlenecks and strategies for exploiting domestic mineral production.
Secretary of the Interior must prepare a list of all Federal lands known to hold critical mineral deposits and reserves and provide such list to the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (by March 30, 2025).
The DOD, DOI, USDA and DOE must identify as many sites as possible on Federal land managed by their respective agencies that may be suitable for leasing or development of private commercial critical mineral production enterprises, and provide such list to the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and the Chair of the NEDC, prioritizing sites which could be operational quickly and have greatest impact on domestic critical mineral supply chain (by April 19, 2025) and thereafter the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Energy must execute extended use leases with private entities developing commercial critical mineral production enterprises on the Federal lands identified on the list referred to above.
The Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Agriculture and the Administrator of the SBA must coordinate with each other and the head of any other agency providing loans, capital assistance, technical assistance and working capital to domestic critical mineral production project sponsors, to ensure that all private parties who enter into lease and commercial agreements pursuant to this Executive Order can utilize as many favorable terms and conditions as are available (by April 19, 2025).
The President of EXIM must release recommended program guidance for the use of mineral and mineral production financing tools authorized under the Supply Chain Resiliency Initiative and Make More in America Initiatives (by April 19, 2025).
The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy must convene meetings with buyers of minerals and work towards an announced request for bids to supply such minerals, and the DOD must further add mineral production as a priority industrial capability development area for the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program (assessing supply chain vulnerabilities and investing in production of targeted products) (by April 19, 2025).
The DOD, OSC and DFC must develop and propose a plan for the DFC to use DOD investment authorities, including the Defense Production Act (DPA) (under the delegated authority detailed below) and the OSC to establish a dedicated mineral and mineral production fund for domestic investments executed by DFC (by April 19, 2025). The plan must be approved by the Secretary of Defense, the CEO of DFC and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The Secretary of Defense will transfer appropriated DPA or Office of Strategic Capital funds to the DFC to reimburse DFC for its implementation services.
The Administrator of the SBA must prepare and submit to the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy recommendations for legislation to enhance private-public capital activities to support financings to domestic small businesses engaged in mineral production (by May 4, 2025).
Accelerating Investment under Emergency Powers
In furtherance of the above-listed actions, and pursuant to the national energy emergency declared under Executive Order 14156 (Declaring a National Energy Emergency), this new Executive Order delegates DPA authority to the Secretary of Defense (in consultation with other agency heads) and waives certain limitations on the Secretary of Defense’s use of the DPA to facilitate mineral production. This allows the Secretary of Defense to make available subsidy payments for domestic mineral production, procure and install additional equipment and facilities for domestic mineral production, and provide for the modification or expansion of privately owned mineral production facilities.
The Secretary of Defense is further directed to utilize the National Security Capital Forum to pair private capital with commercially viable domestic mineral production projects to the maximum extent possible, and all agencies with funding authority for mineral projects must rescind all policies that require applicants to submit Regulation S-K 1300 disclosures as part of their applications.
Removing Obstacles, Multiplying Incentives:
This Executive Order sweeps through the existing regulatory landscape for domestic mining and mineral production with a clear goal: to maximize participation by private capital and minimize any obstacles or requirements that may delay or deter developers from seeking to undertake projects of this nature. By lowering the “red tape” cost of critical mineral project development and increasing the availability of low-interest Federal capital, the Trump Administration seeks to lower barriers to entry for new players in the domestic minerals space while also rewarding existing players for increasing their investment in the United States. There are many potential US mining projects currently awaiting permitting issuances and approvals that may benefit from this initial period of intense inter-agency coordination, including (for example) Polymet Mining’s NorthMet copper-nickel mine in Minnesota, Perpetua Resources’ Stibnite gold and antimony mine in Idaho, and the Twin Metals copper, nickel and cobalt mine in Minnesota. The Stibnite and Twin Metals projects are both located on United States Forest Service-owned land, and various other projects (e.g., the Copper World project in Arizona) abut federal land and may seek to expand onto such land in the near future.
The deadlines to identify and fast-track the permitting of mineral production projects for which permit applications and operational plans have already been submitted will work to clear the decks at each of these Federal agencies, likely with a view to clearing up bandwidth to assess a hoped-for flood of new project proposals over the coming months.
It is important to note that Executive Order 14154 (Unleashing American Energy) ordered the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to rescind all NEPA regulations it has promulgated. While mining entities will still need to obtain permits, comply with NEPA regulations issued by other Federal agencies, and comply with NEPA itself, CEQ’s previous guidance and regulations have been removed, and Federal agencies have been ordered to revise their NEPA regulations to prioritize permitting speed and the removal of permitting obstacles. Projects seeking Federal funding under this new framework will, therefore, still need to understand and comply with requirements for environmental surveys and reporting obligations but may find a reduction in the needed level of analysis and reporting with respect thereto.
The Executive Order also directs the Federal government to prioritize critical mineral production on Federal lands known to hold mineral deposits and reserves. The relevant agencies collectively own or manage over 27% of land in the United States, which may now be open to critical mineral exploration and production. This will be advantageous to new entrants targeting extraction in areas previously off-limits and also to projects adjacent to Federal lands, which may now consider expansion previously thought not feasible.
Finally, we note that, although the definition of “critical minerals” set forth in 30 U.S.C. 1606 specifically excludes fuel minerals and limits “critical minerals” to those designated as critical by the Secretary of the Interior, in addition to the explicit expansion to include uranium, copper, potash and gold as “critical minerals,” the Executive Order authorizes the NEDC to designate any other element, compound or material as a “critical mineral” for purposes of the Executive Order. Considering the mandate of the NEDC, which includes increasing production of coal and petroleum products, the NEDC could in the future potentially also designate fuel minerals, such as coal, oil and natural gas as critical minerals for purposes of benefiting from the incentives contemplated in the Executive Order.
Although these actions signal the Trump Administration’s solutions for an American economy less dependent on imported mineral resources, unless these changes are eventually picked up in legislation passed by Congress, industry participants must balance capitalizing on the opportunity afforded by these new incentive programs with a clear-eyed view across multiple administrations. Executive Orders can be signed in an afternoon, but a mining project will be under construction for years, and in operation for decades. Nonetheless, the existing programs and related enabling laws for many of the relevant agencies already included work on critical mineral supply (with availability in the existing programs of the DOE’s Loan Programs Office, DFC’s and EXIM’s lending and guarantee programs and in the OSC) and this Executive Order is likely to both encourage such agencies to prioritize such projects and to provide enabling support through accelerated permitting where available.
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