the worldwide sources teams betting on a Trump mining revival | USAEMALL.com

Deep below the rolling hills near Superior in Arizona, a giant copper deposit lies more than a mile underground. It could be one of the first major mining projects to get the go-ahead as the Trump administration seeks to boost US domestic mineral output.

Since taking office in January, US President Donald Trump has focused on securing access to critical minerals around the world — from Greenland to Ukraine to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But now, mining executives are eager to see how, and whether, this administration will be just as determined to develop the US’s vast domestic resources.

Rio Tinto, BHP, Antofagasta, Freeport-McMoRan and Barrick Gold are among the companies poised to benefit from the White House’s pro-mining policies.

Trump and interior secretary Doug Burgum have indicated their support for domestic mining in broad terms, although few concrete policies have emerged yet.

Burgum said on Wednesday that the government wants to speed up permitting for extractive industries and cut red tape. “If we’re going to ‘drill, baby, drill,’ we have to also ‘mine, baby mine’,” he told the Cera conference in Houston.

In the coming days, Trump is expected to sign an executive order on critical minerals, which will probably include permitting reform, and support for metals refining facilities, according to people familiar with the plans.

One of the biggest projects that could get approved during Trump’s term is Rio Tinto’s Resolution copper mine near Superior, Arizona, which could meet a quarter of US copper needs. Another is the Twin Metals copper-nickel mine, owned by Antofagasta, in Minnesota.

An analysis by Benchmark Minerals found that if all the copper mines in the US pipeline were developed, including Resolution and Twin Metals, that would add nearly 2mn tonnes annually to copper supply — equivalent to a tenth of global production.  

Mark Bristow, chief executive of Barrick Gold, which runs several large gold mines in Nevada, said he was optimistic about US mining under Trump.

“The last time he was in the White House, he took a while to get to the mining side, but definitely changed things,” said Bristow. “And so we are looking forward to him doing something like that in the mining industry again.”

The US has huge reserves of natural resources, but strict regulations and its legal system have made it difficult to get mines open today. 

It takes 29 years on average to permit a new mine in the US, making it the second-longest wait in the world behind Zambia, according to a report published in June by S&P Global, which also noted that only three mines have opened in the US since 2002.

“The US is not achieving its mineral potential,” wrote Frank Hoffman, associate director at S&P Global and the report’s author. “It has a huge and strategically important mineral endowment, whose development is too long, and ultimately too uncertain, to attract the investment its peers receive.”

Under the Biden administration, the Inflation Reduction Act provided tax credits for certain mining projects and facilitated loans for critical minerals projects.

Some changes the government could make to speed up domestic mining include issuing new rules for the National Environmental Policy Act — which governs how federal agencies make decisions — and supporting more mines on federal lands, where it has historically been difficult to build them.

The White House could also reverse national monument proclamations protecting land from development, opening them up for extraction.  

“The bold vision for moving forward with domestic mining is certainly there,” said Morgan Bazilian, professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines, adding that the permitting reform will be key.

“There have been almost no new mines in the US in the last several decades, and almost all of them were paused under the last administration,” he added.

One of the only mines to get permitted recently was Perpetua Resources’s Stibnite mine in Idaho, which will produce gold as well as antimony, a metal essential for defence and used in alloys and semiconductors.

When China, which controls most of the world’s antimony processing, placed curbs on exports last year, it sent alarm bells ringing in Washington.

“The government has realised that we have offshored so much manufacturing . . . There is recognition that we need to reinvest in mining in the United States,” said Jon Cherry, chief executive of Perpetua.

The Perpetua mine, which received federal approval in January under the Biden administration, has gained funding from the Department of Defense and is applying for a loan from the US Export-Import Bank.

Mines that produce critical minerals — which include copper, rare earths and battery metals, such as lithium and nickel — will probably enjoy the most support under the Trump administration, which considers access to these minerals a national security issue.

Domestic production of copper, which is essential for wiring, utility grids and electric vehicles, will get a big boost if the Resolution mine, jointly owned by Rio Tinto and BHP, gets approval.

The project’s fate rests with the Supreme Court, which will soon issue a verdict on a religious liberty case brought by Apache tribes. They oppose the mine because it would destroy a sacred site at Oak Flat in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest.

If the Supreme Court’s verdict is favourable for the project, it would remove a major hurdle and mean final permits would probably go ahead. 

“Under the Trump administration, there is an increasing recognition of the need for domestic sources of copper and other critical materials in the US,” said Katie Jackson, Rio Tinto’s head of copper. “We can play a significant role in helping to deliver these materials.”

Another big shift under the Trump administration could be in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, a wilderness area in Minnesota, close to the Canadian border.

The Biden administration imposed a 20-year ban on mining in the area, which is prized for its scenic waterways. A bill in Congress seeks to reverse that.

If the ban is lifted that would benefit Antofagasta’s Twin Metals copper-nickel mine, which is near the Boundary Waters, as well as the nearby NewRange copper-nickel projects, which are jointly owned by Teck Resources and Glencore.

“The problem of global copper shortages could be solved by the US. It is a resource-rich country,” said Chris LaFemina, mining analyst at Jefferies. “The problem is getting permits to develop new mines.”

Last month the Department of the Interior, under Burgum, started a review of national monuments, as well as a review of “all domestic mining and processing of non-fuel minerals to restore America’s critical mineral dominance”.

Not all executives are so optimistic, however, and some say they are weary of US policies that flip-flop every four years when the government changes.

“There was a lot of talk, in the last go-around [the last administration], and not a lot of action,” said Randy Smallwood, chief executive of Wheaton Precious Metals. “They just seemed to still find ways to drag things out and drag it on.”

Additional reporting by Malcolm Moore.