As China Cancels Rare Earth Exports, White House Looks for Deep Sea Supply

Shares in Canadian mining firm The Metals Company (TMC) soared Monday on news that President Donald Trump will likely order the creation of a federal "stockpile" of rare-earth minerals retrieved from the seabed. TMC - together with Swiss maritime engineering goliath Allseas - is the only company in the West with a purpose-built ship and a fully-tested deep sea mining capability.

The U.S. interest in seabed-sourced rare earths is strategic, and has recently become urgent. China supplies nearly 70 percent of the world's rare earth ores, and it dominates processing capacity for most of the rest. On April 4, in response to President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs on Chinese-made goods, Beijing restricted all exports of seven "heavy" rare earth elements and the products that contain them - not just to the U.S., but to any third country. These substances are used in high-strength magnets, high-temperature metal alloys, and other components that are critical for electronics, EVs, defense manufacturing and aerospace applications. When current stockpiles run out, U.S. manufacturers that need heavy rare earths will have few alternatives without a reliable Chinese supply.

According to the Financial Times, the White House plans to issue an order to create a government-owned "strategic reserve" for critical rare earth minerals, creating a large-scale market for the new seabed-sourced product. The goal, FT's sources said, would be to "create large quantities ready and available on US territory to be used in the future."

The Trump administration has already reportedly held talks with TMC about granting the company an American license to extract critical minerals in international waters, bypassing environmental concerns and ongoing regulatory talks at the International Seabed Commission.

The manganese nodules targeted by TMC's mining process grow on a timescale measured in hundreds of millions of years, according to researchers, and may play a central role in the little-understood abyssal ecosystem of the mid-Pacific. From preliminary studies, it appears possible that these polymetallic lumps can electrolytically split seawater into H2 and oxygen gas; if accurate, they would be the first known non-biological generators of O2 on Earth.