Why the Trump-shock is now going subsea

The order applies not only to America’s own exclusive economic zone (EEZ) but to the high seas beyond American jurisdiction. The vast Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the north Pacific, which reaches depths of 5,500 metres, may hold bigger quantities of minerals such as nickel than all known terrestrial reserves. Ever more specialised equipment, such as remote-controlled vehicles, is fast being developed to bring minerals up. But mining (though not prospecting) is currently forbidden in international waters by the UN’s International Seabed Authority (ISA). The body, which was first established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), has for nearly three decades struggled to come up with a regulatory framework for deep-sea mining that pleases UN members, mining interests and environmentalists.

In 1982 President Ronald Reagan refused to sign that treaty, mainly because it would have constrained America’s freedom to mine the seabed. Yet America has acted in accordance with the main provisions of UNCLOS and criticised breaches of it, such as China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. In making a unilateral end-run around the ISA, and by extension the treaty, Mr Trump has upended that delicate balance and risks undermining compliance with the law of the sea. This, along with worries about environmental risks, are why his move is provoking growing international outrage.

The president no doubt cares little. He is determined to secure supplies of critical minerals for America that are “independent of foreign adversary control". That is another way of saying “not from China", which is currently by far the biggest processor of rare earths. (The same determination also colours Mr Trump’s land-grabbing views about Canada and Greenland, and his dealings with Ukraine.) The minerals in question are key building blocks of defence systems, electric vehicles and batteries, among many things. Global demand for minerals by clean-energy industries alone could quadruple by 2040, the International Energy Agency estimates.

The executive order instructs multiple parts of the government to work together to ensure national security, technological dominance and support for exploration, extraction and refining. The administration insists that this new strategy will not only hugely increase American-controlled supplies of critical minerals. It will also, officials claim, create around 100,000 jobs over the next ten years. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is to be in charge of issuing mining licenses.

At the front of the queue is The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian firm listed in America that has lobbied the Trump administration hard in recent weeks, above all over the need for America to have a strategic minerals reserve. TMC’s prospecting missions in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone have pulled up several thousand tonnes of polymetallic nodules. The executive order could not have come soon enough for TMC, which needs to raise more money. Following the order, its share price jumped by over 47%, valuing the company at over $1bn. It will now be much easier to raise new shareholder funds.

Until now ocean policymakers and mining executives in America had in private derided TMC as rapacious. They resented its breathless lobbying and not all of them agreed that a unilateral American move over deep-sea mining would be the best approach. Yet some are now coming around. After all, the administration’s push for a comprehensive policy for seabed mining is more than the previous administration managed. And the ISA, despite years of effort, is little closer to coming up with its own mining rules. Here, a growing number of policymakers and executives now say, is a chance for America to take back the initiative and help shape the international rules of the coming seabed boom. A rush of mining applications, including for the waters of American Samoa, will surely follow.

America’s move may cause some of the ISA’s members to dig in their heels, impose sanctions on American deep-sea mining companies and refuse to buy their mineral output. Canada may even seek to punish TMC. That would leave America isolated.

Perhaps more likely, though, is that it will break the uneasy truce at the ISA. More than two-dozen countries, including Canada, Britain and several EU members, have favoured a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining until more research is conducted into the damage it could cause to little-known ecosystems and until a code can be agreed to that includes robust environmental protections. Yet some of these countries will not want to be left on the sidelines of a breathless race to the seabed.

Meanwhile countries that have never supported a moratorium, such as China, Japan, India and Russia, will surely increase their pressure on the ISA to bless deep-sea mining, in international waters as well as in their own EEZs. China, which has bankrolled much of the ISA’s activities, is trying to present itself as a good global citizen (even as, in the South China Sea, it has ignored rulings declaring its maritime claims illegal). It is racing to make good a technological disadvantage with America and Japan in deep-sea mining. In the Pacific, it has befriended island states which see this as a lifeline for their precarious economies. In February, for instance, China signed a strategic partnership with the Cook Islands, whose prime minister, Mark Brown, carries a handful of nodules—“batteries in a rock"—almost wherever he goes.

The Cook Islands’ move angered its Western partners, particularly New Zealand, with which it has constitutional ties. Now America might push back with seabed inducements of its own for Cook Islanders. “We are once again at the mercy of powerful external forces, reminiscent of colonial exploitation that scarred our history," warned Palau’s president, Surangel Whipps, last year when calling for a mining moratorium. Now that Mr Trump has fired the starting gun and set off a race to the ocean floor, such cautions may soon look quaint.

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