Murkowski: Trump Brings Serious Focus to Mineral Security
Anchorage, AK—U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) today issued the following statement about President Trump’s latest Executive Order, entitled Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production. Murkowski, who for years has pushed to modernize federal mineral policies to protect our security and strengthen our economy, applauded the order.
“Our lack of mineral security is our nation’s Achilles’ heel—a vulnerability that leaves us at the mercy of politically unstable and often adversarial nations for the basic building blocks of modern society. We import a wide array of minerals from those nations instead of producing minerals here at home, and we do it despite the potentially catastrophic threats that creates for our security, economy, and competitiveness,” Murkowski said. “China knows this. Russia knows this. But, importantly, so do President Trump and his team. I appreciate their recognition of this major vulnerability and their immediate steps to tackle it. This new order is the most robust effort we have seen in some time—with more agencies directed to make greater use of their authorities to strengthen our domestic mineral security for the long-term.”
Murkowski, the former Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has brought attention to our nation’s mineral-related vulnerabilities for more than a decade. President Trump signed most of her American Mineral Security Act into law at the end of 2020. She and her team also worked closely with the first Trump administration on mineral-related matters such as the first critical minerals list.
The United States’ mineral import dependence has risen significantly in recent decades. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. imported at least 50 percent of its supply of at least 46 mineral commodities in 2024, including 100 percent of 15 of them (counting the 17 rare earth elements as one commodity). The U.S. is more than 50 percent reliant on imports for 40 of the 50 federally designated critical minerals and imports 100 percent of its supply of 12 of them, including natural graphite, manganese, and gallium.
Our mineral security challenges come at a time when global mineral demand is generally projected to skyrocket. For example, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence hasprojected that nearly 400 new lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite mines will be needed around the world by 2035 to produce the raw materials for advanced batteries.
U.S. policies – particularly for federal lands – have not remotely kept pace. Last year, S&P Global reported the U.S. is the world’s second-slowest country for mine permitting, with it taking “an average of nearly 29 years to build a new mine in the U.S.” S&P found that “on federal lands, permitting is characterized by delays, unpredictability and increasing costs. This is a major constraint because federal lands comprise almost half of the total terrain of the 11 mineral-rich western states – and over 60% of Alaska,” which has deposits of nearly all critical minerals.
A fact sheet about President Trump’s executive order is available here, and the full text of the order is available here.
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