- President Trump is set to invoke emergency powers to bypass regulatory hurdles and fast-track domestic mining, processing and refining of critical minerals, reducing reliance on foreign adversaries.
- The urgency stems from China’s control over 80 percent of rare earth processing and key minerals (e.g., lithium, cobalt) – which are vital for technology, defense and renewable energy.
- A March 2025 executive order emphasized reviving the U.S. minerals industry to bolster national security, create jobs and reduce dependence on hostile foreign powers.
- Federal agencies must expedite mining permits, lease federal lands for extraction and propose reforms to outdated laws like the 1872 Mining Act to accelerate development.
- The plan includes public-private partnerships, loans and insurance for mining ventures, along with Export-Import Bank support to secure global mineral supplies for U.S. manufacturing.
(Natural News)—In a bold move to reduce America’s dependence on foreign adversaries for critical minerals, U.S. President Donald Trump has invoked emergency powers to fast-track domestic mining, processing and refining of these essential metals.
Reuters reported, citing a document set to be published in the Federal Register, that the chief executive will slash legal requirements – including some congressional funding approvals – relating to the Cold War-era Defense Production Act (DPA). Per the outlet, the DPA “grants the president broad emergency powers to control domestic industries and resources during national security emergencies.”
The urgency behind the order stems from China’s stranglehold on the global supply of rare earth elements and critical minerals, which are indispensable for modern technology and defense systems. By waiving regulatory hurdles and prioritizing federal land use for mining, the administration seeks to reclaim America’s position as a leader in mineral production – a sector vital for everything from smartphones to fighter jets.
Historically, the U.S. was a mining powerhouse – but the shift toward outsourcing coupled with China’s aggressive industrial policies eroded that dominance. Today, China controls over 80 percent of rare earth processing and holds significant influence over cobalt, lithium and other minerals essential for electric vehicles and renewable energy.
Inside Trump’s plan to boost U.S. mining
Trump’s recent actions picked up on an executive order (EO) he signed months earlier. The EO dated March 20, 2025 aimed to bolster national security by reviving the U.S. minerals industry, which has long been overshadowed by China’s near-monopoly over global supply chains.
“The U.S. possesses vast mineral resources that can create jobs, fuel prosperity and significantly reduce our reliance on foreign nations,” The March order stated. “Our national and economic security are now acutely threatened by our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production.” (Related: America is too reliant on foreign sources of key minerals needed for “green” economy, data shows.)
Under the order, federal agencies must identify and expedite permits for priority mining projects within days. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Energy are tasked with leasing federal lands to private companies for mineral extraction.
Additionally, the administration is pushing for legislative changes to the 1872 Mining Act to streamline waste disposal regulations – statutes that have historically slowed development. The law governs mineral rights on public lands. But beyond regulatory rollbacks, the plan leverages financial incentives to spur investment.
The DoD will partner with private capital through the National Security Capital Forum, while the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation is authorized to provide loans and political risk insurance for domestic mining ventures. The Export-Import Bank is also directed to secure global mineral supplies for U.S. processing, ensuring a steady feedstock for domestic manufacturers.
The Trump administration’s move mirrors past efforts, like the 2010 rare earth crisis when China restricted exports, prompting calls for domestic supply chain resilience. Ultimately, the order signals a decisive step toward decoupling from adversarial supply chains. As global competition for resources intensifies, the success of this initiative could determine whether the U.S. reclaims its industrial independence – or remains at the mercy of foreign producers.
Visit Metals.news for more similar stories. Watch this Fox News report about Russia and the U.S. negotiating a deal for rare Earth minerals.
More related stories:
- China’s ban on rare earth minerals export rattles the world tech industry.
- Texas congressmen introduce bill to reduce U.S. reliance on China rare-earth minerals.
- Exactly as we warned would happen, China just banned exports of critical minerals in response to Trump’s threat of punitive tariffs targeting BRICS nations.
Sources include:
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
