(Headline USA) President Donald Trump is taking a step toward granting the U.S. mining industry’s biggest wishes by singling out one metal as a focus of his domestic minerals policy: copper.
An executive order Trump signed Tuesday calls for boosting the domestic copper industry by investigating the national security implications of imports and weighing tariffs as a response.
“The United States has ample copper reserves, yet our smelting and refining capacity lags significantly behind global competitors,” the order reads.
“A single foreign producer dominates global copper smelting and refining, controlling over 50 percent of global smelting capacity and holding four of the top five largest refining facilities,” Trump continued. “This dominance, coupled with global overcapacity and a single producer’s control of world supply chains, poses a direct threat to United States national security and economic stability.”
Environmentalists will likely try to contest, as they already stalled Twin Metals project near northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, a lake-filled wilderness on the U.S.-Canada border.
U.S. copper use, imports and exports have fluctuated somewhat over the past two decades, according to the Copper Development Association.
While the U.S. in 2024 mined an estimated 1.1 million tons of copper and exported about a third of that in primarily unrefined form, it imported 810,000 tons, nearly all of it refined, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Trump’s noted that China is the world’s leading refiner of copper, with over half the world’s smelting capacity.
How much those numbers might change with rising copper demand to support construction of transmission lines and manufacturing of wind turbines and electric vehicles remains to be seen. Some predict global demand to double by 2030 and keep rising, notes the National Mining Association.
Even before Trump’s plan for copper, the association was encouraged by Trump executive orders promoting mining. One lifts government rules and regulations responsible for “undue burdens” on mining and mineral processing, calls for updating the U.S. Geological Survey’s list of minerals deemed critical to the nation and backs efforts to find and mine new sources of those minerals.
“Made in America, America first, starts with American mining and American miners that supported this president across the country,” National Mining Association president and CEO Rich Nolan said.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
