USGS officially adds copper, silver to critical minerals list
The United States has added copper and silver to an expanded list of critical minerals that it deems to be vital to America’s economy and national security.
The new list, compiled by the US Geological Survey, includes 10 additions to the previous one in 2022, taking the total to 60. The other notable additions are: uranium, metallurgical coal, potash, rhenium, silicon and lead. The addition of copper and silver confirms the earlier draft list proposed by USGS.
“We strongly support USGS’s decision to add copper to the critical minerals List,” Adam Estelle, president and CEO of the Copper Development Association (CDA), said in an email to MINING.COM.
“As CDA has long championed through our #CopperIsCritical campaign, copper holds the key to achieving America’s top policy objectives including energy dominance, AI supremacy, national security and re-industrialization,” he added.
New list
The USGS said it devised the list by using an economic model that it developed to estimate the potential effects of foreign trade disruptions of mineral commodities.
The assessment spans 84 mineral commodities, 402 industries and more than 1,200 scenarios, which the USGS says offers a more realistic and usable framework for policymakers.
The critical minerals list serves as a basis for which commodities the Trump administration will invoke a Section 232 probe for potential tariffs and trade restrictions, as it had done with copper earlier this year.
The list would also inform areas of investments in mining and resource recovery from mine waste, stockpiles, tax incentives for US mineral processing, as well as streamlined mine permitting.
The update comes just days after the US and China agreed to resolve their issue over rare earth minerals, which make up 15 entries (or a quarter of total) on the USGS list.
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4 Comments
Frances Boehm
It’s great to see copper and silver being added to the critical minerals list! These additions are crucial for sustainable development and green technology. Looking forward to seeing how this impacts the mining industry.
Rusty Atwood
Utilizing 100% of the ore is the best solution for getting more mining going here in the USA. That will speed up the permitting process and minimize the environmental impact of mining in Alaska Rare Earth LLC has been working with universities and labs to do just that.
Pleaz Joy
I enjoyed the article
Michael Jenkins sr
That’s great now let’s get the permitting sped up for nickle and copper so these mines projects can start to produce instead of having to wait so long after spending so much money exploring.