From the Congo to the Oceans: Trump America's New "Mineral" Destiny
The United States has already dismantled the Congo's economy to pursue American mining interests. Now the Trump Administration seeks to control mining in the oceans, too.
Trump’s administration’s plan to make seabed mining more ubiquitous is to start issuing permits for mining
companies to mine in international waters, stretches of water that do not belong to any one country. While
some countries, such as Japan, practice seabed mining, they do so in territorial waters. For a country to
begin exploiting the resources of international waters would be risking breaching international law, according
to Leticia Carvalho, Secretary-General of the International Seabed Authority. Trump’s administration’s main
area of interest is the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean. There, seabed mineral resources, which
the White House defines as “polymetallic nodules, cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, polymetallic sulfides,
heavy mineral sands, phosphorites, and other mineral-bearing materials,” are abundant due to their accumulation
in oceans over the past millions of years. Advocates of the seabed mining argue that the abundance of these
minerals in the ocean makes the process more preferable to land-based mining, which is often regarded negatively
by human rights groups and host communities. In the Congo, for example, the mining of cobalt, a critical mineral for EVs and electronics but a toxic one to touch and breathe, has "ravaged the landscape of the DRC." Millions of trees have been cut down to make way for mining, and the process
has caused water pollution and soil degradation. Additionally, the mining has been linked to human rights abuses, including child labor and exploitation of workers who are required to dig out the minerals with their bare hands.
However, numerous environmental concerns come with seafloor mining. For the past decade, the International Seabed
Authority (ISA) has been trying to reach an agreement on rules of seafloor mining called a mining code. In February
2026, the ISA, which was created by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, met in Kingston, Jamaica, to discuss
how to end the impasse that the Trump administration is trying to implement. However, since the U.S. has not ratified
the convention, the nation is not legally obligated to abide by its rules. They have, though, followed most of the
convention’s standards to date. However, now it seems that the Trump administration may begin issuing clearances
for mining companies to seamine before the ISA has established new global standards for mining.
Without global standards being observed by capitalist countries like the United States, environmental harms can
be manifested in the discharge of sediment plumes and the disruption of carbon storage in the seabed, one of
Earth’s most significant carbon sinks. All of these effects have a very real capability of destroying the marine
ecosystem. Mining cobalt-rich crusts, for example, would require the removal of large areas of seamounts, underwater
mountains where the mineral is abundant, killing off many top predator species like sharks. Additionally, the release
of plumes once mineral ores are preprocessed (crushed) affects sea organisms’ feeding and breathing. Furthermore, the
plumes may contain toxic metals that are bioaccumulated in commercial seafood, contaminating the seafood supply.
Whether or not the United States will move forward with Trump’s plan to mine international waters is a controversial
topic that many environmentalists and nations are discussing. Particularly in a world dominated by capitalist countries
like the United States, there is less compassion and care for the people and economies of still-developing countries.
University research commissioned by Greenpeace International has found that the overwhelming benefit of deep-sea mining
would be to a few private corporations, violating UNCLOS regulations on how deep-sea mining must benefit humanity
collectively. As a reference, if deep-sea mining were to take place beginning in the early 2030s, African countries
are expected to receive just 0.49% per country of total ISA royalties. Mining companies, on the other hand, would
receive 98% of the revenue ($5.43 billion). The U.N. Special Rapporteurs view on this issue’s impact on human rights is best exemplified by this comment: