Published: September 10, 2025 | Share This

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The U.S. Department of the Interior, through the U.S. Geological Survey, released the draft 2025 List of Critical Minerals and a report that outlines a new model for assessing how potential supply chain disruptions could affect the U.S. economy.

The draft list will guide federal strategy, investment, and permitting decisions designed to secure the minerals needed to drive the U.S. economy and protect national security. The list of critical minerals informs direct investments in mining and resource recovery from mine waste, stockpiles, tax incentives for U.S. mineral processing, and streamlined mining permitting. 

“President Trump has made clear that strengthening America’s economic and national security means securing the resources that fuel our way of life. This draft list of critical minerals provides a clear, science-based roadmap to reduce our dependence on foreign adversaries, expand domestic production and unleash American innovation,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.

“By working with industry and state partners, we are ensuring that the minerals powering our energy, defense, and technology supply chains are produced and processed in the United States by American workers,” added Burgum.

The 2025 draft list includes 54 mineral commodities, of which 50 were included based on the results of the economic effects assessment, zirconium was included because of the potential for a single point of failure within the domestic supply chain and three were retained based on a qualitative evaluation.

Potash, silicon, copper, silver, rhenium, and lead were recommended for inclusion to the list and arsenic and tellurium were recommended for removal.

The 2025 list is the second update to the list of critical minerals, which began with a 2017 executive order by President Donald J. Trump that set the United States on a path to analyzing — and addressing — the vulnerability of supply chains for critical minerals. The Energy Act of 2020 further specified the process for developing updates to the list every three years.

“The draft 2025 list and methodology reflect USGS advances in forecasting potential mineral supply chain disruptions, as called for in the Energy Act of 2020,” said Sarah Ryker, acting director of the USGS.

“Minerals-based industries contributed more than $4 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2024, and with this methodology we can pinpoint which industries may feel the greatest impacts of supply disruptions and understand where strategic domestic investments or international trade relationships may help mitigate risk to individual supply chains. This is a next generation risk assessment that can be used to prioritize securing the nation’s mineral supply chains,” added Ryker.

The supply chain disruption model assessed the potential effects of more than 1,200 trade disruption scenarios of 84 mineral commodities on 402 individual industries and the U.S. economy overall. The modeled economic impacts were then weighted by the probability of the disruption scenario. Probability weighting combines the likelihood of a scenario occurring with the impact of the scenario.

For example, one scenario represents the complete restriction of U.S. net imports of rhodium from South Africa. The impact of that scenario on U.S. GDP was estimated to be a decrease of $64 billion, but its probability of occurrence was only 3.9 percent, yielding a probability-weighted impact of nearly $2.5 billion. 

The top ten mineral commodities, in descending order by the estimated probability-weighted impact of supply disruptions on the U.S. economy, are samarium, rhodium, lutetium, terbium, dysprosium, gallium, germanium, gadolinium, tungsten, and niobium.

Impacts in the billions of dollars may appear small against the $29 trillion U.S. economy, but those figures are probability weighted. As with the example of rhodium, the consequences of an actual disruption would be far greater. On America’s balance sheet, the loss of even one critical mineral can ripple through entire industries, from semiconductors to defense systems, undermining production capacity, technology leadership, and American jobs. The new USGS methodology enables policymakers to evaluate risks under multiple scenarios for all 84 mineral commodities analyzed, providing a clear economic measure that can be compared directly to other national priorities and risk-mitigation strategies.

Under the Energy Act, Secretary Burgum has broad authority to designate additional minerals for inclusion in the final list. For example, metallurgical coal and uranium are referred for consideration by executive orders and accordingly, the USGS intends to analyze and provide information to the secretary on the potential for including them on the 2025 list of critical minerals. 

On August 26, 2025, the draft list of critical minerals will be posted in the Federal Register for public comment for the next 30 days. Public comment is specifically welcomed on inclusion of metallurgical coal and uranium, whether other minerals should be added, and moving to an annual update for USGS technical input to the list of critical minerals. 

The USGS open-file report on the draft 2025 List of Critical Minerals can be read HERE.

The full list can be read on the Federal Registry HERE.

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