What Is the White House Hiding in Its Minerals Deals?
Today, the consumer protection watchdog group Public Citizen released a report detailing the Trump administration’s secretive web of critical minerals deals around the world. The report, exclusively shared with Mother Jones, shows that the number of deals the administration has publicly claimed to have does not match up with the number of countries known to […]
The White House has been accused of hiding critical information about its secretive mineral deals in the public domain. The watchdog group Public Citizen has released a report that sheds light on the administration's covert strategies involving critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium, and graphite. The report highlights discrepancies between the administration's claimed deals and the number of countries that have officially signed these agreements.
Melinda St. Louis, the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, stated that the deals are being negotiated in secrecy without any public scrutiny or oversight. The administration's fixation on critical minerals, including their personal involvement, has been striking, as Trump has issued 12 executive orders related to these minerals since the start of his second term.
The report reveals that there is no publicly available database listing all the agreements, the involved countries, or potential profit-makers. Many of these moves, based on executive orders, do not require congressional approval. While the State Department fact sheet from February 2026 listed at least 38 international critical minerals agreements, only eleven countries were named, leaving 27 unaccounted for.
Only a fraction of the memoranda of understanding announced have been made fully public, with only two released by the US government. The Biden administration has prioritized trade deals for critical minerals, justifying it as a necessity for the green transition. However, the Trump administration's motives seem to go beyond clean energy goals, focusing on AI, military dominance, and seizing minerals for geopolitical purposes.
The report suggests that military contractors are being pressured to limit their reliance on trade with China for weapons components, leading the US government to seek out these minerals elsewhere. In some cases, Trump's family members may have profited from these deals. For instance, a group of American investors, including two of the president's sons, secured a massive untapped reserve of tungsten in Kazakhstan through a government-brokered deal.
The Trump administration's "minerals for security" deals with countries like Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been particularly controversial. These deals grant US actors significant control over the mining sectors of these conflict-ridden nations, often without proper labor, human rights, or environmental safeguards.
Written by urgent.news from Mother Jones's reporting — not their text. Machine-written; read the original for the full account.
