Trump takes a major step toward seabed mining in international waters

President Trump has ordered the U.S. government to take a major step toward mining vast tracts of the ocean floor, a move that is opposed by nearly all other nations, which consider international waters off limits to this kind of industrial activity.

The executive order, signed Thursday, would circumvent a decades-old treaty that every major coastal nation except the United States has ratified. It is the latest example of the Trump administration’s willingness to disregard international institutions and is likely to provoke an outcry from America’s rivals and allies alike.

The order “establishes the U.S. as a global leader in seabed mineral exploration and development both within and beyond national jurisdiction,” according to a text released by the White House.

Mr. Trump’s order instructs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to expedite permits for companies to mine in both international and U.S. territorial waters.

Parts of the ocean floor are blanketed by potato-size nodules containing valuable minerals like nickel, cobalt and manganese that are essential to advanced technologies that the United States considers critical to its economic and military security, but whose supply chains are increasingly controlled by China.

No commercial-scale seabed mining has ever taken place. The technological hurdles are high, and there have been serious concerns about the environmental consequences.

As a result, in the 1990s most nations agreed to join an independent International Seabed Authority that would govern mining of the ocean floor in international waters. Because the United States isn’t a signatory, the Trump administration is relying on an obscure 1980 law that empowers the federal government to issue seabed mining permits in international waters.

Many nations are eager to see seabed mining become a reality. But until now the prevailing consensus has been that economic imperatives shouldn’t take precedence over the risk that mining could damage the fishing industry and oceanic food chains or could affect the ocean’s essential role in absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.