President Donald Trump signed multiple executive orders on Thursday, including an order to ramp up deep seabed mineral exploration, collection, and processing.
The order, Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources, aims to establish “the United States as a global leader in responsible seabed mineral exploration, development technologies, and practices, and as a partner for countries developing seabed mineral resources in areas within their national jurisdictions.”
Particularly, it directs streamlined permitting to promote the rapid development of America’s capabilities to explore, characterize, collect, and process seabed mineral resources. This is to be accomplished “without compromising environmental and transparency standards,” per the order.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is directed to expedite the permitting process for commercial recovery and exploration permits, a White House fact sheet on the order notes.
Under the order, Lutnick, along with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, are tasked with providing a report that identifies “[p]rivate sector interest and opportunities for seabed mineral exploration, mining, and monitoring in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf,” per the fact sheet.
The report will also identify “Private sector interest and opportunities for nodule and other seabed mineral resource processing capacity in the U.S. or on U.S. flagged vessels,” per the document.
Burgum and Lutnick, in concert with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will create a plan to map prime seabed locations for data collection. They and Wright are also ordered to “engage with partners and allies for seabed mineral exploration and provide a joint report for the feasibility of an international seabed benefit-sharing mechanism.”
Burgum is to identify which critical resources can be extracted from seabeds for defense, energy, and infrastructure usage.
Trump signed a second executive order on Thursday to strengthen federal service probationary periods.
Per a fact sheet:
- The Order establishes a new Civil Service Rule XI to govern probationary and trial periods for federal employees, superseding existing civil service regulations that limited agency discretion in evaluating such employees.
- Instead of these employees becoming tenured civil servants by default, Rule XI requires agencies to affirmatively certify that finalizing their appointment after their probationary or trial period concludes advances the public interest.
The document adds that under the order, agencies are required “to assess employees’ fitness and alignment with agency needs and the public interest.”
