Trump signs Executive Order for critical minerals

Larry W. Reaugh, President and Chief Executive Officer of American Manganese Inc., is pleased to report that the US Government recently released the following Executive Order regarding critical minerals (click here).

Highlights:

• President Trump has signed an Executive Order and declared a National Emergency to expand the domestic mining industry, support mining jobs, alleviate unnecessary permitting delays, and reduce the Nation’s dependence on China for critical minerals.
• The Order begins the process for the Department of the Interior to develop a program to use its authorities under the Defense Production Act (DPA) to fund mineral processing that protects national security.
• The action will cut down on unnecessary delays in permitting actions, providing Americans opportunities for jobs, and improving economic and national security.
• The United States is heavily reliant on imports of numerous critical minerals that are critical to America’s national security and economic prosperity, despite the presence of significant sources of some of these minerals across the United States.
• In 2019, President Trump signed five Presidential Determinations finding that domestic production of rare earth elements and materials is essential to the national defense.
• Through this new Executive Order, more funding will be available to help mining projects, thereby strengthening the economy and improving US national security.

As mentioned in a Forbes article, the Executive order puts American Manganese in a favourable position given the Company’s ability to alleviate the identified material dependencies and contribute to a solution as follows:

• The US is 100% import-dependent on manganese and there is no substitution for manganese in the production of steel. Artillery Peak, Arizona contains vast resources of manganese, and American Manganese holds a US patent which can potentially be utilized for the production of Electrolytic Manganese Metal (EMM) and Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide (EMD). The Company produced a pre-feasibility report in 2012 on producing EMM from Artillery Peak resources. No action was taken on this pre-feasibility report due to the falling price of manganese, which was a result of overproduction in China.

The critical materials list includes commonly used lithium-ion battery materials and American Manganese holds patents for recycling cathode materials used in lithium-ion batteries with high purity and recovery potential of lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese.