From Corporate Policy to Public Policy: Strong Mining Standards Deliver Benefits to Workers, Communities, Businesses, and our Environment
By Abhilasha Bhola
Automakers and other downstream mineral purchasers are exposed to financial and reputational risks associated with mining critical minerals. Supply chain disruptions due to community opposition, lawsuits, and worker protests can upset the delicate balance of just-in-time production. Additionally, human rights violations associated with critical minerals mining, particularly in the Global South, create reputational risks for companies that may be linked to these mines.
Adopting strong human rights and environmental standards for mining projects through laws and robust voluntary schemes is important to help mitigate the harmful impacts of mining projects, de-risk investments, and support a clean energy economy based on shared prosperity for people around the world.
Strong Laws and Regulations Can Drive Industry-Wide Improvements in Mining Practices
Laws and regulations are critical to protecting human rights and the environment in the mining industry. They can cut out low-road actors by mandating minimum due diligence requirements, level the playing field for companies committed to responsible mineral sourcing, and ensure public dollars are not subsidizing human rights abuses.
High road minerals policy is defined by safeguards for frontline communities and the environment, worker and human rights protections, good job creation, investments in mineral circularity, and transparency in contracting. In contrast, low-road minerals policy does not provide safeguards for impacted communities or the environment or deliver economic benefits to workers. It also creates dangerous and low wage jobs, lacks transparency, and incentivizes unnecessary new mining projects.
There are several examples of laws that can protect communities and workers from harm perpetuated by corporate actors. The Uyghur Forced Labor Act bans the import of goods made using forced labor in the People’s Republic of China. Through this law, over 4,000 shipments have been detained, at an overall value of almost $1.4 billion. This resulted in rapid supply chain diversification by forcing industries, such as the solar industry, to find new sources of mined materials. A provision in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) protects Mexican workers’ right to form a union and gives workers legal recourse if their rights are violated at work.
These laws also help protect automakers and other downstream mineral purchasers from financial and reputational risks associated with mining critical minerals, while protecting communities and the environment from abuses.
However, weak laws and regulations that do not uphold strong standards can facilitate corruption, environmental destruction, human rights abuses, and dispossession in underdeveloped countries in the Global South.
In February, Chelsea Hodgkins, senior EV policy advocate with Public Citizen’s Climate Program, testified in front of the House Natural Resources Committee on two bills currently being considered by the U.S. Congress. Each bill, as written, would accelerate mining domestically and abroad without meaningful safeguards for workers, communities, or the environment. Without significant changes, the Securing Essential and Critical U.S. Resources and Elements Minerals Act of 2026 (SECURE Minerals Act) and the Finding Opportunities for Resource Exploration Act (Finding ORE Act) would accelerate and reinforce the harms that have long defined the mining industry, such as corruption, environmental destruction, violations to Indigenous peoples’ rights, and risks to worker health and safety.
The SECURE Minerals Act
If enacted into law, the SECURE Minerals Act would waste billions of taxpayer dollars to benefit corporations and the President’s cronies while polluting the environment and putting Americans’ health at risk.
The Act would establish the Strategic Resilience Reserve Corporation of the United States as a government corporation with the power and authority to shape and control U.S. minerals markets. This body would have similar powers as public agencies, including the ability to issue regulations and purchase public lands for natural resource exploitation and related infrastructure. The Reserve would be financed with an initial $2.5 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars and managed by a Trump-appointed board.
Unlike other public agencies, the Reserve would not be subject to strong congressional oversight or transparency requirements. The Reserve’s Board would have discretion to forgo public notices of meetings and would not be required to publish meeting notes if it deems its content proprietary or sensitive. The Reserve’s records would be exempted from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and related state, tribal, and local open government and transparency laws.
The Finding ORE Act
The Finding Opportunities for Resource Exploration (ORE) Act would create memoranda of understanding (MOUs) between the U.S. and partner countries to jointly map and develop critical minerals and rare earth elements abroad.
This bill establishes a right of first refusal for U.S. companies and foreign allied companies to exploit discovered mineral resources in partner nations, thereby facilitating a new wave of dispossession in the Global South.
The bill also fails to clearly define human rights and environmental standards that projects must adhere to or provide clear criteria for how standards will be applied for projects. In doing so, it opens the door for weak reporting and accountability requirements regarding companies’ social, environmental, and labor practices.
Congress Must Act to Create Strategic, Forward-Thinking Minerals Policy That Protects Human Rights and the Environment
There are four key steps Congress must take to build out a forward-thinking, high-road minerals approach:
- Full Accounting of Mining Industry Subsidies: Congress must take full account of public subsidies for mining before any new appropriations are made to the mining industry. Through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress has already allocated at least $360 billion for critical minerals supply chain projects under a system of inadequate safeguards and absent oversight. But there has been no analysis of future mineral demand or how that demand could be met through investments in circularity instead of new mining.
- Data-Driven Industrial Policy: Congress must develop a clear, data-driven roadmap of the priority sectors, strategic material needs, and safeguards that will facilitate a high-road mineral industrial policy. This plan must include a holistic accounting of how investments in minerals recycling, circularity, substitution, and high standards contribute to resilient supply chains that put community prosperity, worker wellbeing, and environmental sustainability ahead of corporate profit.
- Circularity Instead of Unnecessary New Mines: Congress must invest in generative solutions, like circularity, re-mining, and resource substitution. These investments should create compounding benefits that reduce the impact of new mining projects, create good-paying jobs, and keep materials in domestic supply streams, which supports overall national security and U.S. competitiveness and economic resilience.
- Human Rights and Environmental Protections: Any project funded with public dollars should have strong, legally binding, and enforceable labor, human rights, and environmental protections. Mining companies and project developers must be held to high standards such as good governance provisions, local hire requirements, full transparency of contract terms, tax payments to host countries, and strong congressional oversight.