Trump victory boosts proposed mines near Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota

Proposed mines in northern Minnesota face an easier path with the presidential victory of Donald Trump — who has promised multiple times to re-invigorate mining in the state’s Iron Range.

Trump has already promised to restore the potential for mining on land eyed for the Twin Metals project, a massive underground copper-nickel mine in the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Under Project 2025, a policy plan for the next Republican president penned in part by former Trump officials, the federal government would again allow mining in a 225,000-acre tract of national forest. In 2022, the Biden Administration barred the issuance of new mineral leases there. Advocates have long worried that toxic runoff from copper-nickel sulfide mining could pollute the beloved matrix of boreal lakes, rivers and forests that stretch over a million acres.

“We will end that ban in, what do you think, about 10 minutes?” Trump said during a July rally in Minnesota.

Separately, the Biden administration canceled the federal leases Twin Metals held in Minnesota, which effectively killed the project. The company is challenging that decision in federal court, and it’s unlikely the Department of Justice will continue to defend it after power is transferred in January, said Chris Knopf, executive director of the advocacy group Friends of the Boundary Waters.

“I’m very concerned, at the federal level, what action the Trump Administration will take to hurt the Boundary Waters,” Knopf said. “I expect that will begin very, very soon.”

But proponents of the Twin Metals project and other copper-nickel mines in Minnesota have argued that the mines would provide jobs and needed metals to fuel new technologies needed for cleaner energy.

A spokesperson for Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, a mining supporter who was re-elected Tuesday to his Iron Range seat, wrote in an email that “the first thing our office did this morning was reach out to the Trump transition team to ensure we have a clear path for critical mineral mining.”

“Minnesota contains the world’s largest undeveloped copper-nickel deposit, and these resources hold tremendous promise in realizing many of our nation’s goals on energy security, American job creation, national security and bringing more manufacturing home,” Julie Lucas, the executive director of industry group MiningMinnesota, said Wednesday.

Twin Metals Minnesota spokeswoman Kathy Graul wrote in an email that the company is “committed to advancing our project in a bipartisan manner to ensure Americans can benefit from the much-needed copper, nickel and cobalt resources that are abundant in northeast Minnesota.”

Twin Metals is a subsidiary of Chilean mining giant Antofagasta.

For two other copper-nickel mine proposals, neither of which have disputes with the federal government about mineral rights, the effects of a Trump Administration are less clear.

The NorthMet project was originally proposed by the company PolyMet and is now helmed by a partnership of PolyMet and Teck American named NewRange Copper Nickel. The open-pit mine would be dug near Babbitt, and material would be processed at the former LTV Steel site near Hoyt Lakes.

PolyMet is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Swiss mining giant Glencore.

The NorthMet project has faced several setbacks in court in recent years, and this summer the company said it planned to study major changes to its mine plan. “We will continue to work respectfully with regulators, stakeholders, and rightsholders of all political affiliations,” NewRange spokesman Bruce Richardson wrote in an email.

Aaron Klemz, chief strategy officer at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, said state court cases related to the NorthMet project have already set important precedents to protect groundwater in Minnesota and limit the duration of mining permits, and that mines will still have to comply with those standards.

“The Trump administration is definitely prepared, probably more prepared than they were last time,” he said. “All the advocates are much more prepared than they were last time as well.”

The newest mine proposal, from the company Talon Metals, would extract mostly nickel in a mine near Tamarack, Minn. The company is at the very beginning of the permitting process, and it plans to issue an updated mine plan to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources this month, Chief External Affairs Officer Todd Malan said.

Unlike the other two projects, Talon had attracted significant support from the Biden administration. It was granted $114 million to build a processing facility in North Dakota for the ore it mines. That project may well find favor with a leading contender for Trump’s secretary of energy: North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

The company has another connection to Trump’s orbit. It has an agreement to sell nickel for electric vehicle batteries directly to Tesla Motors, the car company run by Trump backer Elon Musk.

And Trump’s repeated insistence on relying less on international trade may increase demand for metals that are largely mined domestically.

“Long term, I think there will be a focus on domestic sourcing of minerals like nickel and copper and cobalt for both energy and defense,” Malan said.