In the waning hours of the 2025 government shutdown, the Trump administration initiated a request for information (RFI) for a lease sale of minerals located in U.S. waters near the Mariana Trench. Leaders in the nearby U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands (NMI) were not informed of the plan ahead of time. Efforts to mine the deep sea are praised by mining executives but received with near-universal opposition from government leaders and Indigenous communities in the island territories, including governors and territorial legislatures. Opposition is directed in large part toward the risky and untested nature of deep-sea mining, the fact that outdated U.S. mining laws mean companies don’t have to pay any revenue to the territorial governments in exchange for these minerals, and the lack of federal government engagement with communities and leaders. Local and national Indigenous-rights activists and conservation organizations tallied more than 60,000 letters, petitions, and comments opposing the plan.
The RFI in the Mariana Trench is not isolated; it is part of a broader pattern of the second Trump administration prioritizing corporate extraction over the stewardship of U.S. public lands and waters and the economic prosperity of local communities. In the past year, similar RFIs for deep-sea mining have taken place in American Samoa and Alaska. These communities are being asked to bear the brunt of ecological and social harms caused by mining, while the benefits are expected to flow to mining companies.
Deep-sea mining poses a serious threat to marine ecosystems, with the potential to cause irreversible damage to the seabed and surrounding ocean resources. The process involves disturbing vast areas of the ocean floor, releasing sediment plumes and toxic discharge that can spread for miles. A recent study found that waste discharge from deep-sea mining operations could significantly reduce food availability for deep-ocean species, effectively starving marine life. There are growing concerns among scientists that deep-sea mining has long-lasting impacts, altering fragile habitats that have taken millennia to form.
While mining executives claim deep-sea mining is “inevitable,” Indigenous leaders have identified the Trump administration’s approach as “resource colonialism.” This is a model in which extraction proceeds, profits flow outward, and Indigenous peoples and local communities are left with permanent ecological damage and no economic return. This approach exacerbates the extent to which rural and island communities are left behind.
Putting corporate interests ahead of communities
Alaska and the Pacific territories are the most remote and high-cost communities in the United States. These rural Americans voted for candidate Trump largely because of economic issues; he promised to bring jobs to left-behind workers and communities across rural America. But his economic policies are doing the opposite.
The Trump administration has repeatedly framed mining, fishing, drilling, and logging as engines of rural economic revival. In practice, these extractive industries are increasingly automated, capital intensive, and designed to minimize labor. Even where extraction booms, communities see few jobs—while aggressive tax avoidance and weak royalty structures leave little revenue for schools, health care, or infrastructure.
Indigenous leaders have identified the Trump administration's approach as “resource colonialism.”
This same logic drives the administration’s approach to deep‑sea minerals. Public lands and waters are treated as balance‑sheet assets—valuable only when they can be leased, extracted, or sold. That narrow financial view blinds policymakers to the economic value that communities derive from conservation, sustainable fisheries, and long‑term stewardship. Deep‑sea mining fits squarely within a broader extractive agenda: Public resources are monetized for the benefit of a few, while the economic gains are exported to distant shareholders and financial markets.
Deep-sea mining is arguably the most extreme version of an extractive economy that leaves very few if any tangible benefits in the U.S. Pacific territories or Alaska. Similar to employment on oil rigs, deep-sea mining would employ highly skilled crews operating offshore with workers rotating through on multiweek shifts aboard specialized ships. Like the jobs on military prepositioning ships off the coast of Saipan, these are not the kinds of jobs likely to go to residents of coastal Alaska communities or Pacific Island territories. And even if mining proceeds, there is no processing locally—and domestically, it cannot compete with other countries’ processing abilities—eliminating any chance of an economic multiplier effect.
Alaska’s history of looking to new extraction projects—Prudhoe Bay, Willow, and Pebble Mine—to provide fiscal solutions has built a self-reinforcing economic infrastructure that is difficult to change, illustrating the trap of resource dependence. Deep-sea mining is unlikely to break that cycle, and the current proposals appear structured in ways that guarantee the local communities bear the environmental costs while any revenue generated flows to the federal government or corporations.
For U.S. territories, the injustice runs deeper. The NMI, Guam, and American Samoa have fragile, narrowly concentrated economies—tourism, fishing, and military spending—with limited ability to generate revenue, set tax rates, and allocate expenditures based on their own priorities, and their communities bear all the environmental risk. Any royalties or corporate tax revenue from deep-sea mining would flow to the U.S. Treasury, not to territorial governments, because the proposed mining sites lie within the U.S. exclusive economic zone and, unlike states, territories have no automatic claim on revenues generated offshore.
This structure virtually guarantees that deep‑sea mining will exacerbate inequality rather than alleviate it—extracting value from public waters, concentrating wealth at the top, and leaving local communities with little more than the costs.
A better approach
Contrary to the rhetoric of the Trump administration, deep-sea mining does not address the real economic pressures facing rural Americans, such as inflation, cost of living, precarious employment, and lack of infrastructure. In fact, the data point in the opposite direction. Seventy percent of the rural counties that have the highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita—communities engaged in oil and gas, mining, and agriculture—are losing jobs and population at the same time due to several reasons, including technological innovation and automation. Generating economic output does not automatically translate into sustainable or prosperous economies.
The counties that are growing in population, jobs, and income around public lands have diversified economies centered around recreation and innovation sectors. This lesson is particularly relevant for U.S. territories. In the Northern Mariana Islands, local leaders are pressing for support to remove policy barriers that limit tourism—specifically, restrictions that deter visitors from Asia and the Pacific. Investing in visitor access and local services would strengthen an existing economic base, while speculative deep‑sea mining would offer little employment, no local processing, and no guaranteed revenue as well as place core industries such as fisheries and tourism at risk.
Meaningful collaboration with Indigenous peoples, fishermen, and local resource owners must reflect local cultural values and community priorities. The proven stewardship of these communities can simultaneously safeguard ecosystems and sustain local economies.
A better approach would prioritize federal investment in rural infrastructure, sustainable ocean conservation economies—supporting protected area management, fisheries, and tourism in the Pacific territories—and formal recognition of Indigenous ocean stewardship, ensuring that Native communities share real power in decision-making.
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Conclusion
Donald Trump won the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections by speaking to many rural voters who felt left behind by an economy that increasingly extracts wealth from their communities to benefit corporations and the wealthy. The irony is that the second Trump administration’s efforts to open and exploit public lands and ocean are influenced by corporate interests that rig the economy against rural communities and workers in the first place. Deep-sea mining conducted under current economic structures and without consultation of Indigenous coastal communities will not create broadly shared prosperity.
The United States must move away from the failed ideology of corporate extraction and deepen its partnership with rural Indigenous coastal communities to restructure the economy so that it works for them. This means formally recognizing their long-standing stewardship of the ocean, ensuring they share real power in decision-making, and creating pathways for economic benefits from natural resource decisions. Consultation will result in protections for special places; adequate budgets for and stewardship of public resources; and resource extraction where it is appropriate and on terms that benefit workers, communities, and taxpayers.