The US Department of the Interior finalized the 2025 List of Critical Minerals, expanding it to 60 mineral commodities from 50 in 2022 and 35 in 2018, to guide national security, supply chain, and industrial policy.
The final 2025 list adds market-moving names. Uranium and metallurgical coal are in, consistent with executive directives issued this year.
Copper, silver, lead, rhenium, silicon, and potash are included in the final roster after being recommended in the draft. Phosphate is added following interagency input citing food security.
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The final also keeps arsenic and tellurium after the draft proposed removing them, reversing that earlier recommendation. The list also included boron after the public comment period identified supply chain issues in steel additives analogous to other ferroalloys on the list.
USGS says the 2025 update relies on an expanded two-part methodology. First, an economic effects assessment modeled more than 1,200 disruption scenarios across 84 mineral commodities and measured impacts on 402 US industries and the broader economy. Second, the review checked for single points of failure where a sole domestic producer could jeopardize a supply chain.
The final list also acknowledges where byproduct recovery is material, such as silver from base-metal operations, rhenium from molybdenum and copper, and tellurium from copper and platinum group circuits.
The Energy Act requires USGS to refresh the list on a regular cadence with public comment and publication in the Federal Register. The 2025 notice reiterates that the list does not replace other agency definitions of strategic or essential materials and that many minerals not listed remain important to the economy and national security.
The 2025 summary says the list “will be dynamic and updated not less than biannually,” while the Energy Act reference in the same document states an update “at least every 3 years.”
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