In 1980, lawmakers passed the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (DSHMRA). This obscure law vested NOAA with the authority to issue permits for mining beyond American jurisdiction until an international regime was put in place. Its drafters intended the law to be an interim measure, one that would soon be superseded by an international treaty.
But in 1981, the Reagan Administration upended what were known as the law of the sea negotiations and withdrew U.S. support for the draft treaty over disputes about the deep sea mining provisions. The conservative administration saw the centralized management of seabed mining and associated redistributive principles as problematically socialist and anti-industry.
This objection didn’t prevent negotiators from completing the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) the following year. However, the U.S. became one of only four nations to vote against the adoption of the treaty.
President Bill Clinton eventually signed the UNCLOS implementing agreement in 1994, when the treaty entered into force. But Congress never ratified it, despite the U.N. General Assembly approving changes that directly addressed the U.S.’ deep sea mining concerns.
In the three decades since, leaders across the aisle have argued that not signing onto the treaty was a mistake. The U.S. views most treaty provisions as customary international law, and thus effectively legally binding. But as a non-party, it has been sidelined when it comes to multilateral negotiations over U.S. claims to the extended continental shelf in the oil-rich Arctic. Additionally, the U.S. has had no direct voice in negotiations over the international seabed mining regime.
Even so, until the 2010s, the fact that the Deep Sea Hard Mineral Resources Act remained on the books mattered little in practice. While it authorized the U.S. to unilaterally issue licenses to mine the international seabed area, no major confrontations occurred because nobody really wanted to mine the seabed anymore. Commodity prices had fallen and companies discovered that many initial estimates regarding deep sea mining costs and profitability had been overly optimistic. By the mid 1980s, the companies that had pushed for the DSHMRA no longer saw deep sea mining as particularly commercially attractive.
Then came the so-called "clean energy transition." By the mid-2010s, it was clear that the trend toward electric vehicles and other renewables would drive enduring demand for batteries. This spurred renewed interest in deep sea nodules, which contain the nickel, copper, and cobalt required for lithium-ion battery production.