As of spring 2026, the second Trump administration is aggressively treating critical minerals as a national security priority, using trade tools and industrial subsidies to break Chinese dominance and rebuild domestic processing capacity, though long-term success remains dependent on overcoming entrenched permitting and infrastructure hurdles…The Trump Administration has fundamentally shifted US policy by treating critical minerals as essential pillars of national security and economic statecraft rather than mere commercial commodities…Recognizing that China controls global processing, the administration has expanded its focus beyond extraction to include downstream refining, alloys, and magnets, aiming to rebuild the entire industrial ecosystem…Washington is now deploying proactive tools once avoided in the West, such as federal financing, loan guarantees, and equity investments, to catalyze domestic production…To combat decade-long lead times, the administration is using executive actions to accelerate domestic permitting while simultaneously eyeing deep-sea mining and strategic resources in Greenland…The administration seeks a balance between domestic self-sufficiency and international partnerships…For decades, however, the United States largely treated mining and mineral supply chains as commercial sectors rather than strategic industries. Global supply chains were allowed to consolidate around the lowest-cost producers, and the downstream stages of processing and refining became increasingly concentrated in China…By the early 2020s, however, the consequences of that approach are clear: the United States has become heavily dependent on foreign suppliers for many critical materials and lacks domestic capacity in key stages of mineral processing …A third phase saw the emergence of industrial policy tools, including federal financing mechanisms, loan guarantees, and equity investments designed to catalyze domestic production. The final phase now emerging emphasizes international partnerships and supply diversification, as the United States seeks to work with allied producers and emerging mineral economies to reduce global supply-chain concentration…Over the past three decades, China has systematically built dominance across the mineral supply chain. While Chinese mines produce significant volumes of certain minerals, the country’s real advantage lies in downstream activities, particularly refining, chemical processing, and advanced manufacturing. For many materials, Chinese firms control between 60 and 90-percent of global processing capacity. Even when minerals are mined elsewhere (even in the United States), they are often shipped to China for refining before entering global supply chains …Critical minerals are rapidly becoming one of the defining economic and geopolitical issues of the twenty-first century. One year into the second Trump administration, the United States has begun to treat these materials as the strategic assets they truly are.

Fortune Minerals Alberta Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fortune Minerals Limited (TSX: FT) (OTCQB: FTMDF) (“Fortune” or the “Company”) (www.fortuneminerals.com) is pleased to announce that it has signed a backstop agreement with SECURE Waste Infrastructure Corp. (TSX:SES) (“SECURE”) to provide waste disposal solutions for the Company’s planned hydrometallurgical facility in Lamont County, Alberta. The hydrometallurgical facility will process concentrates from Fortune’s planned NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper mine and concentrator in the Northwest Territories (“NWT”), and other feed sources, to make value-added critical mineral products for the energy transition, new technologies and defence, collectively, (the “NICO Project”)…The NICO Project is an advanced development asset comprised of a planned open pit and underground mine and concentrator in the NWT and a dedicated hydrometallurgical facility in Alberta to process three critical minerals to value-added products with more than one million ounces of in-situ gold. Development of the NICO Project would provide a reliable vertically integrated North American supply of battery grade cobalt sulphate, bismuth ingots, and copper cement critical mineral products to address western supply chain resilience and security vulnerabilities.