The Trump administration’s mineral agenda will bolster defense technologies and data centers. It’ll also provide a big boost for EV companies.
08/12/2026 11:40 AM EDT
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the EV sector. But one of his major policy initiatives is now poised to bolster the same companies he’s put on the back foot.
Since taking office, Trump and Republicans in Congress have scrapped hefty consumer tax credits designed to drive faster electric vehicle adoption nationwide, raising costs for cars, batteries and charging stations. EPA under his watch has moved to reconsider Biden-era emissions standards for gas-guzzling cars and trucks. And, with help from Republicans, he’s moved to stall funding for EV charging infrastructure across the U.S. while pushing fossil fuels.
“On day one, I ended Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate that would have crushed the U.S. auto industry forever, it would have never come back,” Trump said at a rally at General Motors’ proving ground in Milford, Michigan, in late July.
Yet in a twist, the Trump administration is providing the EV sector with an upstream boost, subsidizing critical mineral mines and offering grants and loan guarantees to the very battery and mining companies that make electric cars a reality. Domestic battery production has long been an impediment to the growth of the EV industry in the U.S., raising the cost of vehicles and forcing automakers to rely on foreign-sourced minerals. The Trump administration’s industrial policy comes as the EV sector is seeing spikes in sales propelled by the U.S.-led war with Iran and the associated turmoil in the oil markets.
On Friday, the president sat with hundreds of mining executives and Cabinet members to unveil $3 billion for mineral projects — like graphite, magnets and silicon anode material — citing national security and the nation’s reliance on countries like China for those raw materials. While the focus was often the materials needed for weapons or data centers, those same materials are needed for EV batteries.
“[EVs] may not have been [the] main intent [behind supporting critical minerals], but it’s a serendipitous benefit,” said Jon Jacobs, chief commercial officer for Westwater Resources, a graphite producer now in line to receive a $25 million federal loan to build a processing plant in Alabama.
Corey Cantor, research director at the Zero Emission Transportation Association, or ZETA, said the EV sector will benefit from the funding, pointing to research that found securing supply chains and minerals like graphite for energy and defense will likewise benefit AI and advanced manufacturing, including EVs.
“Even if in this case the Department of Defense is important as a customer … battery usage and innovation is going to spill over into a lot of different sectors, whether it’s stationary storage or the EV industry,” said Cantor.
Trump has supported other projects with an EV nexus through other policies.
Last year, his administration took an equity stake in Lithium Americas, which is building the Thacker Pass project in Nevada to pump out lithium needed for batteries for companies like General Motors. The deal affects how Lithium Americas draws down on a $2.3 billion loan, initially offered under the Biden administration. The Thacker Pass mine originally received permit approval during the final days of the first Trump administration.
The administration has also launched a $12 billion commercial-facing stockpile dubbed Project Vault that automakers like GM could use for accessing minerals in times of emergency. GM CEO Mary Barra was in the Oval Office when the the initiative was unveiled.
Will Roberts, automotive research lead at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said Trump’s push to build out the mineral sector will expand an ecosystem that benefit EV makers. That’s especially true, he said, because EVs represent a bigger source of demand for these minerals than defense needs. EVs, for example, currently represent 70 percent of demand globally for lithium, while battery energy storage represents 20 percent and demand for military applications is much smaller, according to Benchmark.
“The level that these companies … are going to have to get to, scale-wise … is clearly beyond, kind of, the demand requirements of purely the defense industry,” said Roberts.
‘Serendipitous benefit’
EV battery metal producers have been whipsawed by the loss of the federal tax incentives expanded by the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The sector suffered a severe setback after Trump signed the GOP megabill into law last year, eliminating the $7,500 electric vehicle discount. Now the sector is no longer in a freefall and is seeing a slight uptick globally, in part fueled by oil price hikes amid the war with Iran. EV sales increased in both the U.S. and China in the second quarter of 2026 compared to the first quarter, according to the International Energy Agency.
Trump’s mineral funding adds to the improvement in the general climate.
As part of the funding announcement last week, the U.S. Export-Import Bank said it’s offering a $25 million loan for Denver-based Westwater Resources to complete a processing plant for graphite anode material in Alabama about an hour away from the location of the company’s mine in Coosa County.
Last year, Westwater saw its offtake agreement with the automaker Stellantis scrapped after the incentives were terminated, followed shortly by SK On terminating its offtake agreement. Discussions continue about revving those agreements, and Westwater has an offtake agreement with Hiller Carbon, which supplies and processes carbon products to the steel and foundry industries.
“It’s beneficial for us, it’s beneficial for the customers too, because presumably they’re getting an overall lower price,” said Jacobs with Westwater. “Anything that supports materials that go into batteries is obviously going to support the EV industry.”
Also in the mix was the Pentagon’s award of $1.4 billion for Sila Nanotechnologies to produce silicon anode material, a replacement for graphite in EV batteries and other modern technologies.
Gene Berdichevsky, Sila’s CEO and co-founder, said the funding will support expanding the company’s facility in Moses Lake in Washington state to serve emerging markets like drones and data centers, but it is still focused strongly on EV applications, having signed major customers in the sector like Mercedes and Panasonic, which makes batteries.
“We’re absolutely continuing to do the things that we’ve been doing with automotive, but we’re also seeing huge tailwinds and growth in the physical AI space,” he said.
Berdichevsky said the Trump administration’s goal of securing minerals for defense applications will rely on robust commercial demand, such as EVs.
“For us to have a domestic supply chain for batteries, it can’t be just for sort of small volume military applications,” he said. “To have a really strong military industrial base, you have to have a strong industrial base.”
Berdichevsky said that Republicans’ crackdown on tax credits for foreign-made parts in their recent budget law was a “very good move,” helping drive demand for domestic alternatives like Sila’s product.
“EVs ultimately have to stand on their own,” he said. “So yes, the EV tax credit pulled forward a lot of demand, but we’ve got to make sure that EVs are competitive on their own.”
Trump also unveiled $150 million for Niron Magnetics in Minnesota to build a facility in Sartell, Minnesota, to produce rare-earth-free magnets that can be used in motors for EVs, the defense industry, data centers and audio equipment. The facility is slated to come online next year.
“This conditional commitment recognizes the importance of Niron’s rare-earth-free approach and the urgency of building domestic manufacturing capacity for a technology the world increasingly depends on,” Niron CEO Jonathan Rowntree said in a statement.