A Canadian deep-sea mining pioneer, The Metals Company, is charting a new course to land the controversial extraction practice’s first commercial contract — by appealing to US President Donald Trump.It wants to collect so-called polymetallic nodules — mineral deposits made up of multiple metals — on the Pacific Ocean floor.TMC originally planned to apply for a contract with the International Seabed Authority (ISA) — the organization with jurisdiction over the seabed in international waters — in June.The company’s subsidiaries had spent years using contracts awarded by the ISA to explore parts of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a section of the Pacific Ocean rich with these nodules.The zone contains an estimated 21 billion tonnes (23.1 billion tons) of nodules containing minerals used in high-demand products like electric car batteries. The ISA has yet to award a contract for industrial extraction, however, as it has spent a decade developing a deep-sea mining code with member states. The extended wait has led the Canadian firm to seek opportunities through different means.Although the area TMC hopes to deep-sea mine is in international waters, a 1980 US law could be used to issue a commercial extraction permit — if the Trump administration allows it.”We are ready,” TMC CEO Gerard Barron said on a conference call last month. “What we need is a fair hearing and a regulator willing to engage.”Originally named DeepGreen Metals upon its creation in 2011, the company rebranded to The Metals Company after going public in 2021.The firm collects nodules more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) underwater, having tested a vehicle that gathers the raw materials from the ocean floor and transports them to a ship on the water’s surface using a giant pipe.The company’s change in strategy to bypass the ISA has angered member nations of the international body, as well as environmental NGOs concerned about the impact of deep-sea mining.Bobby-Jo Dobush, a legal officer with The Ocean Foundation, told AFP that deep-sea mining is “the worst, most environmentally destructive, most expensive way to get minerals.”- ‘Political appetite’ -The Metals Company is banking on Washington — which opted not to join the ISA — and Trump’s desire for minerals not imported from China or other rivals to outweigh the environmental concerns. TMC Chief Financial Officer Craig Shesky said during the March conference call that the legal precedent for the United States to authorize extraction “has always been there.” “What has been missing is the political appetite in the United States to take advantage of it. And that’s the main change that has come with this administration,” Shesky said.He estimated that allowing the company to collect a billion tonnes of nodules via deep-sea mining could provide the United States with “456 years of manganese, 165 years of cobalt, 81 years of nickel and four years of copper” based on current consumption patterns.Dmitry Silversteyn, an analyst with Water Tower Research, said TMC could begin production some time in 2026, especially “with the administration in the United States now being very focused on standing up a domestic critical metals and critical materials industry that’s independent of Chinese supply chain.”Dobush, of The Ocean Foundation, said the apparent rush to nail down a contract shows TMC is “really in dire financial straits.”But Silversteyn said TMC was progressing steadily enough for “getting into production commitment” by the end of 2026.Barron touted his company’s progress, saying last month: “We’ve shown that we can pick up nodules from the seafloor, we can lift them to the surface and process them onshore, all the way to the refined products, with minimal environmental impacts and limited capital expenditure.”

Learning to sew is what spared Guatemalan Francisca Lares the perilous migrant journey to the United States, crippling smuggler debt and likely deportation. Instead, she found the better life she was seeking right on her doorstep.The 30-year-old single mother is a beneficiary of a scholarship program of the government and the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) for young Guatemalans to learn a trade and make a living in their own country.More than half the Central American country’s 18 million residents live in poverty, according to official figures. The ratio is even higher in Indigenous villages such as Estanzuela in Joyabaj municipality, where Lares lives.It is a significant push factor, and some 3.2 million Guatemalans are believed to live in the United States — hundreds of thousands of them illegally.Lares had herself considered pursing the “American dream” at a time she was earning $75 a month producing handmade fabrics and barely getting by.Then she heard about a sewing course offered at the “Quedate” (Stay) training center.After completing the course she bought a sewing machine, and now makes traditional Mayan tunics known as huipiles that she sells from a small shop at her home. Lares also markets her wares on social media, and has already sent a few blouses all the way to the United States.She does not want to speak about how much she earns, but told AFP she can now easily cover her needs and those of her daughters aged five and nine.It was the training, she said, “that made me stay here and say: I can get ahead.”- ‘They are being caught’ -The project, which launched in 2021 at a municipal center in Joyabaj and has received donations from Japan, also trains young Guatemalans in hairdressing, baking, computer repair and other skills to help them find jobs or open their own businesses.Courses last from two weeks, like the one Lares took, to nine months.For many in a country where 70 percent of people work in the informal sector and almost one in six are illiterate, the only alternative is putting their lives in the hands of unscrupulous smugglers.”They are being caught,” Lares told AFP of her countrymen and women being expelled from the United States in a deportation wave under President Donald Trump. “They are returning and one starts to think: what if I had left (Guatemala), what if I was just starting to pay off my debt and had to leave (the United States) — how would I have paid my debt?” she said.Smugglers, also known as “coyotes,” charge desperate clients as much as $20,000 to get them to the United States from Joyabaj.”Some die” on the journey, pointed out Lares, speaking to AFP at the training center she credits with offering her a new lease on life.”There is suffering there (in the United States) too… Let’s spare our families the suffering.”Many among Lares’s classmates are deportees.- ‘Better to stay’ -Fellow graduate Marleny Tino, 25, also considered emigrating. In the end, only her husband went.He now lives in Florida “afraid” of being deported, she told AFP.”It is better to stay here than risk your life going there and then being deported as soon as you arrive,” said the mother of two, who also makes huipiles and runs a small business from her home.Remittances sent home by migrants amounted to some $21 billion last year, almost a fifth of GDP.Last year, the United States deported 61,680 Guatemalans, according to the government of the Central American country.Pedro Miranda, the director of the training center, said the goal was to equip more than 600 young people with new skills in 2025.So far, 814 youngsters have learnt a trade at the center and two similar ones in Huehuetenango and Solola.