The IMA Mine Project could supply 8 percent of the nation’s demand for the critical mineral within 18 months, trimming reliance on China-dominated imports.
A Canada-based corporation is rehabilitating a mine in east-central Idaho that has been shuttered for nearly 70 years to extract the first domestically produced tungsten in the United States in more than a decade.
American Tungsten Corp. CEO Ali Haji told investors, researchers, and mining executives during a 6ix.com presentation on Aug. 21 that the company’s IMA Mine Project could be fully operational within 18 months once it secures $20 million in capital to proceed beyond the $7 million it has spent in preliminary site upgrades.
Tungsten is among the hardest metals. It is classified by the Defense Department (DOD) as a critical mineral, vital for the production of tank armor, artillery, bullets, hypersonic weapons, submarine hulls, semiconductors, circuit boards, and many other products and applications.
The United States has been totally reliant on imported tungsten since 2015, when China, the world’s dominant producer of processed tungsten, flooded the global market, lowering prices to a point at which domestic mining and milling could not compete.
Since 2023, China has imposed restrictions on strategic materials exported to the United States, including gallium, germanium, antimony, graphite, and tungsten.
To reduce reliance on imports, especially from foreign adversaries, President Donald Trump issued a March executive order requiring federal agencies to help expedite projects by streamlining permitting, opening more public lands for mining, and including critical mineral development under the regulatory auspices of the Defense Production Act.
In the past month, the Energy Department announced that it would shift $1 billion from programs established under 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act into funding critical mineral projects. According to Reuters, the Trump administration is also considering reallocating at least $2 billion from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act into critical mineral mining and processing.
In March, the DOD accepted American Tungsten’s application to join the Defense Industrial Base Consortium, which aims to expand and diversify the domestic defense industrial base, enable private sector businesses to partner with federal agencies, and provide “non-dilutive financing”—early-stage startup capital without equity collateral—for contractors in key industries.
By John Haughey
