President Trump announced on Monday that the U.S. would create a domestic stockpile of critical minerals for civilian use — essentially a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but for lithium, copper, rare earths, and other rocks central to electronics and decarbonization.

It’s one of many experimental and unusual steps that the administration has taken to boost U.S. mineral production over the past 13 months. But are any of those plans working? What could improve — and what does any of this mean for clean energy?

On this week’s Shift Key, we talk to someone who saw these policies up close. From 2023 to 2025, Nathaniel Horadam worked on electric vehicle and mineral policy at the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, eventually overseeing the office’s critical mineral portfolio last year. The office is the department’s in-house bank (it’s since been rechristened the Energy Dominance Financing Office) and it runs some of the federal government’s most ambitious industrial policy.

Horadam is now founder and president of Full Tilt Strategies, LLC, and he writes about mineral issues for his Tailings substack. He joins us to discuss what’s working, what’s not working, and what needs to improve. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University. Jesse is off this week.

Mentioned:

Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals

Reuters: US moves away from critical mineral price floors

“What exactly are ‘Critical Minerals’?,” by Nathaniel Horadam

The Secure Minerals Act, by Senators Todd Young and Jeanne Shaheen

The Pentagon’s Rare Earths Deal Is Making Former Biden Officials Jealous

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by ...

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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

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Trump’s Most Self-Defeating Move on Rare Minerals

Shift Key with Robinson Meyer

Trump’s Most Self-Defeating Move on Rare Minerals