Gold is not among the 60 minerals on the US critical minerals list published in November 2025. Its absence has fueled the idea that Washington removed the precious metal from its priorities. The reality is more nuanced: several months earlier, a presidential executive order had already included gold within its scope to accelerate US mineral production. The two decisions serve different objectives.
The first concerns a technical assessment of supply risk conducted by the US Geological Survey (USGS). The second defines the scope of administrative intervention to stimulate domestic extraction, processing and refining of raw materials. Confusing these instruments leads to an excessive conclusion: gold’s absence from the USGS list does not mean it is considered unimportant or excluded from every public measure.
A list designed to measure vulnerability
The list published in the Federal Register on 7 November 2025 contains 60 minerals. It retains the 50 materials selected in 2022 and adds ten, including copper, silver, uranium, boron, lead, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon and metallurgical coal. Gold is not included.
This selection is not a universal ranking of mineral value. US law requires the USGS to identify materials essential to the economy or national security whose supply chains are vulnerable to disruption and whose absence would have significant consequences. The method therefore estimates what would happen if trade were disrupted: which sectors would be affected, how large the shock would be and how likely it is to occur.
To make this assessment, the USGS modeled more than 1,200 trade disruption scenarios affecting different minerals and industries. Materials with high, substantial or moderate risk may be selected. Where calculated risk is low, the analysis also examines whether a single domestic supplier could constitute a point of failure.
This framework emphasizes industrial continuity and value-chain resilience. It does not by itself measure a metal’s financial value, its role in monetary reserves, its appeal to investors or its place in international trade. Gold’s high price, safe-haven role and importance for central banks therefore do not establish that it meets the USGS vulnerability criteria.
The presidential order has a broader scope
On 20 March 2025, US Executive Order 14241 defined the “minerals” covered by its production measures as including legally designated critical minerals, but also explicitly uranium, copper, potash and gold. The text notably directs federal agencies to identify mining projects and examine ways to accelerate permits and approvals within their authority.
The executive order and USGS list are therefore not competing versions of the same classification. The former organizes support for domestic production and can name raw materials beyond the technical list. The latter identifies materials whose supply poses a particular risk to the US economy and security. Gold being named in the order but not the list reveals this difference in function, without establishing the political reason for its inclusion on its own.
This distinction also matters to businesses. Inclusion on the USGS list does not automatically guarantee financing, accelerated authorization or a public contract: individual schemes have their own rules and implementation decisions. Conversely, gold’s inclusion in the executive order’s definition does not constitute a financing promise or preferential treatment for every gold project.
What this means for African producers
For African gold-producing countries, this clarification avoids overstating the effect of a US designation. The order establishes a policy framework supporting US mineral production, but does not itself create new demand for African mines, a guaranteed market or an automatic assistance mechanism for foreign projects.
US market access will depend on more concrete factors: metal quality and traceability, commercial terms, compliance with applicable rules and buyers’ interest. For producing states, the share of value captured locally also remains central. Developing refining capacity, transparent exports, formalized artisanal mining and predictable tax revenues directly affects economic benefits.
Comparison with newly added materials also shows that US mineral strategy extends beyond energy transition metals. Copper, silver, potash and phosphate serve varied industrial and agricultural uses. Their common feature under the USGS framework is less their intrinsic value than a supply risk considered sufficiently important by the US methodology.
Follow policy instrument by instrument
The 2025 list contains 60 materials, but is designed to evolve with production, trade and demand data. The law requires review at least every three years, while the publication notice describes it as dynamic and intended for more frequent updates. A future revision could therefore change risk assessments if trade dependencies, production capacity or industrial uses change.
For mining participants, analysis must distinguish three questions: is a material considered vulnerable under the USGS model? Is it included in a federal text facilitating production? And which concrete programs turn those directions into contracts, loans or investment? The answers cannot be inferred from a single list.
For gold, the signal is clear but limited: it is not classified among the USGS’s critical minerals in 2025, while it is expressly covered by the US order on increasing mineral production. This coexistence shows why African producers and investors must read regulatory tools according to their precise purpose, rather than treat the “critical” label as a definitive verdict on a resource’s strategic importance.