Silver Goes Critical: USGS Recommends Silver Added to 2025 U.S. Critical Minerals List

On Monday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) released a technical recommendation to add silver to the 2025 US List of Critical Minerals. The recommendation appears in the USGS's new economic-risk assessment that underpins the forthcoming federal list revision.

Methodology and Technical Input for the 2025 US List of Critical Minerals

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USGS - Methodology and Technical Input for the 2025 US List of Critical Minerals.pdf

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Why?:

USGS modeled more than 1,200 year-long trade-disruption scenarios across 84 mineral commodities and measured their probability-weighted impact on US GDP using detailed 2023 input-output tables. A mineral was recommended for inclusion if its expected, annualized GDP hit exceeded a set threshold (>$2 million) or if the US supply chain had a single point of failure domestically.

For silver, USGS found:

🔴Expected GDP impact: ~$36 million probability-weighted net decrease in US GDP from silver trade disruptions– above the inclusion threshold.

🔴Primary risk driver: A hypothetical full-year halt of US net imports from Mexico (America's key silver import source) would, on its own, cut US GDP by about $435 million before probability weighting; with an estimated ~4% likelihood, that scenario contributes the largest share of risk to silver's total. Canada and "all other countries" add smaller– but meaningful– risk slices.

🔴Root causes: Elevated US import dependency and concentration of world production amplify the downside if trade is disrupted.

USGS concludes that silver should be added to the list (alongside several other commodities) based on this quantified economic risk framework. The analysis is designed so policymakers can directly compare the scale of risk with the cost and benefit of different mitigation strategies (stockpiles, diversification, processing capacity, etc.).

What this means:

🔴A USGS recommendation is the technical basis for the Department of the Interior's next Critical Minerals List update.

🔴Inclusion focuses federal attention on supply-chain resilience, enabling targeted actions to reduce disruption risk where they matter most for the US economy.

🔴Silver Wars called the alarm last December to make silver critical in 2025. We are now inches away from that goal. We thank the USGS for helping to ensure the future of US silver security!