Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 8–9 April 2026 the Argentine Cámara de Diputados gave final passage (137–111 with 3 abstentions) to a bill amending Ley 26.639 (the 2010 Régimen de Presupuestos Mínimos para la Preservación de los Glaciares y del Ambiente Periglacial), after the Senate had already approved the reform in February 2026 (40–31 with 1 abstention). The Executive promulgated the law as Ley 27.804 via Decreto 271/2026, published in the Boletín Oficial on 24 April 2026. The reform narrows the federal protection floor by limiting strict protection to glaciers and periglacial geoforms with proven hydrological function, and transfers to provincial governments the authority to define the technical and scientific criteria delimiting protected areas — directly unblocking the "ABCD" copper pipeline (Agua Rica/MARA, Filo del Sol, Josemaría, Los Azules, El Pachón) and adjacent lithium and gold projects whose prior periglacial-buffer encumbrance had stalled an estimated USD 30bn of investment, ~70% in copper / gold / silver.

Ghana's Parliament passed the Ghana Gold Board Act, 2025 (Act 1140) on 29 March 2025; presidential assent followed on 2 April 2025, with full operational effect from 1 May 2025. The Act repeals PNDCL 219 (1989) and establishes the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) as the sole statutory licensor and exclusive primary buyer, seller, assayer, grader, weigher and exporter of all gold produced by the country's licensed Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) sector. Large-scale mining operations remain outside the monopsony. Effective 1 May 2025, no person other than GoldBod may export ASM gold from Ghana, and all gold trading and marketing businesses must hold a GoldBod licence (application window for Ghanaian-owned firms opened 22 April 2025). Proceeds from all ASM gold exports settle through the Bank of Ghana, channelling foreign-exchange flows from roughly 30% of national gold output — Ghana is the world's #6 producer and Africa's largest — into formal central-bank reserves. The stated objectives are to combat smuggling, capture the smuggling-loss premium for the state, support Bank of Ghana gold-reserves accumulation, and generate foreign exchange. The Act sits alongside the Bank of Ghana's Domestic Gold Purchase Programme as the legal infrastructure for Ghana's gold-as-reserve-asset strategy.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14241 on 20 March 2025 (Federal Register publication 25 March 2025) invoking Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III sections 301, 302, and 303 — and selected Title VII authorities — for domestic critical-mineral production, and delegated those authorities to the Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). The order operationalises the "national energy emergency" declared by EO 14156 (Jan 2025) to waive certain DPA §303 congressional-notification thresholds, designates "mineral production" as an Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program priority, expands the EO definition of "critical minerals" to include uranium, copper, potash, gold (and any further item designated by the Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council), and directs the Departments of the Interior, Energy, Treasury, and EXIM Bank to mobilise federal lands, permitting, and financing to expand US upstream and midstream capacity. EO 14241 is the cross-cutting domestic-mineral umbrella authority of the second Trump administration, paired with FY2025 supplemental appropriations (USD 2bn National Defense Stockpile, USD 5bn Industrial Base Fund) and complemented by the 24 April 2025 follow-on EO on offshore minerals and the 8 April 2025 coal amendment.