President Donald Trump has approved construction of the Ambler Road Project in Alaska, a 340-kilometre private industrial route that will connect the state’s remote mineral belt to the Dalton Highway, its only major road running north to south through the interior. Under the Biden administration, the Bureau of Land Management, a Federal Agency, had rejected the project, citing environmental concerns.

The decision, announced by the White House earlier this week, directs federal agencies to reissue the necessary permits so construction can begin immediately. The project is backed by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and has been described by the White House as key to: “unlocking America’s mineral potential.”

The Ambler Road will extend west from the Dalton Highway, which was built to service the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, crossing tundra and mountain passes to reach the Ambler Mining District. In a region larger than South Africa’s Northern Cape but with almost no permanent roads, the road link would be transformative. Mining companies can currently reach the area only by air or winter ice routes, making it impossible to economically move heavy machinery and ore.

The new corridor will create a year-round route from the interior’s mineral fields to Alaska’s main transport spine, much as the N3 and N1 connect South Africa’s mining heartland to its ports. By tying the Ambler belt into the state’s logistics system, the project opens a resource-rich but landlocked area to further investment. This will allow copper, zinc, cobalt and other strategic metals to be transported to refineries and export points without relying on seasonal trails. For Alaska’s economy, the road offers a way to diversify beyond oil, which has dominated state revenues for half a century. For the United States (US), it represents a step toward resource independence in an era when access to global mineral markets is shaped by geopolitical competition.

According to the White House, construction of the road will create roughly 2 700 jobs and attract more than a billion dollars in new investment. Once completed, the road will serve over 1 700 existing mineral claims in the region.

The U.S. Geological Survey has mapped the Ambler belt as containing several high-grade deposits, including the Arctic and Bornite deposits. The Arctic deposit is a massive sulphide orebody rich in copper and zinc, first identified in the 1960s and regarded as one of North America’s highest-grade undeveloped copper resources.

It alone holds about 37 million tonnes of ore that is of an exceptionally rich concentration.

The Bornite deposit is another large copper deposit that also contains cobalt, a metal increasingly vital to batteries, electronics and defence technologies.

The US has become reliant on China and Central Africa for many minerals critical to its tech and defence industries. Many of these minerals, ranging from cobalt to germanium and gallium, are present in the Ambler system. U.S. Geological Survey studies have previously identified the threat to US supply chains if Chinese or African imports were disrupted. Those studies showed how a shortage of even small-volume minerals would disrupt supply chains, raise costs and slow growth.

Economists say the project could do for Alaska’s mining sector what the Trans-Alaska Pipeline did for its oil industry in the 1970s; opening the interior to investment and generating long-term tax revenue.

For the US, the Ambler Road is the first major new resource corridor approved in decades. For global observers, it signals a new American drive to build strategic infrastructure that secures its own mineral future.