American Samoa says no to deep-sea mining. The Trump administration might do it anyway.

In early August, in the village of Utulei on the eastern shore of Tatuila, the largest of seven islands that make up American Samoa, more than two dozen local residents gathered in an auditorium. They were there to learn about a proposal to allow deep-sea mining across more than 18 million acres of their surrounding waters in the Pacific Ocean.

President Donald Trump had issued an executive order to jump-start the nascent deep-sea mining industry three months earlier. Within weeks, the U.S. Department of the Interior began asking for public input on leasing the seabed surrounding American Samoa, and the territorial government organized a series of meetings to help educate the public on what to expect.

During the meeting, Oliver Gunasekara, co-founder and chief executive officer of a