OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
Aug
Subject: Corporate Responsibility, Cobalt and the Children Behind America’s Technology
Dear President Trump,
I write to ask your Administration to bring urgent attention to an issue hidden deep within the global technology supply chain: the conditions under which cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the continuing problem of child labour.
America is home to some of the most powerful and innovative technology corporations in human history.
Their products have transformed the world.
Smartphones connect billions of people. Laptops power businesses and education. Electric vehicles are transforming transportation. Rechargeable batteries are central to the technological and energy economy.
But somewhere at the beginning of these extraordinarily valuable supply chains is a mineral:
Cobalt.
And behind some of that cobalt are children.
America Has Shown That Corporations Can Be Held Accountable
On 26 August 2026, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle claims brought by U.S. states concerning alleged harm to children associated with Facebook and Instagram.
Whatever one’s position on that particular case, it demonstrates an important principle:
The protection of children should never become secondary to corporate profit.
If America’s legal and political institutions are prepared to demand accountability when technology products potentially harm American children, we should also ask what responsibilities American corporations have toward vulnerable children who may be involved in producing materials entering their global supply chains.
A Congolese child’s life has value too.
Technology Companies May Not Employ These Children — But That Cannot End the Conversation
We recognise an important distinction.
American technology companies generally do not directly employ children in Congolese cobalt mines.
Modern technology supply chains can involve miners, traders, processors, refiners, battery manufacturers, component suppliers and numerous other intermediaries.
But complexity cannot become an excuse for ignorance.
A corporation benefiting from a global supply chain should be expected to make reasonable efforts to understand where its critical minerals originate and under what conditions they were produced.
Corporate Social Responsibility must reach beyond the corporate headquarters.
It must reach the beginning of the supply chain.
We Are Asking America to Lead
Mr President, your Administration has already recognised the strategic importance of critical minerals to America’s economy, technology sector, energy infrastructure and national security.
We respectfully ask you to add another principle to America’s critical-minerals strategy:
Human dignity.
We call upon your Administration to work with Congress, the Department of Labor, Department of State, Department of Commerce and other appropriate agencies to establish stronger requirements for companies benefiting from cobalt entering the American market.
We respectfully ask your Administration to support:
- Mandatory supply-chain due diligence for major corporations using cobalt and other high-risk critical minerals.
- Mine-to-product traceability, requiring reasonable verification of the origins and processing routes of cobalt entering American technology supply chains.
- Independent auditing and public reporting, rather than reliance exclusively upon corporate self-reporting.
- Strong prohibitions against cobalt produced through child labour or forced labour entering U.S. commercial supply chains.
- Meaningful penalties for companies that knowingly or recklessly disregard credible evidence of serious labour exploitation within their supply chains.
- Remediation rather than abandonment of vulnerable communities. When child labour is discovered, corporations should help fund responsible programmes that remove children from dangerous mining environments while supporting education, families and alternative livelihoods.
- A partnership with the Democratic Republic of the Congo aimed at improving legitimate mining conditions, worker safety, education, supply-chain transparency and economic opportunity.
Do Not Simply Remove the Children — Improve Their Future
There is another danger we must avoid.
If corporations simply abandon mining communities whenever child labour is discovered, desperately poor families may become even poorer.
The objective should therefore not merely be:
“Remove children from the supply chain.”
It should be:
“Remove children from dangerous mines and give them a pathway into classrooms, training, opportunity and a better future.”
The communities producing minerals essential to the technological revolution should participate in the prosperity that revolution creates.
Corporate Social Responsibility Must Mean Responsibility
The phrase Corporate Social Responsibility appears in annual reports, sustainability reports and corporate presentations around the world.
But responsibility must ultimately be measured by actions.
If a corporation can trace a smartphone from a warehouse to a customer’s front door, we should continue developing systems capable of tracing critical minerals from finished products back through refineries and processors towards their sources.
Technology should help solve this problem.
A Simple Principle
Mr President, this campaign is not against American technology companies.
We want American innovation to succeed.
We want technological advancement.
We want electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, smartphones, computers and the technologies of tomorrow to continue transforming our world.
But technological progress and human dignity must advance together.
America has demonstrated that corporations can be challenged when the welfare of children is at stake.
We therefore ask America to extend that principle throughout the global technology supply chain.
No child should have to sacrifice their childhood for our technology.
No smartphone is worth a child’s future.
No electric vehicle is truly sustainable if exploitation is hidden somewhere within its supply chain.
No technological revolution should leave the children who help make it possible trapped in poverty.
Mr President, America possesses enormous economic influence.
Please use that influence to encourage a technology industry in which innovation, profitability and human dignity coexist.
Let America lead the world towards responsible technology and responsible cobalt.
The children of Congo deserve education.
They deserve safety.
They deserve opportunity.
And above all,
they deserve their childhood.
Respectfully,
Daniel Elijah Joseph
Author | Lecturer | Founder, Daniel Elijah Joseph Publications
United Kingdom
