The Pentagon looks forward to acquiring almost $1bn of critical minerals, which is a part of a global spree in order to build stockpiles and reduce the dominance of China over these essential metals that are undoubtedly crucial for the defense manufacturers, reported the Financial Times.
The US Defense Logistics Agency – DLA happens to be spearheading this initiative, looking forward to enhancing the national reserve of minerals that are very critical to defense manufacturers.
China, apparently, happens to control the supply chains when it comes to critical minerals and permanent magnets that are essential in terms of applications such as smartphones and also military equipment.
Recently, China went on to expand its export restrictions related to rare earth elements by way of adding another five elements to the list and also executed more strict rules that target the users across the semiconductor industry.
In response to this, the US President went on to cancel a planned meeting with Xi Jinping of China and also announced a 100% tariff when it comes to Chinese imports.
Interestingly, one of the former defense officials told the Financial Times that the U.S. defense department is for sure focused on the stockpile.
They are definitely looking out for more, and they are doing it in a deliberate as well as expansive way and are also looking for certain novel sources of varied ores that are required for defense products.
Another former defence official opined that the $1bn investment goes on to represent quite a significant growth in stockpiling efforts.
Critical minerals are indeed very vital for national security, as they underpin the weapons systems and technologies like radar and also missile detection.
The recent stockpiling initiatives from the Pentagon pertaining to $1bn of critical minerals happen to reflect the heightened focus of the Trump administration on these resources. Some of the targeted metals, apparently, were not previously stockpiled, as per the report.
It is well to be noted that recently, the DLA went ahead and purchased almost $500m of cobalt and $245m worth of antimony from the US Antimony Corporation, along with $100m of tantalum from one of the undisclosed US companies.
In addition to this, the agency also procured a combined $45m worth of scandium from Rio Tinto as well as APL Engineered Materials. These materials are reserved in terms of national defence needs or wartime.
The fact is that this move happens to be a part of a broader strategy that has been outlined in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) by US President Donald Trump, which also includes $7.5bn as far as critical minerals are concerned.
The act goes on to allocate $2bn especially to make the national defence stockpile more robust, with the Pentagon also planning to make use of these funds by late 2026 or early 2027.
Besides this, the OBBA earmarks $5bn when it comes to Defense Department investments within critical mineral supply chains and also offers $500m for one of the credit programme from the Pentagon so as to boost investments.