Congress wants to double rare earth mineral fund to free defense supply chain from China

WASHINGTON — Congress seeks to greater than double the web price of the nationwide strategic mineral stockpile to minimize the protection industrial base’s reliance on adversaries corresponding to China for provides wanted to construct all the things from bullets to nuclear weapons to nighttime imaginative and prescient goggles.

The Senate’s annual protection authorization invoice, which the Armed Companies Committee superior Thursday, would authorize $1 billion in funding for the Nationwide Protection Stockpile in fiscal 2023 to “purchase strategic and significant minerals presently in shortfall,” per a abstract of the laws.

This may greater than double the worth of the stockpile of uncommon earth minerals, which incorporates many important to protection provide chains, together with titanium, tungsten, cobalt and antimony.

The fund is presently valued at $888 million, down from $42 billion in right this moment’s {dollars} at its peak in the course of the starting of the Chilly Conflict in 1952. Lawmakers worry the Nationwide Protection Stockpile will turn out to be bancrupt by FY25, absent congressional motion, and are prioritizing shoring up the fund on this yr’s protection appropriations and authorization cycle.

The stockpile is managed by the Protection Logistics Company, and the Pentagon submitted a legislative proposal to Congress earlier this yr asking for $253.5 million for FY23. The $1 billion the Senate seeks to allocate would cowl this whereas backfilling a number of funding requests the Nationwide Protection Stockpile has made in earlier fiscal years and offering larger monetary safety within the years forward.

The Senate invoice would additionally amend the legislation to present the Protection Division extra discretion and suppleness over the fund. Present legislation encourages the Nationwide Protection Stockpile to have interaction in mineral sell-offs to fulfill Congressional Finances Workplace necessities moderately than maintain onto the reserve for emergencies.

Congress additionally approved repeated stockpile sell-offs to fund different applications when the USA was much less anxious about near-peer rivals corresponding to China, which dominates the strategic mineral provide chain, and extra targeted on counterterrorism operations within the Center East and Africa.

Of specific concern is the availability of antimony, a mineral wanted to provide primary bullets and ammunition, that comes virtually solely from China. Russia is gaining floor because the world’s second largest provider of antimony, with Tajikistan coming in third.

The Senate protection invoice would require the Protection Division to transient Congress on vulnerabilities within the antimony provide chain. Draft laws of the Home protection authorization invoice additionally mandates a briefing on antimony in addition to a five-year plan on provide chain vulnerabilities of essential minerals within the stockpile.

Each payments would require the Protection Division to instate a coverage of recycling spent batteries to reclaim strategic minerals wanted within the protection industrial provide chain corresponding to cobalt and lithium.

The Home is anticipated to advance its model of the protection authorization invoice subsequent week earlier than each chambers vote on the laws later this yr.

The $40 billion Ukraine army support bundle Congress handed final month additionally consists of $500 million in Protection Manufacturing Act funding to bolster the U.S. essential mineral provide chain.