Moulton wants material boost
Rare-earth metals stockpile at 4% of Cold War-era value
‘The post-Cold War sell-offs of the National Defense Stockpile are no longer appropriate — and now they are dangerous. Bolstering funding for the NDS will ensure that China and Russia will not dictate where, when, or how we access important critical minerals.’ U.S. REPS. SETH MOULTON
AND SCOTT FRANKLIN
After decades of selloffs, the nation’s strategic stockpile of some hard-to-source materials is just 4% of what it was in 1989 and that’s a danger to the nation, according to two U.S. representatives urging Congress to move on administration plans to boost spending.
“America can no longer be content to rely on other countries for resources that are essential to our military and technological edge,” U.S. Reps Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Scott Franklin, R-Fla., said in a joint letter to the appropriations committee urging support for an additional $253 million in spending on the materials in the next budget year.
“The post-Cold War selloffs of the National Defense Stockpile are no longer appropriate — and now they are dangerous. Bolstering funding for the NDS will ensure that China and Russia will not dictate where, when, or how we access important critical minerals,” the congressmen wrote.
Established during World War II, the NDS is supposed to ensure the military can access hard-to-source materials during supply chain shortages, which may occur during or due to global conflict.
The stockpile includes resources like titanium, aluminum, tungsten and cobalt.
In 1989, the stockpiles were packed with materials that would be worth $21.9 billion dollars today. The material on hand now, Moulton said, is worth no more than $881 million, a fraction of the former reserves.
A spokesperson for the Department of Defense confirmed Moulton’s figures but would not say if the stockpile is large enough to respond to an emergency if one were to arise.
The reduction is no accident, Moulton said.
“In the past three decades after the Cold War, Congress has authorized the sell-off of the majority of the NDS’s stockpiled materials,” Moulton said.
The sell-offs included 26 million pounds of cobalt, 76 million pounds of tungsten ore and 60 million pounds of titanium, according to the figures confirmed by DoD.
Funds from the sold materials were used to commission a war memorial, funding for a Health and Human services hospital and medical insurance trust funds, to cover losses from foreign military sales, and otherwise deposited into the general fund.
In March, the Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act’s authority to direct the DoD to designate five metals — lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese — as essential to national security and authorized steps to bolster domestic supplies.
A majority of global lithium production comes from China, Australia, Argentina and Chile. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the world’s largest cobalt producer, though 80% of that is processed in China. Russia comprises the mass of the global nickel market.
“We need to end our longterm reliance on China and other countries for inputs that will power the future,” Biden said.
According to the DoD, the strategic stockpile received an investment of $125 million in fiscal 2022 and this year the Biden Administration proposes spending an additional $253 million. The goal, a DoD spokesperson said, is to eventually invest $1 billion in the stockpile.
Even with those investments, the stockpile will be less than one-tenth its former size.