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President Joe Biden will invoke the Defense Production Act to increase production of cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, nickel, and other key materials needed for electric vehicles and grid-scale batteries in an attempt to ease U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers and, longer-term, on oil imports.
The law, when activated by presidential order, gives the government the power to make loans or grants to companies carrying out work deemed essential to national security and to order companies to prioritize supplies under government contracts over private ones.
However, the Biden administration is not planning to buy minerals directly, a person familiar told the Financial Times.
Instead, the directive would fund mining feasibility studies, safety improvements, and technologies that extract minerals from mine waste.
After Biden ordered a review last year of the U.S.’s critical supply chains and their vulnerabilities, the energy department predicted a coming boom in electric vehicles (EVs) and laid out a plan to ensure supplies of essential materials.
The department has budgeted almost $3 billion to counter U.S. dependence on China for lithium, the key ingredient in EV batteries, by developing domestic supplies.
Biden’s infrastructure bill also budgeted $7 billion over five years for processing related minerals and recycling used EV batteries.
TRENDPOST: We named the move toward Self-Sufficient economies as a Top 2022 Trend which we released last November. China pursued the trend with its dual circulation policy of forging an economy balanced between domestic consumption and manufacturing for export.
The Ukraine war and long-term supply chain disruptions that are resulting from it have strengthened the trend and emphasized this crucial shift in the global economic structure.
As global tensions increase and sanctions cut off supplies of basic commodities and essential materials, progressive nations will move toward Self-Sufficiency. Indeed, it will also become a political rallying cry for progressive movements.