The Dirt Awakens

The Defense Production Act is The U.S.'s mining policy

"The Defense Production Act is our peacetime arsenal. It gives us the tools to keep our economy moving and our defenses strong." Harry Truman

In 1950, with memories of World War II still fresh and the Korean War heating up, President Harry Truman faced a critical dilemma: the U.S. steel industry, the backbone of military manufacturing, was grinding to a halt. Labor strikes and price disputes threatened to delay vital weapons production. With little time to negotiate, Truman reached for an extraordinary tool: the Defense Production Act (DPA). Enacted just months earlier, the DPA allowed the president to prioritize production essential to national security. Truman used it to seize control of steel mills—an act so bold it triggered a landmark Supreme Court battle in Youngstown v. Sawyer. Though the Court ruled against Truman, the moment etched the DPA into the arsenal of presidential power.

Since then, the DPA has been invoked repeatedly during national emergencies. President Eisenhower used it in the 1950s to ensure steady supplies of copper and aluminum for Cold War defense. President Obama tapped it in 2011 to boost domestic battery manufacturing, aiming to reduce reliance on foreign lithium-ion technology. In 2020 and again in 2022, President Trump and President Biden used it to address pandemic shortages and build out clean energy infrastructure.

Each invocation has followed a familiar script: identify a vulnerability, deploy the DPA, and mobilize industry. In 2025, President Trump has identified what he sees as the most pressing vulnerability yet—U.S. dependence on foreign, especially Chinese, critical minerals—and he is turning the DPA into a full-blown mining policy.

President Trump’s second term is putting the DPA to work like never before—not to build weapons, but to dig the dirt they require. America needs metals. China controls them. And with AI servers humming, EVs scaling, and geopolitics cracking, Trump has decided to reshore America’s raw material base.

The law allows the president to direct private industry to produce materials deemed essential to national defense. In March 2025, Trump signed the “American Minerals First” executive order, building on EO 13953 from 2020, which had already declared foreign mineral dependence a national emergency. Now it’s active policy.

Key initiatives under the renewed DPA effort include fast-tracking mining permits through streamlined federal agency coordination, DPA Title III funding for domestic processing plants, especially rare earth separation and lithium refining, and strategic stockpiling of copper, nickel, cobalt, and rare earths.

The message to industry is clear: if you can mine it, smelt it, or refine it in the U.S., there will be money—and policy—to back you.