President Donald Trump, issued an executive order calling for an assessment of America’s defense industrial base and supply chain:
A healthy manufacturing and defense industrial base and resilient supply chains are essential to the economic strength and national security of the United States. The ability of the United States to maintain readiness, and to surge in response to an emergency, directly relates to the capacity, capabilities, and resiliency of our manufacturing and defense industrial base and supply chains.
Among other issues, this executive order calls for a realistic look at how the United States obtains and maintains supplies of critical materials needed for the military.
Maintaining access to critical resources like rare earth has long been on the radar of American defense planners, and alarm bells have been ringing over the United States’ heavy reliance on outside sources like China to meet it defense needs.
