President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to tighten restrictions on where defense contractors can source critical minerals and other sensitive components found in the Pentagon’s weapons arsenal.
According to Peter Navarro, the White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, the order will “end the waiver racket,” allowing federal defense contractors and subcontractors to bypass existing laws that prohibit sourcing certain materials from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The order takes effect on Jan. 1, 2027.
“The fighter jet, missile battery, naval vessel, radar system, drone, or armored vehicle does not begin on the factory floor of a prime contractor. It begins with minerals, metals, magnets, chips, chemicals, software, castings, and forgings — literally thousands of components moving through supply chains that stretch across the world,” Navarro said Monday. “In a major defense program, those chains may run five or six tiers deep, while government visibility often stops at the first or second.
“The dangers are buried in the lower tiers: the subcontractors and vendors supplying specialty metals, electronics, chemical software, and raw materials that Washington is not watching,” he added.
The executive order also directs War Secretary Pete Hegseth to speed up the testing of new source materials that could replace those coming from “unreliable foreign suppliers.”
Navarro pushed back on concerns that the United States may not produce enough of the covered materials to supplant foreign suppliers, arguing that the Trump administration is taking active steps to boost American production and procurement of rare earth minerals and other sensitive materials.
ICE MELTING UNDER TRUMP’S EXPECTATIONS, OFFICERS SAY
Navarro said the purpose of the order was to eliminate American “dependencies on the rest of the world.”
“We’re going to make this stuff here as much as possible,” he said. “We will work with our allies as much as possible. In many cases, with these critical minerals, rather than being dependent on the rest of the world, we are going to emerge as the strategically dominant supplier through the use of innovation and new technology.”