2023-19057. Request for Public Comments on the Potential Market Impact of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Materials Plan From the National Defense Stockpile Market Impact Committee

AGENCY:

Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce.

ACTION:

Notice of inquiry; request for comments.

SUMMARY:

The National Defense Stockpile Market Impact Committee, co-chaired by the Departments of Commerce and State, is seeking public comments on the potential market impact of proposed changes of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Annual Materials Plan (AMP). Potential changes to the AMP are decided by the National Defense Stockpile Market Impact Committee, who advise the Defense Logistics Agency in its role as the National Defense Stockpile Manager on the projected domestic and foreign economic effects of all acquisitions, conversions, and disposals involving the National Defense Stockpile.

DATES:

To be considered, written comments must be received by October 5, 2023.

ADDRESSES:

Submissions: You may submit comments, identified by docket number BIS–2023–0018 or XRIN 0694–XC099, through the Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov. To submit comments via https://www.regulations.gov, enter the docket number BIS–2023–0018 on the home page and click “Search.” The site will provide a search results page listing all documents associated with this docket. Find a reference to this notice and click the button entitled “Comment.” Further instructions on how to submit a comment on regulations.gov can be found on the FAQ page. BIS also requests commenters review the instructions in the Additional Instructions for Comments section further in this notice. BIS, as the publisher of the notice, will be receiving the comments and disseminating them to the National Defense Stockpile Market Impact Committee. While BIS encourages the submissions of comments via https://www.regulations.gov, comments may also be submitted via email to the following: Katherine Reid, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Strategic Industries and Economic Security, email: [e-mail]. All comments submitted through email to Commerce must include the phrase “Market Impact Committee Notice of Inquiry” in the subject line and will be added to the docket on regulations.gov. Public comments are an important element of the Committee's market impact review process.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Marina Youssef, Office of Strategic Industries and Economic Security, Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce, telephone: [phone], (Attn: Marina Youssef), email: [e-mail].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Background

The federal government operates several different stockpiles that are managed by different federal agencies depending on the stockpile's purpose. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) manages the Strategic National Stockpile, which contains medicines and medical equipment. HHS' stockpile can supplement medical countermeasures needed by states, tribal nations, territories, and the largest metropolitan areas during public health emergencies. Another example is the Department of Energy's operation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for use when the international oil market is severely disrupted.

The Department of Defense (DOD) maintains a stockpile of critical and strategic materials known as the National Defense Stockpile (NDS). During a war or national emergency, this stockpile is meant to provide strategic and critical materials to support national defense and essential civilian requirements in a time of national emergency. The stockpile currently contains 57 materials ( i.e., primarily minerals) that are deemed strategic and critical to national security.^[1]

Under the authority of the Strategic and Critical Materials Stock Piling Revision Act of 1979, as amended (the Stock Piling Act) (50 U.S.C. 98 et seq.), the Department of Defense's Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) is the National Defense Stockpile Manager. The NDS is a strategic stockpile, not an economic stockpile. It is not intended to influence prices in the market or insulate private industry from supply shocks. Rather, its purpose is to ensure the defense and essential civilian industrial base has consistent access to the materiel it needs—and the private industries making products have the raw materials they need—during a war or national emergency.

Congress authorizes the sale of excess materials in the stockpile and proceeds of the sales are transferred to the National Defense Stockpile Transaction Fund. The NDS does not receive annual appropriations in the defense budget for operations expenses. Instead, the stockpile has a revolving fund in what the U.S. Treasury termed the National Defense Stockpile Transaction Fund.^[2] Whenever materials in the stockpile are sold, the proceeds of that sale are added to that fund. The DLA then uses that money to pay for the operational expenses accompanying the maintenance of the stockpile and to purchase new materials. Information about stockpile disposals—what was sold and at what value it was sold—is publicly available in monthly announcements published by DLA.^[3]

Section 3314 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993 (FY 1993 NDAA) (50 U.S.C. 98h–1) formally established a Market Impact Committee (the Committee) to “advise the National Defense Stockpile Manager on the projected domestic and foreign economic effects of all acquisitions and disposals of materials from the stockpile . . .” The Committee must also balance market impact concerns with the statutory requirement to protect the U.S. Government against avoidable loss. See50 U.S.C. 98e(b)(2).

The Committee is comprised of representatives from the Departments of Commerce, State, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, the Treasury, and Homeland Security. The FY 1993 NDAA directs the Committee to consult with industry representatives that produce, process, or consume the types of materials stored in the Stockpile as the National Defense Stockpile Manager. The DLA must produce an Annual Materials Plan (AMP) proposing the maximum quantity of each listed material that may be acquired, disposed of, upgraded, converted, recovered, or sold by the DLA in a particular fiscal year. With this notice, Commerce, on behalf of DLA, lists the quantities and types of activity—potential disposals, potential acquisitions, potential conversions (upgrade, rotation, reprocessing, etc.) or potential recovery (from government sources)—associated with each material in its proposed FY 2025 AMP.

The quantities listed in Attachment 1 are not acquisition, disposal, upgrade, conversion, recovery, reprocessing, or sales target quantities, but rather a statement of the proposed maximum quantity of each listed material that may be acquired, disposed of, upgraded, converted, recovered, or sold in a particular fiscal year by the DLA. The quantity of each material that will actually be acquired or offered for sale will depend on the market for the material at the time of the acquisition or offering, as well as on the quantity of each material approved by Congress for acquisition, disposal, conversion, or recovery.

Additional Instructions for Comments

The Committee is interested in any supporting data and documentation on the potential market impact of the quantities associated with the proposed FY 2025 AMP.

While regulations.gov allows users to provide comments by filling in a “Type Comment” field or by attaching a document using an “Upload File” field, BIS prefers comments be provided in an attached document—preferably in Microsoft Word (.doc) or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf). If the submission is in an application format other than Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat, please indicate the name of the application in the “Type Comment” field. Please do not attach separate cover letters to electronic submissions; rather, include any information that might appear in a cover letter within the comments. Please include any exhibits, annexes, or other attachments in the same file, so the submission consists of one instead of multiple files. All filers should name their files using the name of the person or entity submitting the comments.

Submitted materials properly marked as business confidential information with a valid statutory basis for confidentiality and which is accepted as such by BIS will not be disclosed publicly. Commenters submitting business confidential information should clearly identify the business confidential portion at the time of submission, include a statement justifying nondisclosure and referring to the specific legal authority claimed with the submission, and provide a non-confidential version of the submission which will be placed in the public file on https://www.regulations.gov. For comments containing business confidential information, the file name of the business confidential version should begin with the characters “BC”. Any page containing business confidential information must be clearly marked “BUSINESS CONFIDENTIAL” on the top of that page. The file name of the non-confidential version should begin with the character “P”. The non-confidential version must be clearly marked “PUBLIC” on the top of the first page. The “BC” and “P” should be followed by the name of the person or entity submitting the comments. Commenters submitting business confidential information are encouraged to scan a hard copy of the non-confidential version to create an image of the file, rather than submitting a digital copy with redactions applied, to avoid inadvertent redaction errors which could enable the public to read business confidential information.

Public comments will be available on regulations.gov, and the BIS Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) website at https://efoia.bis.doc.gov/​. This office does not maintain a separate public inspection facility. If you have technical difficulties accessing this website, please call BIS's Office of Administration at (202) 482–1900 for assistance.

Attachment 1

Proposed Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Materials Plan

Material	Unit	Quantity	Footnote
Potential Disposals:
Beryllium Metal	ST	8
Carbon Fibers	Lbs	92,000	1
Chromium, Ferro	ST	24,000
Chromium, Metal	ST	500
Germanium	kg	5,000
Manganese, Ferro	ST	20,000	1
Manganese, Metallurgical Grade	SDT	320,300	1
Aerospace Alloys	Lbs	1,500,000
Platinum	Tr Oz	8,380	1
PGM—Iridium	Tr Oz	489	1
Quartz Crystals	Lbs	15,712	1
Tantalum	Lbs	190	1
Tin	MT	640
Titanium Based Alloys	Lbs	300,000
Tungsten Ores & Concentrates	Lbs W	1,100,000	1
Zinc	ST	2,500
Potential Acquisitions:
Aluminum (High Purity)	MT	1,700
Aluminum Alloys	MT	1,500
Antimony	MT	700
Cadmium Zinc Telluride	EA	2,800
Electrolytic Manganese Metal	MT	5,000
Energetics	Lbs	20,000,000
Ferroniobium	Lbs Nb	300,000
Grain Oriented Electric Steel	MT	3,200
Hafnium	MT	2,300
Iso-Molded Graphite	MT	1,700
Lanthanum	MT	1,100
Magnesium	MT	3,500
Neodymium-Praseodymium Oxide	MT	300
NdFeB Magnet Block	MT	450
Rayon	MT	200
Samarium-Cobalt Alloy	MT	60
Tantalum	Lbs Ta	64,500
Tire Cord Steel	MT	2,370
Titanium	ST	15,000
Tungsten	Lbs W	4,500,500
Zirconium	MT	2,300
Potential Conversions (Upgrade, rotation, reprocessing, etc.):
Aerospace Alloys	Lbs	50,000
Antimony	Lbs	198,000
Beryllium Metal	ST	8
CZT (Cadmium Zinc Tellurium substrates)	EA	1,000
Carbon Fibers	Lbs	5,000
Europium	MT	35
Germanium	kg	5,000
Iridium Catalyst	Lbs	200
Lithium Ion Materials	MT	50
Rare Earths Elements	MT	12
Silicon Carbide Fibers	Lbs	875
Triamino Trinitrobenzene (TATB)	Lbs	48,000
Potential Recovery from Government sources:
Aerospace Alloys	Lbs	1,500,000
Battery Materials	MT	100
Boron Carbide	MT	300
Cobalt	Lbs	50,000
E-Waste	MT	100	2
Germanium	kg	5,000
Iridium Catalyst	Lbs	200
Magnesium Metal	MT	25
Rare Earths	Lbs	20,000
Tantalum	MT	10
Yttrium Aluminum Garnet Rods	kg	250
1 Actual quantity will be limited to remaining excess inventory.
2 Strategic and Critical Materials collected from E-Waste (Strategic Materials collected from electronics waste).

Thea D. Rozman Kendler,

Assistant Secretary for Export Administration.

Footnotes

1.  Defense Logistics Agency, “Strategic Materials: Office,” U.S. Department of Defense, https://www.dla.mil/​Strategic-Materials/​About.

2.  Strategic and Critical Materials Stock Piling Revision Act of 1979, Public Law 96–41, p. 5.

3.   https://www.dla.mil/​Strategic-Materials/​Announcements/​.