President Biden is reportedly planning to invoke wartime powers to increase domestic production of critical minerals needed to build batteries for election vehicles and other defense equipment.

The Daily Caller reports:

The president would add battery materials to a list of materials protected under the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) if he were to move forward with the plan, people familiar with White House plans told Bloomberg. Such a move would give mining firms access to a $750 million fund established under the DPA and used to “to carry out all of the provisions and purposes” of the act, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

However, any use of the DPA wouldn’t discard current regulations and legal hurdles facing mining projects nationwide, Reuters reported.

Minerals such as cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, graphite and zinc are essential for the production of electric vehicle batteries, battery storage facilities, solar panels and wind turbines, according to a 2021 International Energy Agency report. However, China, Russia and other hostile nations currently dominate the global production of such materials.

In June a White House supply chain report showed that China controlled more than half of the world’s mining capacity

“It’s more secure, coming from inside our borders than it is from overseas, especially when a lot of the suppliers now, who are trying to corner the market, include hostile regimes such as China and Russia,” National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.