The FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (Pub. L. 119–60) was signed on 18 December 2025. Most of its critical-minerals provisions are amendments to 10 U.S.C. § 4872, the specialty metals rule, which bars the department from buying certain materials melted or produced in a covered nation — China, Russia, North Korea or Iran.
The list got longer
Molybdenum joins the covered materials immediately. Gallium and germanium join on 18 December 2027 — two years’ notice, which is itself a statement about how long the drafters thought a supply chain takes to move. They sit alongside what was already there: samarium-cobalt magnets, neodymium-iron-boron magnets, tantalum metals and alloys, tungsten metal powder, and tungsten heavy alloy.
And the question changed
This is the provision that matters to anyone reading this site. From 1 January 2027, the restrictions expand beyond melting and production to reach mining, refining and separation.
Under the old test, a magnet was compliant if it was pressed and sintered outside the four covered nations. The rare earth oxide inside it could have been separated anywhere. That is not a loophole anyone hid — it is simply what the statute asked, and separation is the step that one country dominates. From 2027 the question runs further back: where was it mined, where was it refined, where was it separated.
Which is the argument this site makes, arriving in procurement law. The gap was never the ore. It was everything between the ore and the part.
Batteries, by name
Section 842 adds battery sourcing restrictions: advanced batteries and cells procured by the department must not be owned, sourced, refined or produced by a foreign entity of concern. Six Chinese manufacturers are named — CATL, BYD, Envision Energy, EVE Energy, Gotion High Tech and Hithium — and the restriction phases in rather than landing at once: new acquisitions from 1 January 2028, standard restrictions from 1 January 2029, and existing acquisitions from 30 January 2031.
The relief valves
The Act is not only restriction. Section 833 creates a temporary national security waiver framework for disclosed non-compliant items, expiring 1 January 2028. Section 836 sets up a voluntary public compliance certification repository from 1 January 2027, so a supplier can declare itself compliant somewhere a prime can find it. Section 837 established a defence industrial base working group, within 180 days of enactment, on accelerating the qualification of compliant sources — which is the real bottleneck: qualifying a new source for a defence part is slow work whatever the statute says.
What this changes
Read this next to Executive Order 14415, which closes the nonavailability waiver from the same 1 January 2027. The statute widens what has to be domestic or allied; the order removes the easy way out of it. They were written to land together.
For a supplier, the practical question is no longer whether your part is compliant but whether you can demonstrate where its material came from, three or four tiers down. For a processor or separator on American soil, it is a demand signal with a date on it.
