[2] Title III authorizes the president to establish mechanisms (such as regulations, orders or agencies) to allocate materials, services and facilities to promote national defense.

Using the Act, Department of Defense provided capital and interest-free loans, and directed mining and manufacturing resources as well as skilled laborers to these two processing industries.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the DPA increasingly was used to diversify the US energy mix by funding the trans-Alaskan pipeline, the US synthetic fuels corporation, and research into liquefied natural gas.

[23] The DOD has since used the Act to help develop a number of new technologies and materials, including silicon carbide ceramics, indium phosphide and gallium arsenide semiconductors, microwave power tubes, radiation-hardened microelectronics, superconducting wire, metal composites and the mining and processing of rare earth minerals.

[20][24] In June 1994, President Bill Clinton invoked the Defense Production Act to implement national security resource preparedness during disasters under the advisement of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director.

[29][30] On March 18, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) through an executive order that defined ventilators and personal protective equipment as "essential to the national defense.”[31][32] Trump named Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro as the policy coordinator for using the DPA in response to the COVID-19 crisis, and designated Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar the authority to determine quantities of essential supplies.

[35] Fifty-seven Democratic representatives in the House of Representatives sent a letter to Trump during the week prior, urging him to make use of the DPA for public health purposes, and Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi warned that “we must put more testing, more protective equipment, and more ventilators into the hands of our front-line workers immediately.”[36][37] On March 23, 2020, Trump issued an executive order classifying "health and medical resources necessary to respond to the spread of COVID-19" as subject to the authority granted by the DPA to prohibit hoarding and price gouging.

[40] At the beginning of April 2020, Trump expanded his use of the DPA to require a total of six private companies, now including General Electric and Medtronic, to secure supplies to manufacture ventilators.

[51] As defined by the United States Geological Survey, these minerals are "called critical or strategic owing to concerns about risk of supply interruption and the cost of such a disruption”.

[52] The United States currently relies largely on foreign sources, such as China, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, and Canada, for the mining and processing of these metals.

[51] The Administration’s primary strategy for combating climate change involves reliance on critical minerals to create large-scale batteries intended to electrify transportation and energy sources.

[53] Some are in favor of capitalizing on minerals like lithium to quickly electrify the transportation industry, while others caution against mining due to the process’s long-term consequences for ecosystems.

[59] Communities in these areas have experienced prolonged and disproportionate exposure to pollutants generated by such processes, increasing their priority to benefit from the IRA’s clean energy goals.

[59] Their residents are intended to be earlier recipients of the five key energy technologies identified by the Biden Administration (solar; transformers and electric grid components; heat pumps; insulation; and electrolyzers, fuel cells, and platinum group metals).

[61] On November 17, 2023, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced $169 million funded by the IRA for nine projects at 15 sites to accelerate US-made electric heat pump manufacturing.

[63] The joint invocation of the DPA and the IRA was intended to advance the Justice40 Initiative, which aims to ensure that forty percent of the benefits (economic and otherwise) to come from federal investing in measures to halt climate change will be reaped by disadvantaged and marginalized communities.

An initial investment of $35 million is identified by the Department of Health and Human Services for domestic production of materials utilized for sterile injectable medicines.