The Defense Production Act’s Expanding Role in Energy

Defense Production Act and Energy Infrastructure

On April 20, 2026, the White House signed a series of presidential determinations invoking Section 303 of the Defense Production Act of 1950 (DPA). The act was not deployed once but five times in a single day. The targets covered petroleum production and refining, coal supply chains, natural gas transmission and liquefied natural gas (LNG) capacity, grid infrastructure, and large-scale energy infrastructure.

Historically, these actions are not typically routine. When a President reaches for the DPA this extensively, it signals that the market economy’s typical operations are not moving at the necessary speed to meet what the administration sees as a legitimate national security threat.

Reviewing the historical grounding of past DPA uses is helpful toward understanding why and whether the Trump administration’s national security threat framing appropriately applies in this context. This brief also addresses the open-endedness of the DPA’s current use as well as the uncertainty tied to its broad application, particularly when compared with historical examples.

Purpose and Powers of the DPA

Passed in 1950, the Defense Production Act grants the president broad emergency authority over domestic industries. This Cold War-era statute was first enacted by Congress during the Korean War to meet the wartime demand for industrial resources. Over the past few decades, Congress amended the act to cover “energy supply, emergency preparedness, and critical infrastructure protection.”

The law has three core tools: 

• Title I: Prioritization and allocation of contracts for critical goods.
• Title III: Expansion of productive capacity through financial incentives.
• Title VII: Voluntary agreements with private industry.

The president’s invocation of the act functions as a legal mechanism to bypass routine industry procedures. In effect, the president can direct private companies to prioritize government needs, fund capacity expansion, and reduce market barriers that normally slow large industrial developments.

The Pentagon estimated its DPA authority usage at approximately 300,000 times per year for a wide range of military equipment, from Air Force One components to ballistic missile defense systems. The process is largely quiet and routine. However, the public and strategic nature of the act’s deployment by the Trump administration potentially marks a historical shift.

Historical Uses of the DPA

Across its 75-year history, the DPA has been publicly invoked in three major categories of crisis, and each one offers useful context to situate its most current deployment.

Korean War, 1950

During the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman recognized an immediate need to increase military production, promoting economic measures that would divert industrial output toward national defense resources. The industrial mobilization during this period was largely a success, as defense goods for production as well as government and private manufacturing capacity were focal points.

Yet, the act’s deployment also came with a legal contention: Truman’s attempt to control steel mills throughout the U.S. under DPA authority was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer in 1952. The case serves as a landmark reminder that wartime authority also has constitutional limits.

COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020–21

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several federal agencies used DPA authority to increase the production of ventilators, N95 masks, and personal protective equipment (PPE), including a $489 million contract with General Motors for 30,000 ventilators.

However, the first Trump administration largely treated the DPA as a “break-the-glass” option. In 2020, President Donald Trump equated the use of the order with “nationalizing” private companies and asserted that businesses were already choosing to expedite their outputs. Experts strongly criticized the administration’s stance, including James E. Baker, former legal advisor to the National Security Council, who noted: “Why isn’t the government bringing its full arsenal to the fight?”

In 2021, President Joe Biden used the DPA more extensively to accelerate vaccine production and shore up medical supply chains.

Energy and National Security, 2000s and Beyond

During the 2000–01 energy crisis, the DPA was deployed to supply California with natural gas, marking a narrowly targeted use. Decades later in 2022, the Biden administration invoked Title III of the DPA in response to the Russia-Ukraine war, directing support to munitions producers, strategic materials manufacturers, and clean energy resources for national defense purposes.

Notably, the current Trump administration’s use of the DPA is broader in scope than either of these previous enactments.

‘Declaring a National Energy Emergency’ Executive Order

The context and rationale of Trump’s recent DPA orders involving energy infrastructure not only precedes the Iran war, at least partially, but also extends beyond the current conflict. Upon taking office on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed the executive order, “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” which states: “This active threat to the American people from high energy prices is exacerbated by our Nation’s diminished capacity to insulate itself from hostile foreign actors. Energy security is an increasingly crucial theater of global competition. In an effort to harm the American people, hostile state and non-state foreign actors have targeted our domestic energy infrastructure, weaponized our reliance on foreign energy, and abused their ability to cause dramatic swings within international commodity markets. An affordable and reliable domestic supply of energy is a fundamental requirement for the national and economic security of any nation.”

Given this order’s framework, the Trump administration likely considers China and potentially Russia to be in the “hostile state and non-state foreign actors” category.

The same executive order also asserts that increasing U.S. investment in energy would fortify relations with allies and strengthen U.S. foreign policy: “Moreover, the United States has the potential to use its unrealized energy resources domestically, and to sell to international allies and partners a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy. This would create jobs and economic prosperity for Americans forgotten in the present economy, improve the United States’ trade balance, help our country compete with hostile foreign powers, strengthen relations with allies and partners, and support international peace and security. Accordingly, our Nation’s dangerous energy situation inflicts unnecessary and perilous constraints on our foreign policy.”

Overall, this executive order calls for the removal of permitting barriers to accelerate energy infrastructure development through reduced environmental reviews rather than providing specific directives with significant immediate impact. For example, it identifies broad regions of interest alongside generalized claims, stating: “These numerous problems are most pronounced in our Nation’s Northeast and West Coast, where dangerous State and local policies jeopardize our Nation’s core national defense and security needs, and devastate the prosperity of not only local residents but the entire United States population.”

These are the key provisions:

• Section 2, “Emergency Approvals”: “The heads of executive departments and agencies (‘agencies’) shall identify and exercise any lawful emergency authorities available to them, as well as all other lawful authorities they may possess, to facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources, including, but not limited to, on Federal lands.”
• Section 3, “Expediting the Delivery of Energy Infrastructure”: “To facilitate the Nation’s energy supply, agencies shall identify and use all relevant lawful emergency and other authorities available to them to expedite the completion of all authorized and appropriated infrastructure, energy, environmental, and natural resources projects that are within the identified authority of each of the Secretaries to perform or to advance.” 

Notably, Section 2 demonstrates how the administration aims to add speed into a bureaucratic system that can be slow to begin developing such projects, while Section 3 gives secretaries within the U.S. inter-agency framework broad authority to accelerate delivery, a feature not utilized in the past.

US Energy Impacts From the Iran War

Initially, the Trump administration’s recent DPA invocations seem to be a response primarily to the ongoing war with Iran and, secondarily, to China’s dominance across many supply chains for materials needed by U.S energy producers. Additionally, gasoline prices that sat at $2.98 per gallon before Feb. 28, 2026, when joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began, currently average around $4.48 per gallon based on early May reporting.

On April 19, Energy Secretary of Energy Chris Wright acknowledged that gasoline prices may not fall below $3.00 per gallon until “later this year” or 2027, marking a divergence from earlier claims that the price increases would be temporary. Likewise, Strait of Hormuz constraints are raising U.S. and world oil prices, and thus, one potential solution is for further U.S. oil production, which would likely benefit the U.S. and its allies, as well as any nation that is a net importer of oil. Some U.S. oil producers have announced plans to increase production in 2026. 

Currently, the global energy impacts from the Iran war are not yet affecting U.S. electricity production or costs. This is largely because U.S. natural gas prices are disconnected from higher global LNG prices, which helps prevent U.S. electricity price increases since natural gas is the marginal fuel in most U.S. electricity markets.

While LNG exports and prices have been affected, the Iran war has not disrupted natural gas turbine manufacturing or electricity infrastructure buildout, as Gulf countries have not yet established large-scale production of these turbines, transmission components, wind turbines, or solar panels. China produces many of those products and is the dominant supplier of renewable equipment. Yet, China’s renewable energy products do not appear to be an area of focus for Trump’s DPA orders.

Rationale for DPA Orders

Even with the Iran war’s far-reaching energy impacts, the rationale for the recent DPA invocations goes beyond the scope of the war and pump prices. The White House legal framing across all five determinations is consistent, as the DPA orders view that U.S. industry requires presidential action to more quickly increase production “due to constrained financing, long lead times, permitting and infrastructure bottlenecks, and supply chain limitations.” In effect, the orders’ directives aim to legally designate the full fossil fuel supply chain as defense-critical infrastructure and, in effect, to unlock federal financing and contract priority authority that otherwise would be unavailable.

In March 2026, the Trump administration’s DPA invocation ordered that offshore drilling resume at Sable Offshore Corp.’s Santa Ynez Unit, which has increased California’s output by nearly 50,000 barrels per day. The April 20 DPA determinations aim to use a similar strategy that applies to transformers, natural gas turbines, LNG terminals, coal baseload facilities, and grid infrastructure broadly, areas where supply lead times are measured in years, not months.

Assessing the Strategy of DPA Orders

National Security Concerns

Energy infrastructure is a legitimate national security concern. As the U.S. imports significant amounts of foreign energy, with crude oil accounting for 67% of energy imports in 2024, international actors have leveraged these interconnections to sway commodity markets, which poses security risks for the U.S. and its allies. For instance, following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia significantly reduced natural gas imports to Europe, creating an energy crisis with global implications.

Additionally, electricity transformer and natural gas turbine production shortages as well as LNG export constraints due to facility capacity limits are vulnerabilities that predate the current administration. Refining bottlenecks are also a potential issue; while the U.S. is a large net exporter of refined products, local production, apart from California, is not typically affected by these chokepoints.

Given these national security concerns, the DPA can be utilized as a legal mechanism to increase investment to help markets support what the administration sees as immediate fossil fuel supply needs.

Broad Application and Timeline

At the same time, the open-endedness of the DPA orders raises questions. Given the orders’ broad focus and lack of a specific timeline, there seems to be no clear end to its application. Could emergency DPA authority that overrides existing laws and regulations last multiple years? Can it do so without Congress amending laws to reflect the DPA orders, or could the lack of congressional amendments end the emergency executive power?

The DPA is a mobilization tool, not a device that immediately spurs production. It can redirect funds and contract priority ratings. However, it cannot create refineries or pipelines solely based on a political timeline. The COVID-19 pandemic experience clearly demonstrated that even aggressive DPA use results in a considerable delay between invocation and real-world output. Whether the recent DPA memos translate into infrastructure development or remain largely symbolic is an open question.

Uncertainty of Comprehensive Use

The breadth of the Trump administration’s DPA orders significantly deviates from the act’s historical uses. Previous administrations targeted specific bottlenecks related to industrial manufacturing, medical equipment, and energy supply.

This current series of DPA orders is a comprehensive posture that declares the entire conventional energy supply chain — largely fossil fuels — as critical to defense and national security concerns. Thus, these memos are expected to have downstream consequences for federal contracting, permitting prioritization, and the Department of Energy’s capital deployment. It could also set a precedent for future administrations, with different energy priorities, to invoke the DPA authority toward broad energy strategies.

Key Policy Implications

The DPA was originally passed to address contemporary energy supply and national security concerns: the gap between what the market can deliver and what national security demands when it becomes too wide to leave unaddressed. Overall, the DPA’s mechanism is a legally appropriate pathway shaped by historical precedent. However, the open-ended nature of the Trump administration’s recent DPA invocations significantly deviates from the order’s past uses, and the current orders’ widespread overriding of existing legislation, regulation, and state and federal relations remains a legal uncertainty.

What history consistently demonstrates is that DPA orders work most effectively when they are operationally specific, tied to clear production targets, and backed by accountability structures. For example, the Korean War mobilization succeeded because of the order’s precise focus, and the ventilator procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic worked effectively, as its targets were specific. The question now is whether the recent five DPA memos will translate into tangible infrastructure capacity, or whether they are largely symbolic and potentially under deliver on their underlying promises.

This publication was produced by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Wherever feasible, the material was reviewed by outside experts prior to release. Any errors or omissions are solely the responsibility of the author(s).

This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author(s) and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.