FORTRESS America, Cobre Panamá Final Report and Milwaukee Steel Framework

The U.S. Department of War announced FORTRESS America on September 30 as a new department wide programme intended to strengthen the resources, industrial capacity and infrastructure supporting U.S. military power. The initiative is organised around energy independence, supply chain and defence industrial base resilience, strategic reserves, installation hardening and cyber resilience, and resilience in space and spectrum.

The programme explicitly links military readiness to dependence on foreign mines, overseas manufacturing and vulnerable supply chains for inputs including rare earths, specialty metals, semiconductors and propellants. It also calls for greater independent power capacity at major military installations and deeper reserves of critical supplies, placing resource access, domestic processing and infrastructure resilience inside a single defence framework.

Panama’s interministerial commission on Cobre Panamá delivered its final report to President José Raúl Mulino on September 30, presenting 17 recommendations and six criteria for any future solution. The commission recommends evaluating the viability of an agreement that could resolve pending international arbitration proceedings and establish conditions for a restart that would lead to an orderly closure of the site, without fiscal cost to the state, without the possibility of an extension and in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling.

The report places state control over mineral deposits, transparency, environmental supervision and the financing of final closure among its governing conditions. The government also stated that there is currently no mining extraction at the site: it remains under a state ordered preservation plan, while previously extracted stockpiled material is being processed principally as an environmental safety measure.

Ministers participating in the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity met in Milwaukee on September 30 and reached consensus on a comprehensive framework for joint action, named the Milwaukee Framework. The agreement moves the forum toward coordinated national measures addressing excess steel capacity and the market distortions that participating governments associate with it.

The development places industrial capacity and steel trade policy at the centre of the G20 trade discussions in Milwaukee. The framework is designed to guide participating members as they implement measures through their own legal and policy systems, linking steelmaking capacity, trade enforcement and industrial policy disciplines in a common process.

A U.S. and South Korea strategic framework announced on September 30 envisages up to US$120 billion of Korean investment to support construction of eight large nuclear reactors in the United States. The contemplated programme includes six Westinghouse AP1000 reactors and two Korean APR1400 reactors incorporating Westinghouse technology, with deployment proposed on U.S. federal sites.

The framework also provides for a Korean equity investment of between 5% and 10% in Westinghouse and links the proposed reactor buildout to growing U.S. electricity demand from electrification, reindustrialisation, artificial intelligence and compute infrastructure. It builds on earlier U.S. partnerships intended to expand domestic nuclear generation.

Serbia’s state owned electricity company EPS, gas company Srbijagas and Azerbaijan’s SOCAR signed a shareholders’ agreement in Belgrade on September 30 for development of a combined cycle gas power plant in Niš. The agreement also provides for creation of a joint company, with the Serbian companies collectively holding 50% and SOCAR holding the other 50%.

The agreement defines ownership rights, joint management, unanimous decisions on key questions during the preparatory phase and financing for development work. Serbia presents the project as a long term element of its electricity security strategy and a further step in energy cooperation with Azerbaijan.

The U.S. Department of State placed a final rule on public inspection on September 30 removing Syria from the list of countries subject to a comprehensive policy of denial under section 126.1 of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The change permits requests involving defence articles and defence services for Syria to be reviewed on an individual licensing basis.

The measure marks another step in the changing U.S. policy toward Syria following earlier sanctions relief and the rescission of the terrorism support determination underlying sections 40 and 40A of the Arms Export Control Act. The rule removes the comprehensive ITAR policy of denial while leaving proposed transfers subject to individual licensing and other applicable U.S. legal requirements.