America stopped making titanium sponge in 2020. China and Russia produce 75% of the world's supply. Two Japanese companies, Toho Titanium and Osaka Titanium, supply 70% of America's imports. Sponge is the porous metallic form that every titanium part starts as. In 2018, Titanium Metals Corporation warned regulators that without tariffs the US military would depend on geopolitically risky countries for titanium. No tariffs came. Two years later their plant closed. This month the Air Force announced an $8.4 million program to 3D-print titanium aerostructures. The sponge still comes from overseas. I manufacture chemicals. The same molecular structure that lets titanium survive the most corrosive reactors in our industry is the structure that punishes you when you try to shape it. It conducts heat 30 times slower than aluminum. Machine it and three problems feed each other. The heat stays at the tool tip. The metal bonds to the cutting tool. The surface hardens the moment the tool touches it. Each cut hits a tougher surface than the one before. Aerospace-grade titanium has no substitute. Nothing else matches its strength-to-weight at jet-engine temperatures. Every F-35, Falcon 9, and chlorine plant depends on a metal the US imports.