Why is that necessary when it appears there is sufficient global supply and regulations are causing it to be unavailable to the US market? The issue isn't a shortage of production, as far as I can tell. And even if there were, a stockpile only absorbs a temporary shortage. A strong industry with many producers is what the government should desire, I imagine.

It makes sense from a national defense perspective to have reasonable stockpiles of essential goods.

I'm not a national defense expert, but it seems to make sense to ensure your country can get access to essential goods. One possible solution would be stockpiling them. Another would be maintaining the capacity either in the state or the private sector to acquire or manufacture them rapidly. It feels like hindsight 20/20 to say "why didn't the government have a stockpile of [thing we had a shortage of]".

It appears to me the policy here led to essentially a single point of failure or low optionality for the market to get the product. Not clear stockpiling is the answer to that problem.

It's literally impossible to stockpile all essential goods.

In our current political climate, people would attack this during the good times as wasteful and not a good use of money. I agree with you, but we have a party in this country that doesn't think good governance is a virtue.

I was actually thinking of something like that as well. If nothing else, the cast-offs from a stockpiling program could be a nice social welfare program.