On Tuesday, December 3, China announced stringent export restrictions on “dual-use” technologies for both civilian and military use, specifically targeted at the United States. These restrictions double down on previously announced controls on these metals, going so far as to ban shipments of antimony, gallium, and germanium to the United States. The new restrictions marked several firsts in the trade war—the first time Chinese critical minerals export restrictions were targeted at the United States rather than all countries and the first time restrictions on critical minerals were a direct response to restrictions on advanced technologies. Critical mineral security is now intrinsically linked to the escalating tech trade war....

Cost of tariffs passed on to end users can be a chokehold on industries that are labour intensive...

Building minerals security is one of the most bipartisan goals in Washington. The United States first opened its Bureau of Mines in 1910 to coordinate minerals security needs. It was closed in 1996. In many ways, the U.S. government rapidly decelerated its efforts over the subsequent two decades. However, over the last seven years, the United States realized its reliance on China for critical minerals posed serious risks to its national and energy security alongside its economic competitiveness and prosperity....

Copper is vital to U.S. national, economic, and energy security. Everything—from clean energy technologies, electronics, and automotives, to power transmission infrastructure, data centers, and defense systems—depends on copper.  ...

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 introduced a host of new tax credits, grants, and other incentive programs designed to boost domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies and their components. The Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Tax Credit (PTC) is a key initiative that targets not only the downstream production of technologies like electric vehicle (EV) batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines, but also boosting the upstream critical minerals industry by providing credit to offset high, and sometimes prohibitive, production costs....

When the world signed the Paris Agreement in 2016 the outlook for critical minerals was rosy. It marked global consensus of the importance of net zero ambitions....

Key metal is in high demand, and major producer Russia is likely to remain a pariah...

Addressing Critical Mineral Supply Chain Risks in Semiconductor Production...

With less than 35 days until the US election, if I had five bucks for every time someone in the world asked me what’s going to happen I probably wouldn’t need to work again....

Over the last four years, the Biden administration has rolled out a series of legislation to reduce its reliance on China for various supply chains. This includes the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Investment Infrastructure and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. The administration has also rolled out two avenues for international partnerships to advance its minerals security interests. The first is a multilateral forum, the Minerals Security Partnership, which includes European countries and high-income East Asian countries as well as Australia, Canada, and India. The second method is through the IRA, which gives countries that the United States has a free trade or critical minerals agreement with access to electric vehicle tax credits....

As African leaders convene in Beijing for the China-Africa co-operation summit, a word of caution: the state of the Chinese economy is precarious. Focusing on building up one source of foreign direct investment and one buyer of African natural resources exposes countries to significant risk....

On August 14, China announced export restrictions on antimony in the country’s latest move to restrict critical mineral shipments globally in the name of national security. Antimony is a critical inputfor the defense industry, particularly for armor-piercing ammunition, night vision goggles, infrared sensors, bullets, and precision optics, and the electronics industry, including semiconductors, cables, and batteries. This is the latest restriction after a series of export controlsin 2023 on graphite, germanium, gallium, and rare earth processing technologies, raising alarms in the semiconductor, electric vehicle, and defense industries that rely on these materials....

I was sitting at Washington’s Dulles Airport on Sunday night when the news flashed across the screen: Joe Biden had dropped out of the US presidential race, less than a week after former president Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt. Quite a time to be living in Washington....

Indonesia is the world’s largest nickel producer and produces significant quantities of copper, cobalt, tin, and gold. In 2023, mining contributed to 11.9 percent of Indonesia’s gross domestic product. Over the last 15 years, Indonesia has imposed—and at times loosened—bans on raw resource exports and local ownership requirements. While the raw nickel export ban has proved effective in stimulating Chinese investment to build a robust downstream industry, history shows that a one-size-fits-all form of resource nationalism has not always been beneficial to Indonesia’s mining sector....

Even at the height of sanctions, the US and allies did not stop importing uranium; in fact, Russian uranium production expanded significantly...