On Monday, the Biden administration issued new restrictions on the export of key semiconductor equipment and software to China. On Tuesday, China retaliated by banning the export to the US of three strategic elements — antimony, gallium, and germanium — that have multiple military and civilian uses. It is also restricted the export of graphite to the US.
The two countries are now locked in a trade war over key technologies and the strategic commodities used to fabricate everything from batteries to missile guidance systems. As two analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Security put it, “critical mineral security is now intrinsically linked to the escalating trade war.” The latest salvo in the trade war provides yet another reminder that the US has, for too long, ignored its strategic vulnerability to Chinese supply chains. If China is willing to cut off the flows of antimony, gallium, germanium, and graphite to the US, it could also ban, or reduce, the exports of other strategic metals, minerals, and magnets, and, in doing so, inflict significant damage to American industry and US security.
Three decades ago, the Chinese ruler Deng Xiaoping said, “The Middle East has oil. China has rare earths. We must take full advantage of this resource.” Today, China has an effective monopoly on all of the rare earth elements and in particular, two heavy rare earths: dysprosium and terbium. It has also taken a mercantilist approach to a slew of strategic elements in the Periodic Table, including nickel, cobalt, copper, lithium, and tellurium. In addition, it has a near-monopoly on the production of neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets, which are used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and numerous consumer and military applications.
If you skipped chemistry class in high school, antimony (Sb) is one of many strategic elements in the Periodic Table, and China produces more of it than any other country. Antimony is used in lead-acid batteries to improve the strength and castability of the battery’s grids. Antimony is also critical in multiple military applications, including bullets, missiles, nuclear weapons, and night-vision goggles. On Friday, I talked to an executive at a major US manufacturer of automotive and industrial lead-acid batteries. (He asked me not to use his or his company’s name.) He said his company had secured supplies of antimony through mid-2025, but after that, “we don’t know.” He said Trump’s threat of tariffs on all Chinese goods and the looming shortage of antimony are giving him “a lot of sleepless nights.”
The executive said that prices for antimony have more than tripled over the past few weeks to $17 per pound. He said the US has taken antimony — which is considered a critical mineral by the Interior Department, along with rare earths, cobalt, and uranium — for granted for too long. The last major antimony mine in the US, the Stibnite Gold Mine in Idaho, was closed in the 1990s. Today, the US imports 100% of the antimony it needs from overseas suppliers, and China accounts for about half of that supply. Now that it has control over antimony and other key elements, the executive told me, China is “putting the screws to us.”
Can the US get unscrewed from China’s stranglehold on strategic metals and magnets? Let’s take a look.
In addition to its use in batteries and ammunition, antimony is also used as a flame retardant. It’s also found in ceramics, glass, and rubber products. As seen above, China produces more antimony than any other country.
Gallium is a soft metal used extensively in electronics and semiconductors. China produces about 99% of the world’s refined gallium.
Germanium is a metalloid used in infrared technology, fiber optics, solar cells, and LEDs. Along with gallium, hafnium, indium, niobium, and several others, it is considered a “technology-critical” element. China produces about 59% of the world’s refined germanium.
Graphite is a form of carbon. It is used primarily in lithium-ion batteries and is the single largest component by volume in electric vehicle batteries. Each EV contains some 136 pounds of graphite. According to CSIS, the US imports 100% of its graphite. China accounts for 77% of natural graphite production, 95% of synthetic graphite production, and nearly 100% of graphite refining.
But China’s dominance of antimony, gallium, germanium, and graphite is only one aspect of its stranglehold on strategic commodities. The US has long been vulnerable to Chinese supply chains. As seen above, China has a near monopoly on the NdFeB magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and numerous consumer and military applications. It also controls the global supply of dysprosium and terbium, which are used to make NdFeB magnets work better at high temperatures. Last year, in “The EPA’s China Syndrome,” I explained that agencies in the federal government have “repeatedly warned about China’s dominance of the magnet sector.” I wrote:
In February 2022, the Department of Energy issued a report titled “Rare Earth Permanent Magnets: Supply Chain Deep Dive Assessment.” It said, “Nearly all supply chain stages are concentrated in China and the chemistry associated with processing rare earths is challenging, expensive, and hazardous. Furthermore, substitution is difficult through the supply chain due to the unique characteristics and technical advantage of rare earth magnets.” Last September, the Commerce Department issued a report which projected that U.S. demand for NdFeB EV magnets would quintuple between 2020 and 2030 to 10,000 tons per year. It further estimated it would hit 23,000 tons per year by 2050. The report also found that America’s dependence on imported NdFeB magnets meets the statutory definition of threatening national security.
The International Energy Agency has repeatedly underscored the danger inherent in China’s dominance of key metals and supply chains. In a report released earlier this year, the agency said that the “geographic concentration for refined products has increased in recent years.”
As seen above, the agency expects China’s dominance to continue. And while the IEA is careful with its words, the implications of the graphics it published in its report on critical minerals are clear. China has dominant positions in key metals and alt-energy technologies and will be the dominant player through 2040, and perhaps longer. The IEA notes that the “already high geographic concentration of both mining and refining processes further intensifies and current dominant players continue to expand their operations.”
So what is the way forward?
The answer is obvious: the US is going to have to counter China’s mercantilist approach to strategic elements and commodities with a mercantilist approach of its own. That will require policymakers to adopt a long-term outlook — and support for — mining, refining, and stockpiling strategic elements and commodities. As I noted in my piece last week — “Seven Reasons To Be Skeptical About SMRs” — an America-first approach must also include uranium. The nuclear sector is too important to US national security to rely on other countries for supplies of raw and enriched uranium.
Mining is the most obvious area where the US will have to change course. In a recent report for the Center of the American Experiment, Sarah Montalbano and Debra Struhsacker write that “Current tensions between the US and China demonstrate the folly of relying so heavily on a potential adversary for minerals critical to US national security, economic prosperity, energy transition ambitions, the electric grid, and more.”
In their report, “Mission Impossible: Mineral Shortages and the Broken Permitting Process Put Net Zero Out of Reach,” they explain that the Biden administration has “obstructed timely development of two world-class copper, nickel, and cobalt deposits in Minnesota that could reduce the country’s reliance on foreign minerals and provide some of the key minerals needed to meet energy transition goals.” They conclude that Congress must pass legislation to improve the permitting process so that proposed mining projects “can be permitted more quickly and to limit obstructionists’ routine use of the judicial system to challenge agencies’ permitting decisions.”
None of this will be quick, cheap, or easy. Policymakers, and conservative politicians in particular, like to believe that the marketplace can resolve shortages and create the best outcomes. That may be true in some cases, but the US is now facing a different, more confrontational foreign policy that will require reshoring key industries and supplies of strategic commodities.
On Tuesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said the US is “politicizing and weaponizing trade and technology.” Meanwhile, a US official said China’s export ban “underscores the need to diversify away from China.”
Let’s hope this escalating trade war (and war of words) doesn’t turn into a shooting war. In the meantime, the new Trump administration and Congress need to get serious about reducing America’s reliance on China and Chinese supply chains. And the first place they should look is the Periodic Table.
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