On Monday, the Biden administration issued new restrictions on the export of key semiconductor gear and software program to China. On Tuesday, China retaliated by banning the export to the US of three strategic parts — antimony, gallium, and germanium — which have a number of army and civilian makes use of. It’s also restricted the export of graphite to the US.
The 2 nations at the moment are locked in a commerce warfare over key applied sciences and the strategic commodities used to manufacture all the things from batteries to missile steering techniques. As two analysts on the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Safety put it, “crucial mineral safety is now intrinsically linked to the escalating commerce warfare.” The newest salvo within the commerce warfare gives yet one more reminder that the US has, for too lengthy, ignored its strategic vulnerability to Chinese language provide chains. If China is prepared to chop off the flows of antimony, gallium, germanium, and graphite to the US, it might additionally ban, or scale back, the exports of different strategic metals, minerals, and magnets, and, in doing so, inflict important injury to American business and US safety.
Three many years in the past, the Chinese language ruler Deng Xiaoping mentioned, “The Center East has oil. China has uncommon earths. We should take full benefit of this useful resource.” Right now, China has an efficient monopoly on the entire uncommon earth parts and particularly, two heavy uncommon earths: dysprosium and terbium. It has additionally taken a mercantilist strategy to a slew of strategic parts within the Periodic Desk, together with nickel, cobalt, copper, lithium, and tellurium. As well as, it has a near-monopoly on the manufacturing of neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets, that are utilized in electrical automobiles, wind generators, and quite a few shopper and army purposes.
If you skipped chemistry class in highschool, antimony (Sb) is one among many strategic parts within the Periodic Desk, and China produces extra of it than another nation. Antimony is utilized in lead-acid batteries to enhance the power and castability of the battery’s grids. Antimony can also be crucial in a number of army purposes, together with bullets, missiles, nuclear weapons, and night-vision goggles. On Friday, I talked to an government at a significant US producer of automotive and industrial lead-acid batteries. (He requested me to not use his or his firm’s identify.) He mentioned his firm had secured provides of antimony by means of mid-2025, however after that, “we don’t know.” He mentioned Trump’s risk of tariffs on all Chinese language items and the looming scarcity of antimony are giving him “a whole lot of sleepless nights.”
The chief mentioned that costs for antimony have greater than tripled over the previous few weeks to $17 per pound. He mentioned the US has taken antimony — which is taken into account a crucial mineral by the Inside Division, together with uncommon earths, cobalt, and uranium — as a right for too lengthy. The final main antimony mine within the US, the Stibnite Gold Mine in Idaho, was closed within the Nineties. Right now, the US imports 100% of the antimony it wants from abroad suppliers, and China accounts for about half of that provide. Now that it has management over antimony and different key parts, the manager advised me, China is “placing the screws to us.”
Can the US get unscrewed from China’s stranglehold on strategic metals and magnets? Let’s have a look.
Learn the remainder of this piece at Robert Bryce Substack.
Robert Bryce is a Texas-based writer, journalist, movie producer, and podcaster. His articles have appeared in a myriad of publications together with the Wall Avenue Journal, New York Occasions, Forbes, Time, Austin Chronicle, and Sydney Morning Herald.
Photograph: China has dominant positions within the international markets for quite a few strategic parts, together with lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, gallium, germanium, tellurium, antimony, and the uncommon earth parts.