With antimony, he said, “we’re really at the heart of national defense.”

China Tightens Its Grip on Yet Another Critical Mineral and for now, the United States has few other options.

August 23, 2024, 2:54 PM View Comments

More than a year after China rattled the West by imposing export controls on gallium and germanium, two powerful chipmaking inputs, Beijing flexed its muscles again this month by announcing curbs on another key, yet often overlooked, metal: antimony.

Antimony may seem like an obscure material, but it is vital in the defense industry, with critical uses in nuclear weapons, infrared missiles, and night-vision equipment. No country maintains as dominant a grip on the metal’s global trade as China, which accounts for nearly half of all production and more than 60 percent of U.S. imports. Beginning Sept. 15, Beijing will require exporters to apply for a license for certain antimony products as well as require permission for related smelting and separation technology exports.

For Washington and its European partners, this latest move has only reinforced the importance of diversifying away from Chinese-dominated mineral supply chains. Yet it has also underscored an uncomfortable reality: No matter how eager Western powers are to slash their dependence on China, they will likely remain vulnerable to such measures in the immediate future, given the many challenges in securing alternative sources and the necessary financing.

“Everyone knows that you can’t rely on China,” said Gracelin Baskaran, an expert in critical mineral security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank. But the United States is “caught in an impasse” between its political and national security interests and a challenging market environment, including whipsawing commodity prices and high capital costs, she said.

“China is 100 percent reminding the world how much power it has when it comes to those commodities that you need for national security, energy security, and economic security,” she added.

The risks of supply chain over-dependence on a geopolitical rival were thrown into the spotlight when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and weaponized its natural gas supply against its European buyers. At the time, Russian exports accounted for about 47 percent of Europe’s total gas supply, and Moscow’s retaliatory energy cutoffs pitched dependent nations into a severe energy crisis. But those measures also turbocharged European efforts to transition away from Russia’s supply, and in 2023, less than 15 percent of Europe’s total gas supply came from Moscow.

China, similarly, has wielded its critical mineral dominance as leverage in geopolitical spats, perhaps most notably when it cut rare-earth exports to Japan in 2010. After unveiling gallium and germanium trade curbs last summer, Beijing also imposed new restrictions on exports of graphite—which underpins electric vehicle batteries—last year.

“It started with gallium and germanium, so it started with semiconductors. It moved on to graphite, with batteries,” said Tom Moerenhout, a critical minerals expert at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. With antimony, he said, “we’re really at the heart of national defense.”

As Beijing has leveraged its supply chain might, addressing the critical mineral challenge has “truly become [a] bipartisan priority for the United States,” said Jane Nakano, an energy security expert at CSIS.

Yet breaking away from China’s grip on the industry, itself the product of decades of research and investment, comes with its own unique set of challenges.

That’s because securing new mineral supply chains isn’t just a question of increasing mining; it requires an entire ecosystem of refining, processing, and manufacturing systems, all of which are costly and take many years to build. The United States is also grappling with its own domestic problems, including a talent squeeze in the industry and long-standing permitting delays. Private firms getting in the game must also navigate a notoriously risky and competitive market, complicated by volatile prices and shifting geopolitical tensions.
(I read this friday night and forgot to include the link)