Wake up AMERICA!!
It's only going to get worse... if you want to safeguard your own supply of critical minerals (including Graphite) - you need to start taking serious steps NOW!

China squeezes Western militaries with export ban on weapons metal

Annie Lee and Mark Burton

Aug 16, 2024 – 10.11am

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Singapore | China is tightening its grip over global critical mineral supplies by placing export controls on antimony, a metal used widely in ammunition and other military applications that has surged in price this year.

The country will apply the restrictions to antimony and antimony-related materials from September 15 to safeguard national security, a statement from the Ministry of Commerce said. That adds to earlier controls on other critical minerals including gallium and germanium, which have set off alarm bells in Washington.

Antimony is used widely in ammunition and other military equipment. Bloomberg

China is the world’s top supplier of more than 30 critical minerals, and it claims a 56 per cent share of global mined supplies of antimony, according to a 2023 European Union study. That dominance has been built up over decades, but recently the US and other Western governments have been ramping up efforts to secure alternative supplies.

At a regular weekly briefing on Thursday, the ministry said the curbs were not directed at any specific country or region.

But Beijing’s restrictions on critical minerals have been viewed in part as a tit-for-tat response to the Biden administration’s increasingly aggressive efforts to keep China from gaining the upper hand in artificial intelligence and chip manufacturing.

In the latest salvo, the US is considering unilateral restrictions on China’s access to AI memory chips and equipment capable of making those semiconductors as soon as next month.

The US and other countries are scrambling to ease their reliance on China for key materials, setting out policies and support packages for their critical minerals sectors, including rare earths.

While China is by far the world’s top antimony miner, production has fallen substantially in recent years, in a trend that has fuelled fears of global shortages and underpinned a surge in prices.

“It’s a sign of the times,” said Christopher Ecclestone, a principal and mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company in London.

“The military uses of Sb [antimony] are now the tail that wags the dog. Everyone needs it for armaments so it is better to hang onto it than sell it,” he said. “This will put a real squeeze on the US and European militaries.”

Concerns about China’s grip over critical mineral supplies have grown sharply since it placed gallium and germanium under stricter government oversight a year ago, in a move that has sent prices for the two metals soaring. It later put graphite under the same export scrutiny and halted outbound sales of a range of technologies to make rare earth magnets.

Perpetua Resources, which is building a US antimony and gold project with support from the Pentagon and the US Export-Import Bank, had initially planned to begin production by 2028, should it obtain final permits this year. But China’s moves mean the company is studying ways to produce antimony faster.

“We are looking at things that we can do during construction to get antimony out the door sooner for some of these strategic needs,” Jon Cherry, Perpetua’s CEO, told Reuters.

“The [US] Department of Defence is aware of the critical nature of antimony and the short supply available. We’ve been hearing from a lot of different sources about the lack of supply for antimony, that the market is very tight and getting tighter daily.”

The strategic metal is used in military applications such as ammunition, infrared missiles, nuclear weapons and night vision goggles, as well as in batteries and photovoltaic equipment.