China's latest export controls have caused some in the critical minerals industry to worry that Beijing will leverage its global supply chain dominance in unprecedented ways.
BEIJING — China's latest export controls has rattled insiders of the critical minerals industry, and some concerned that Beijing will leverage its global supply chain dominance in unprecedented ways."Three months ago, there's no way one would have thought they would have done this. It's quite confrontational in that regard," Lewis Black, CEO of Canada-based Almonty Industries, said in a phone interview.
"There's always been an equilibrium ... they were never weaponized because they could create this snowball of escalation," he said. “The way that the statement was written, we've extrapolated that to tungsten and other rare earths. It may not happen," Adock said, noting that"tungsten is probably the highest economic importance."While tungsten is also used to make semiconductors, the metal, like antimony, is used in defense production.
"During a situation where there's a bit of a race to secure metals in case there is some sort of flare up in tensions, frankly we talk about South China Sea or Taiwan, you want to have as much tungsten as you can," Ecclestone said."But you also want people on the other side to have as least tungsten as you can engineer.