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.
"There's always been an equilibrium ... they were never weaponized because they could create this snowball of escalation," he said.in 2023, while the U.S. did not mine any marketable antimony, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's latest annual report. The U.S. has not commercially mined tungsten since 2015, and China dominates global tungsten supply, the report said.
"China has a declining tungsten production, but tungsten is absolutely vital, far more than antimony, in military applications," said Christopher Ecclestone, principal and mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company. Ecclestone said that last week, the niche market of antimony trading noticed that the U.S. price for buying the metal from Rotterdam was exponentially higher than the price for delivery out of Shanghai. That's after antimony prices kept rising even after pandemic-related shipping disruptions ended, he said.