As part of ongoing China-US tensions, China leveraged its dominance over 17 critical minerals — restricting their global export. These minerals are essential inputs for a number of high-tech products: from batteries, optics and thermoelectric devices to semiconductors and quantum computing. Antimony, gallium and germanium had export restrictions gradually raised on them, culminating in an outright ban in December 2024. Two further rounds of export controls on 14 other materials were imposed in February and April 2025…
