Since 2023 the number of tariff codes China requires a licence to export has tripled, and the value of controlled exports passed USD 11 billion in 2025. A large wave announced in October 2025 — expanded rare-earth controls and the whole battery supply chain — was suspended for one year, until November 2026. The suspension is a cliff, not a resolution: the underlying concentration is unchanged.
| Material | Imposed by | 2025 share | Stage | Mechanism | Action | Since | Status |
|---|
Why the map predicts what gets controlled
Export controls are a downstream weapon: they only bite where one country holds a genuine chokepoint. Sorted by the atlas's 7-mechanism taxonomy, the pattern is stark — controls land almost entirely on by-product stages (gallium 99%, germanium 94%, indium 86%, tellurium 73%, bismuth 73% — all recovered from a host metal, so they cannot scale on their own) and built-capability stages (rare-earth separation 91%, refined graphite 94%, tungsten 76%). No one has export-controlled a diffuse chain (wind turbines, heat pumps, grids) — because there is no chokepoint there to weaponise. The map is, in effect, a list of what can be controlled next.
Source: IEA, Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026 (market-share table and control timeline), © IEA, CC BY 4.0, cross-checked against USGS and public policy records. Shares are the top country's 2025 position (mine or refining stage as noted); some are IEA figures that differ from USGS — see each material's chain page for the reconciliation.