Critical Materials Atlas
Method · importer-side exposure

Leverage map

The global pages say who holds each chokepoint. This makes it personal: for every importing country, material by material, how much of its supply runs through the dominant producer — and how single-sourced it is. Two different vulnerabilities: capture (systemic — you buy from the world’s chokepoint leader, so an export ban hits you) and lock-in (idiosyncratic — you depend on one supplier, even if it isn’t the global giant). Click any country to see its worst exposures and who holds the leverage.

How to read it. Rows are importing countries (most China-captured at the top), columns are materials (most globally-concentrated at the left). A cell’s darkness is how much of that country’s imports of that material comes from the chokepoint leader — toggle between the material’s global leader and China specifically. A pale cell is diversified supply; a dark cell is a country that has handed one supplier its whole book for that material.
Method & caveats

Capture = share of country i’s imports of material m that comes from m’s dominant global exporter. China mode shows the share from China specifically. Lock-in = the country’s own import-source HHI and top-source share (≥70% from one source flags a single-source dependency). The per-country score = capture × √(import HHI): high when you buy heavily from the global chokepoint AND have few alternatives.

Caveats. This is import-based: a country that refines for itself simply imports less, so a low exposure can mean self-sufficiency, not resilience (China’s own row is small because it feeds itself). It captures refined-goods dependence via trade, not stockpiles, long-term contracts, or domestic mines. Shared HS codes (gallium/germanium 811292) are a basket. Top 40 importers by critical-material import value are shown; the open dataset covers all. Built by build_leverage.py on CEPII BACI. See also Break the chokepoint and the reallocation stress test.

Colour by: low high — reliance on one supplier