China’s Strategic Export Control Upends Rare Earth Markets

China has spent years staking out near-total domination of a laundry list of rare earth minerals with a vital and growing role in clean energy supply chains. The nation has been building up its own domestic wealth of these key primary materials while simultaneously expanding its acquisitions and influence in resource-rich developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. But now, China is limiting exports of graphite, a key material in electric vehicle batteries as well as other energy industry applications, in a move that will have reverberating…