What One Mineral Reveals About the U.S.–China Trade War
China has imposed strict controls on the export of antimony. But global supply chains, both legal and illegal, are finding ways to adapt.
Something very strange is happening in the market for antimony. This is not a market most of us think about. And that’s because, unless you’re a chemist, you’ve probably never even heard of antimony (anti-what?). Some may remember from school that it’s one of six metalloids in the periodic table.1 But this is not just some obscure rock. It is, instead, what the U.S. refers to as a “critical mineral.” Antimony products are essential to manufacturing ammunition, explosives, night-vision goggles, nuclear missiles, and other strategic weaponry.2 And, until recently, the U.S. relied almost entirely on one country for this crucial resource: China.
China is the undisputed heavy-weight champion of antimony production. In the early 2010s, it produced 75-83% of the world’s supply.3 That number has declined due to a Chinese crackdown on illegal mining and the rise of alternative producers like Russia and Tajikistan.4 But China still dominates the processing of raw antimony into usable material.5 Companies with names like Hunan Gold and Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star are the biggest players, transforming this silvery metalloid into crystals and powders used in a wide variety of industrial applications.
Like the rest of the world, the U.S. has long been dependent on China for the import of processed antimony. As recently as October 2023, China accounted for 84% of total U.S. imports of antimony oxides.6 But recent escalations in the U.S.-China trade war have changed everything. In August 2024, China imposed strict controls on the export of antimony products.7 This was followed by an outright ban on their export to the U.S. in December.8 Both moves were a direct tit-for-tat response to U.S. controls on the export of semiconductors. And, as trade data indicate, they initiated a rapid decline in Chinese antimony exports to America:
One would expect these restrictions to severely curtail American access to this critical mineral. China is, by far, the biggest producer of raw antimony. And the next two largest producers, Russia and Tajikistan, are not exactly what you might call “friendly” alternatives. Nor can the U.S. supply itself. America has negligible natural deposits of antimony and virtually no mining capacity.9 This has long been a source of concern for American policymakers. In a recent Hearing of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, titled “Now Ore Never,” experts lamented that the U.S. has been dependent on China ever since World War II.10
But U.S. imports of antimony have not declined. To the contrary, they exploded after both of China’s export control moves. And while the latest available data indicate an equally extreme reversal, monthly imports remain at pre-control levels:
What’s happening here? And how has the U.S. managed to fill the gap? The answers are not just about this one obscure mineral. They speak to a broader story about the ways in which the U.S.-China conflict — and the world’s sudden retreat from 20th century free trade principles — is transforming the global economy. It is a story about disruption and adaptation. And it is also a story about crime. Specifically, how the growing use of sanctions, tariffs, and export controls naturally give rise to new criminal networks designed to evade trade restrictions. And that story begins in a place you might not expect: Belgium.
The Brussels Trade
When you think about countries with large deposits of natural resources, you do not normally think of Belgium. This flat, highly-educated country, which is approximately the size of Maryland, is more known for its export of pharmaceuticals, strong beers, and, of course, European regulations. Belgium is not blessed (or cursed) with plentiful natural resources. And, indeed, that is precisely why King Leopold II brutally colonized the Congo in the late 19th century.11
Nor does Belgium possess any natural deposits of antimony.12 Nevertheless, it is now the leading exporter of antimony oxides to the United States, accounting for 39% of its total supply in July 2025.13 This is strange! And it is not the only European country experiencing a U.S. export boom despite not having any mines. French exports to the U.S. have risen substantially, peaking at 32% of total in December. Spain, which hasn’t provided antimony oxides to the U.S. in the last ten years, now suddenly accounts for 10% of its imports.14 By sourcing processed antimony from these countries, America has largely replaced the volume lost from China:
These shifts are a bit less mysterious when we remember that pure antimony is not the same thing as processed antimony oxides. Belgium doesn’t need natural reserves of the former in order to produce the latter (nor does it need cocoa trees to produce its famous chocolate). It can import the raw material from abroad and turn it into a new, Belgian-made product. That is exactly what companies like Belgium’s Campine are doing. And as they explain in their interim financial report for FY25, export controls have created the commercial opportunity of a lifetime:
Revenue more than doubled to €384 million, compared with €169 million in the same period last year…Growth was primarily driven by antimony trioxide sales, with Campine becoming the global market leader following Chinese export restrictions at the end of 2024…CEO De Vos commented: “…2025 is already shaping up to be an exceptional year.”
But this still leaves the question of where these European companies are obtaining the pure antimony needed for processing. The answer: Tajikistan. Before 2020, the EU was, like the U.S., largely dependent on China.15 But Europe has reversed course, pivoting to Tajikistan as its primary supplier.16 Tajikistan provided Belgium and France with 83% and 81%, respectively, of their pure antimony imports in 2024.17 That material is subsequently being processed and shipped to the U.S.
What we are witnessing, in other words, is a rapid reorientation of the global supply chain for critical minerals. The U.S. has long been dependent on a line of production running directly through Beijing. But in a remarkably short span of time, it has shifted to a new chain that originates in Tajikistan and runs through Europe. This has created clear winners and losers. Perhaps no one is benefiting more than Tajikistan’s booming mining industry (and European refiners).18 American companies, on the other hand, are losing out from having to pay much higher prices.19
The bigger loser, however, may be China. The world is demonstrating that it possesses the flexibility to adjust in response to their strategic export controls. And that would be bad enough. But China is also dealing with another issue, one that has plagued its Western adversaries for years. Namely, China is finding that creating export controls is the easy part. Enforcing those controls — chasing the smugglers and preventing illicit transshipment — is a far more challenging task.
The Smuggler Trade
On May 9th, 2025, the Chinese Communist Party announced the creation of a special inter-agency operation.20 The objective of this operation is straightforward: prevent criminals from circumventing Chinese export controls on critical minerals. Following China’s imposition of these controls, they have faced immediate efforts by criminal networks to smuggle goods abroad or engage in illicit transshipment. As China Daily, a state-controlled newspaper, summarized:
In one disclosed case, a country that cannot independently produce or refine rare metals has been stockpiling them through various methods to secure a stable domestic supply. Investigations found that contractors from this country swapped packaging and forged non-China origin labels before transshipping the items back to their country.
The contractors also used various methods to illegally export China’s rare earths and other controlled items, including false reporting of contents and components, misrepresenting product names, sending small quantities in multiple express shipments and switching transportation channels.21
This is, well, amusing. The newspaper is describing exactly what Chinese companies have been doing to evade Western export controls for many years. As we have discussed, there is substantial evidence that China is obtaining AI microchips through mislabeling, false reporting, and structuring techniques. Combating these strategies has primarily been the West’s problem. But now that China is flexing its own restrictions, it has to deal with the same enforcement challenges.
The primary challenge appears to be illicit transshipment. This is a technique in which goods are re-routed through third-countries to disguise their true origin. In this case, Chinese antimony oxides are exported to some country, where they are relabeled as non-Chinese products and shipped to America. The billion-dollar question is: which third-countries are being used? Who, in other words, are what the political science literature refers to as the “sanctions busters”?
According to a recent report by Reuters, it could be Mexico and Thailand.22 Following China’s ban, both countries began importing large quantities of antimony oxide from Beijing and exporting that same product to the U.S. Reuters presents data on these shifts, which I have updated with more recent trade statistics:
These trends do not, in themselves, prove the existence of illicit transshipment. But they are suspicious. It suggests that Mexico and Thailand may be importing and re-exporting the same product without alteration. This is very different from Belgium, which is transforming raw antimony into processed variants. But Reuters’ reporting is not just based on suggestive data. One U.S. executive explained — on the record! — how his company skirts Chinese controls to obtain critical minerals:
Levi Parker, CEO and founder of U.S.-based Gallant Metals, told Reuters how he obtains about 200 kg of gallium a month from China, without identifying the parties involved due to the potential repercussions. First, buying agents in China obtain material from producers. Then, a shipping company routes the packages, re-labelled variously as iron, zinc or art supplies, via another Asian country, he said. The workarounds aren’t perfect, nor cheap, Parker said. He said he would like to import 500 kg regularly but big shipments risked drawing scrutiny, and Chinese logistics firms were “very careful” because of the risks.23
Levi, we don’t know each other. And look, I think it’s very cool that you’re being so transparent. But…what are you doing!? You know you can say these things “off the record” right? I hope you’re OK.
Effect and Cause
This is certainly not the first time trade restrictions have spurred the creation of illicit economies. We have already discussed how Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs created a new market for evasion. And scholars have long observed that sanctions and export controls can inadvertently empower criminal actors. Take, for example, UN sanctions on Yugoslavia in 1992. Peter Andreas has argued that this case, despite being one of the few sanction campaigns widely considered “successful,” had the unfortunate side-effect of enabling criminalization:
Sanctions were central to both the rapid growth of the underground economy and its state-directed restructuring toward organized smuggling and clandestine financial transactions. [Slobodan Milošević] was able to command loyalty and collect sanctions rents by providing preferential access to the sanctions-busting trade, which in turn helped to prop up the regime. In short, sanctions enhanced the criminalization of politics and the politicization of criminality.24
What sanctions and export controls do, in other words, is alter the domestic political economy of targeted states. They provide local criminal actors with the opportunity to benefit from the restrictions and, in some cases, obtain power. And this is not limited to recent sanctions cases. John Hancock, an American founding father and signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, was a smuggler! In fact, the entire story of U.S. independence can be convincingly retold as smugglers rebelling against the British Navy’s militarized enforcement of export controls.25
But sanctions, tariffs, and export controls do not just impact targeted states. They also transform global supply chains, reconfiguring the economic networks through which countries access strategic goods. World leaders might like to think they can predict or possibly even control these structural shifts in global markets. But they can’t. Because what we think of as the “market” is, in reality, thousands of firms making decisions and finding creative solutions. Global supply chains are, in other words, a bit like a buzzing swarm of bees in your attic. You can try to direct them outside by shutting some doors while opening others. But it isn’t possible to predict how they might split, morph, and re-emerge through the tiniest window cracks.
Antimony is a microcosm of this organic reaction. China imposed its ban to choke off America’s access to this critical mineral. And it has succeeded in driving up the prices paid by U.S. firms. But it has not eliminated their supply. The global market adjusted at remarkable speed. A supply chain once controlled by China is now led by Tajik mines and European refining companies. Further, the restrictions have spurred what appear to be new illicit markets running through Southeast Asia.
The danger, for China, is that this new supply chain sticks. Things may revert back to normal if Trump and Xi strike a deal. And firms might be attracted back to China by their lower prices. But price is not everything. The U.S. (and Europe) may eventually find Tajikistan to be a less risky partner. And there is now a broad spectrum of refiners and intermediaries with an interest in the new status quo. If that happens, China can’t blame the market. Because as Jack White once said, it’s one of those unavoidable laws that you just can’t take the effect and make it the cause.
I am not one of those people.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Author calculation based on USITC DataWeb statistics.
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Author calculation based on USITC DataWeb statistics.
Author calculation based on USITC DataWeb statistics.
Ibid.
Per International Trade Centre data.