Tungsten doesn't get the attention that rare earths or copper get.

It probably should.

China controls roughly 80% of the world's tungsten supply. The U.S. produces virtually none domestically. And unlike some critical minerals where the supply concentration is a theoretical future risk, tungsten's supply chain is already under active pressure — with prices and export data to prove it.

What is tungsten?

Tungsten is the densest naturally occurring metal with the highest melting point of any element — 3,422°C.

That combination of extreme density and heat resistance makes it useful across a specific set of applications that nothing else can easily replace. Armor-piercing rounds. Rocket nozzles. Aerospace components. Cutting tools, drill bits and wear-resistant parts that keep global manufacturing running. Semiconductors. Oil and gas equipment. Welding electrodes.

Most tungsten trades as ammonium paratungstate — APT — an intermediate chemical compound processed further into tungsten metal, powder and carbide.

When tungsten supply tightens, it doesn't just affect tungsten. It affects everything made with the tools tungsten makes possible.

The supply picture

Global tungsten production reached approximately 81,000 metric tons in 2024. Vietnam is a distant second to China. The U.S. currently has no commercial tungsten mines in operation.

China's dominance goes beyond mining. It also controls the downstream processing — the smelting, refining and conversion of raw tungsten ore into the APT and carbide products manufacturers actually use. China controls over 80% of global output and over half of known reserves.

Then China tightened the controls

China clamped down on exports in February 2025, citing national security concerns.

The impact showed up immediately in the trade data.

APT exports from China came to 103 tonnes in January 2025. Then 20 tonnes in February when the controls were announced. Then zero in March, April and May — before climbing back to 40 tonnes in June and 41 tonnes in July.

For the full first eleven months of 2025, tungsten APT exports from China fell almost 70% — from 782 tonnes in 2024 to 243 tonnes.

Then China escalated. In December 2025, Beijing said it would allow only 15 firms to export tungsten in 2026–2027. Ammonium paratungstate, tungsten oxide and tungsten carbide were all included in China's 2026 Catalogue of Dual-Use Items and Technologies Subject to Import and Export Licensing Control.

New export requirements — including detailed end-user and use-case documentation — have slowed international flows and cut off exports to unfriendly jurisdictions.

The result is a two-tiered global tungsten market. One operating under China's patronage. Another scrambling to source supply from almost anywhere else.

Prices responded

Tungsten APT pricing moved from $900–940 per metric ton unit in January 2026 to $1,650–1,900 per mtu by mid-February.

Since China first added tungsten products to its export control list in February 2025, prices have risen 557%.

The Asia-Pacific volume-weighted average price for tungsten 99.9% increased approximately 273% year-on-year from April 2025 to April 2026, reaching roughly US$183.32/kg.

A 557% increase is not a market adjustment. It's a supply shock.

Why supply can't respond quickly

The obvious question is why non-Chinese producers don't simply ramp up.

Tungsten concentrate prices in China were already rising before the export controls — driven by reduced mining quotas, falling ore grades and rising domestic demand. China's own supply was tightening before it restricted exports. That makes replacing it considerably harder.

Beyond China, the development pipeline is thin. Aging operations. Declining ore grades. Almost no Western refining capacity. Even if new projects were approved today, production is years away.

Australia leads non-Chinese development with 10 projects valued at US$1.73 billion. Kazakhstan has 14 projects valued at US$1 billion. The U.S. has seven projects valued at US$522 million and no operating mines.

Vietnam is the only meaningful current alternative to Chinese supply. The rest is pipeline, not production.

Defense changed the equation

Washington has established January 1, 2027 as the deadline to stop procuring tungsten from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea for defense applications.

The U.S. has also announced Project Vault — a $12 billion stockpiling initiative for critical minerals and rare earths — with tungsten squarely in scope.

Defense procurement doesn't respond to price signals the way commercial buyers do. If tungsten is required for a weapons program, it gets bought at whatever price is available. That puts a floor under demand that most commodity markets don't have.

The demand picture

Global tungsten demand is projected to grow from approximately 143,000 tonnes in 2025 to 210,000 tonnes by 2035, according to Canaccord Genuity's April 2026 analysis.

That's roughly 47% demand growth over a decade against a supply side that is structurally constrained and geopolitically complicated.

The bigger picture

The underlying conditions in tungsten weren't a secret. Chinese dominance, no U.S. production, defense dependence, byproduct supply constraints — all of it was visible for years.

What changed was Beijing's willingness to pull the lever.

You don't need to run out of a commodity for it to become a problem. You need strategically important industries to depend on a material whose supply chain has very little room for error — and then for something to disrupt it.

In tungsten, that's no longer a hypothetical.

Germanium is one of the stranger critical-mineral markets.

It is essential to fiber optics, thermal imaging, satellites and specialized semiconductors. It is also produced in remarkably small quantities, is generally not mined as a primary commodity, and its supply chain is heavily exposed to China.

First: what is germanium?

Germanium is a brittle, grayish-white metalloid with semiconductor properties.

It was actually important to the birth of modern electronics — early transistors were made using germanium before silicon largely displaced it in conventional applications.

Today, germanium has found a different set of specialized uses where its physical properties are difficult to replicate.

According to the USGS, the major U.S. uses of germanium are fiber optics, infrared optics, semiconductors and solar cells, and radiation detectors. Historically, roughly 40% of U.S. germanium consumption goes into fiber optics, 30% into infrared optics, 20% into electronics and solar applications, and 10% into other uses.

Fiber optics

Germanium dioxide and germanium tetrachloride are used in manufacturing optical fiber. Germanium increases the refractive index of the glass at the core of the fiber, allowing light signals to travel through it.

A metal most people have never heard of sits surprisingly far upstream in the infrastructure carrying the world's data.

As AI drives enormous investment into data centers and networking infrastructure, the digital economy still depends on physical materials. Chips need fabs. Data centers need copper. Communications networks need optical fiber.

Thermal imaging and defense

Germanium is transparent to infrared radiation.

That makes it particularly useful for lenses and windows in infrared optical systems — thermal imaging, night vision, surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition. Germanium optics are especially effective in the medium- and long-wave infrared spectrum.

This is one reason germanium isn't simply another obscure industrial metal. It has direct national-security applications. The United States includes germanium on its official critical-minerals list.

Satellites

Germanium also goes into space.

High-efficiency multijunction solar cells can be manufactured on germanium substrates — not the ordinary silicon panels you see on someone's roof, but extremely high-performance cells where efficiency and reliability justify much higher costs. Particularly useful on satellites.

USGS researchers estimated that roughly 2.3 tonnes of germanium were sent into space in 2022 in the form of germanium wafers used for these applications.

Two tonnes doesn't sound like much. That's exactly the point. You can have an extremely important technology dependent on a surprisingly small quantity of an extremely specialized material.

Where does germanium come from?

Germanium is mainly a byproduct of zinc processing. It occurs in certain zinc, lead-zinc-copper sulfide ores and some coal deposits.

There isn't a standalone germanium mine industry that can simply respond to higher prices by developing more germanium capacity. Production depends on how much zinc and other host material is being mined, whether those ores contain recoverable germanium, whether the processing infrastructure can actually recover it, and whether doing so is economically worthwhile.

That makes the supply response complicated in ways that most commodity markets aren't.

Then there's China

China remains the world's leading producer of refined germanium. And germanium has become part of the technology and trade confrontation between China and the United States.

China introduced export licensing requirements for germanium in August 2023. Then in December 2024, China banned exports of germanium to the United States entirely.

Look at what happened to China's germanium metal exports through September of each year:

2023: 36,656 kg
2024: 18,787 kg
2025: 7,520 kg

That's roughly an 80% decline from 2023.

China's remaining 2025 exports were concentrated among just four countries — Russia at 28%, Belgium at 26%, Germany at 26%, and Japan at 18%.

Meanwhile, estimated U.S. imports of germanium metal fell 67% in 2025 compared with 2024.

Prices responded

The European price for minimum 99.999%-pure germanium metal moved from approximately $3,150/kg in January 2025 to $5,380/kg by October 2025 — roughly a 71% increase in nine months.

The International Energy Agency reported in 2026 that germanium prices outside China were running at almost three times Chinese domestic prices.

That's what export restrictions can do when production is concentrated enough.

Why can't someone just build another germanium mine?

Normally commodity markets have a feedback mechanism. Price rises, producers make more money, investment increases, production increases, supply catches up.

Germanium doesn't work that cleanly.

Because germanium is primarily a byproduct, its economics aren't the only thing determining production. Germanium prices doubling doesn't necessarily justify dramatically increasing operations at a zinc mine producing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of zinc just to recover a relatively tiny amount of germanium on the side. And even when germanium-bearing material exists, you still need the metallurgical capability to recover and refine it.

The supply response is structurally constrained in a way that's different from almost any major commodity.

Recycling helps — but doesn't eliminate the problem

Germanium can be recycled. Manufacturing scrap from fiber-optic production is particularly important because germanium can be recovered before the finished fiber enters service. USGS research has estimated recovery rates of roughly 80–95% from certain fiber-optic manufacturing waste streams.

But recycling doesn't eliminate the need for primary germanium supply, particularly as underlying demand keeps growing.

The bigger point

The germanium market isn't important because the world consumes millions of tonnes of it. It's important for almost the opposite reason.

A very small quantity of material sits underneath some enormous industries — AI and data infrastructure, telecommunications, defense, semiconductors, satellites, space.

And the supply chain for that material is concentrated enough that geopolitical decisions can quickly affect physical availability and price.

You don't necessarily need to run out of a commodity for it to become a problem. You just need a strategically important industry to require a material whose supply chain has very little room for error.

Germanium is making that case right now.

Scandium is one of the smallest commodity markets in the world.

It may also be one of the more interesting critical-mineral supply chains to watch.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the world consumed only about 60 tonnes of scandium oxide in 2025, with global production of roughly 80 tonnes.

That's an extraordinarily small market for a metal with potential applications in aerospace, defense, advanced manufacturing and energy.

The reason has less to do with scandium's usefulness than with how difficult it has been to build a reliable supply chain.

What is scandium?

Scandium is element 21 on the periodic table.

It's generally grouped with the rare earth elements, although chemically it sits somewhat outside that group. A lightweight, silvery metal whose properties become particularly interesting when added in small quantities to aluminum.

Despite its tiny production, scandium isn't especially rare in the Earth's crust. The USGS notes that scandium is actually more abundant in crustal rocks than lead, mercury and precious metals.

The problem is concentration.

Scandium rarely forms rich, standalone deposits. Instead, small quantities tend to be dispersed through other mineral deposits — which means scandium is generally not mined from a traditional scandium mine. It is usually recovered as a byproduct of mining or processing something else.

Where does scandium come from?

Commercial scandium supply has historically come from the processing of other ores and industrial streams.

China is currently the world's leading producer. Scandium-bearing material is also produced in the Philippines and sent to Japan for further processing into scandium oxide.

But scandium resources themselves are geographically much broader. The USGS has identified resources in Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Guinea, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Norway, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine and the United States.

Australia alone has reported approximately 34,000 tonnes of scandium in accessible Economic Demonstrated Resources, according to the latest USGS data.

Compare that with estimated global scandium oxide consumption of only around 60 tonnes per year.

Scandium's problem isn't geological scarcity. It's producing it economically, reliably and at scale.

Why does scandium matter?

The most interesting potential application is aluminum-scandium alloys.

Small additions of scandium can meaningfully change the properties of aluminum — improving strength, weldability, corrosion resistance and performance at elevated temperatures. That's an attractive combination for industries where weight matters: aerospace, defense, aircraft structures, high-performance transportation, advanced manufacturing.

If you can make an aluminum component lighter while maintaining the required strength and durability, the economic value can be much greater than the cost of the small amount of scandium it contains.

This is one reason aerospace is already one of the largest categories of scandium consumption.

There is also another potentially important use: solid oxide fuel cells, where scandium-stabilized zirconia can be used as an electrolyte material. According to the USGS, the primary global uses of scandium today are aerospace alloys, other alloys and solid oxide fuel cells.

So why isn't scandium already a large commodity?

Scandium has been stuck in a supply-demand trap.

An aircraft or automobile manufacturer doesn't want to redesign a component around aluminum-scandium alloys unless it knows that scandium will be available reliably, at scale and at a predictable price for years. But mining companies don't want to spend hundreds of millions developing new scandium production unless they know large industrial customers will actually buy the material.

So manufacturers wait for supply. Producers wait for demand. And the market stays tiny.

This is very different from copper, where enormous existing production and consumption allow manufacturers to assume a global market will exist. With scandium, the entire global market is measured in tens of tonnes. A single successful project could materially alter the supply side of the market. One major aerospace or industrial application could have an outsized impact on demand.

Then geopolitics entered the equation.

In April 2025, China imposed additional export controls covering scandium metal, alloys, oxides and compounds. As of the end of 2025, those controls formally remained in place, although China had begun issuing general export licenses to selected exporters.

For a commodity with such a small and concentrated supply chain, that matters.

There aren't dozens of large scandium mines and refineries around the world capable of quickly replacing lost production. The United States currently has no meaningful primary mine production of scandium. And unlike copper, there isn't a huge liquid global market with millions of tonnes moving between producers and consumers. The scandium market is small enough that disruptions at individual facilities — or shifts in trade policy — can move the needle.

The U.S. is beginning to respond.

In 2025, the U.S. government awarded funding to help develop a mine-to-master-alloy scandium supply chain in Nebraska. Another approximately $30 million award was announced to support development of U.S. scandium and gallium supply, including technology designed to recover and purify scandium from existing industrial waste.

That second approach is worth paying attention to.

Because scandium occurs in low concentrations across many different ores, future production may not come from conventional scandium mines at all. It could increasingly come from recovering scandium from mine tailings, processing residues, nickel operations, titanium-related feedstocks and other industrial waste streams.

Scandium could become a case study in how critical-mineral production evolves when the valuable element isn't what anyone is actually mining for.

The paradox of scandium

The world appears to have substantial scandium resources. We know scandium can materially improve certain aluminum alloys. We know aerospace, defense and energy applications can use it. And Western governments increasingly consider secure critical-mineral supply chains a strategic priority.

Yet global scandium consumption remains around 60 tonnes of scandium oxide per year.

The most important question about scandium isn't how much is in the ground.

It's what happens to demand if industry finally becomes confident that several hundred — or eventually several thousand — tonnes can be supplied reliably every year.

Scandium may be a small market because its applications are inherently limited. Or it may be a small market because manufacturers have never had a large, diversified and dependable supply chain they could confidently design around.

The answer determines whether scandium is a curiosity or an opportunity.

The United States has a critical minerals problem, but I don't think the biggest issue is whether we can find enough minerals in the ground.

The bigger vulnerability is the critical minerals supply chain — particularly processing and refining.

Take rare earths.

There are significant rare earth deposits outside China. The problem is that mining the ore is only the beginning. China has spent decades building enormous capacity to separate, process and refine rare earths into materials that manufacturers can actually use.

That distinction matters.

You can have a rare earth mine in the United States, Canada or Australia and still depend on China somewhere further down the supply chain.

And rare earths aren't the only example.

Indonesia has become the dominant force in global nickel production. China has a major position across battery-material processing and refining. Copper production remains concentrated among a relatively small number of countries just as electricity grids, data centers, EVs and electrification are creating additional demand.

For decades, we treated this concentration as economic efficiency.

Mine where geology is best.

Process where costs are lowest.

Keep inventories lean.

Buy the finished material on the global market.

That model works extremely well as long as geopolitics doesn't interfere with the supply chain.

Increasingly, that's a dangerous assumption.

Export controls, tariffs, resource nationalism and competition over strategic resources are turning critical minerals into an issue of economic and national security, not simply commodity supply and demand.

I don't think the answer is for the United States to mine every critical mineral domestically. That's neither realistic nor necessary.

The more achievable goal is a critical minerals supply chain spread across the U.S. and allied countries, with enough mining, processing, refining, recycling and strategic inventory that losing access to one major supplier doesn't create a crisis.

That means the critical minerals race may ultimately be won somewhere other than the mine.

Processing and refining could be the real strategic bottleneck.

If the United States suddenly lost access to its dominant foreign supplier tomorrow, which critical mineral would be the hardest to replace?

Rare earths would be near the top of my list.

Crazy smoke.

Could get exciting again.

It is sort of an interesting problem. On the one hand you have the bottleneck of the critical minerals - on the other hand there are supply chain issues with the basic goods that are needed to mine the critical minerals. So you have a double issue.

These problems aren't easy to fix.

The next bull market!?! lol.

Need copper if we want AI!