Getting Real about Critical Minerals: The Case of Antimony

While Democratic and Republican politicians have acknowledged the importance of critical minerals, both for America’s current needs and future technology, China’s decision last week to restrict the export of one metal, antimony, underscored the urgent need for policymakers to move beyond campaign-season lip service about “bringing home supply chains” and toward realistic measures that ensure the United States has continued access to resources that directly impact its national security.

A silvery-white, crystalline solid often mined alongside deposits of sulfur or heavy metals like lead, copper, and silver, antimony (chemical symbol, Sb) has been known since Biblical times. It has a wide range of uses, ranging from cosmetics to construction. Nowadays, while about half of the global usage of antimony is for its flame-retardant qualities, an estimated 20 percent is used in the manufacture of photovoltaic glass to improve the performance of solar cells and, increasingly, in next-generation grid-scale liquid-metal electricity storage batteries (LMBs) and more efficient alternatives to current technology rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Moreover, antimony has become strategically important because of its role in sensitive military equipment ranging from night-vision goggles to missiles and as a hardening agent for everything from bullets to tanks and warships.

Like it has done with the value chains for a host of other critical minerals—including restrictions imposed last year on the export of gallium and germanium, elements widely used in the semiconductor industry, as well as its tight grip on rare earth elements—China has steadily consolidated a dominant position in the antimony supply chain. While the U.S. Geological Survey’s most recent data show that China holds less than one-third of the world’s known reserves of antimony, it produced almost half of global production last year (Tajikistan and Russia together produce another 30 percent). Furthermore, irrespective of where the mineral is sourced, Chinese firms control most of the world’s supply of antimony trioxide, the most common form of the processed material.

According to a statement by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce cited by the Chinese Communist Party’s international affairs daily Global Times, the new export restrictions, which take effect September 15, are “to further protect China's national security and interests and fulfill the nation’s international non-proliferation obligations.” Commenting on the new decree, a retired People’s Liberation Army Air Force equipment specialist quoted by the South China Morning Post acknowledged that it was clearly intended to make it harder for the United States to produce arms: “The move is definitely a decision made after careful consideration, and it has a clear purpose—by restricting exports, it will undoubtedly impact the world’s major arms manufacturers, especially the U.S.”

The United States is even more vulnerable to the latest play by Beijing because 82 percent of the 22,000 metric tons used by American industry, civilian and military, in 2023 was imported (the balance was recovered from recycling spent lead-acid batteries). Almost two-thirds of the imported antimony metal and oxides came from China. No antinomy is currently mined in the United States, and the only firm in the entire country to produce primary antimony metal and oxides is the U.S. Antimony Company, which imports feedstock for its smelter in Western Montana. Another company, Perpetua Resources, which has received support from the U.S. Defense Department under Title III of the Defense Production Act as well as recently received a letter of interest from the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank for potential financing, is developing an open-pit gold resource in northern Idaho that will produce antimony as a by-product of the mining operation. Still, commercial production is not expected until 2028—and that assumes that the company successfully runs the gauntlet of environmental activists and the permitting bureaucracy.

Even by then, Beijing will still have additional cards to play. These include the type of manipulation it has engaged in to depress prices and stymie efforts to develop alternative supply chains, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month with respect to rare earth elements (REEs) used in permanent magnets in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and robots. Even the neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr), the most highly valued segment of the REE market, is down more than 20 percent since January thanks to Chinese overproduction and what the newspaper described delicately as Beijing being “willing to be a loss leader in parts of the value chain to help downstream ambitions.”

Thus, the only way to tackle this challenge is to take it on realistically, which is to say, comprehensively. U.S. policymakers must not only encourage the development of the critical mineral resource in question where access can be secured from friends—or, at the very least, non-adversarial countries—but also support the development of processing value chains and, ultimately, give them a fighting chance of competing against the Beijing’s market domination by judicious use of offtake agreements.

If U.S. policymakers fail to get real about the stakes, both for America’s current defense needs and for the potential technological applications of antimony and other critical minerals—and do so quickly—what has been an irritant in international trade will prove to be a self-inflicted strategic wound.

Ambassador J. Peter Pham, a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Senior Advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, is a former U.S. Special Envoy for the Sahel and Great Lakes Regions of Africa.

Image: Kevin Cupp / Shutterstock.com.