China has banned the export of gallium, antimony, germanium and superhard materials to the US in retaliation for the US ban on HBM and memory manufacturing tools announced today. It will also impose stricter restrictions on the sale of dual-use products such as graphite.
According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, this is to prevent the US from using all these exports for military purposes. This is the reason given by the US to block the sale of artificial intelligence (AI) chips and access to the latest chip technology to Chinese companies.
Through this export ban on minerals, it will have an impact on the US semiconductor, aerospace, EV battery production and military sectors in the near future. China held 48% of global antimony production last year. In addition to being used in EVs, the metal is also used in bullets, missiles and nuclear weapons.