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On 31 December 2025, China's Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs jointly published Announcement No. 91 of 2025, releasing the 2026 edition of the Catalogue of Dual-Use Items and Technologies Subject to Import and Export Licence Administration, effective 1 January 2026. The update replaces the 2025 catalogue and is issued under the Export Control Law of the PRC and the Regulations on Export Control of Dual-Use Items. Key additions to the export-licensing perimeter include samarium, gadolinium, and lutetium compounds — mid-to-heavy rare earths critical for permanent magnets (EV motors, wind turbines), phosphors (medical imaging, displays), and defence applications — requiring MOFCOM export licences for all covered shipments from 1 January 2026.

The Government of Maharashtra, Industries Department, notified the Maharashtra Industry, Investment, and Services Policy-2025 on 31 December 2025, valid for five years and superseding the prior Maharashtra Industrial Policy 2019. The umbrella state-level instrument supports Maharashtra's "trillion-dollar economy by 2030" and "Developed Maharashtra 2047" vision with targets of ₹70.5 lakh crore (~USD 850 bn) cumulative investment, 50 lakh (5 million) jobs across manufacturing and services, and expansion of industry's share of Gross State Value Added to 30%. It is Maharashtra's first-ever combined industry + services + investment-promotion framework (prior policies were industry-only), establishes the unified "Invest Maharashtra" platform and revamped MAITRI 2.0 portal (125+ services, AI investor support, blockchain document verification), and empowers a Cabinet Sub-Committee under the Chief Minister to sanction bespoke customised-package incentives for Mega and Ultra-Mega Projects above the ₹500 crore threshold.

Decree 353/2025/NĐ-CP is the principal implementing instrument of Vietnam's Law on Digital Technology Industry (Law No. 71/2025/QH15), effective 1 January 2026 — the same date as the parent statute. The decree's five chapters and 36 articles operationalise three pillars: (i) a comprehensive State-support and preferential-incentive framework for products, services, and infrastructure across the semiconductor, AI, cloud, fintech, and e-commerce sectors; (ii) a high-quality-human-resources development framework covering training funds, scholarship schemes, and foreign-expert visa fast-tracks; and (iii) Vietnam's first statutory innovation sandbox, allowing organisations to deploy new digital products and business models under time- and scope-limited regulatory carve-outs where current law has not kept pace with practice.

On 26 December 2025, Japan's Cabinet under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi approved the FY2026 (Reiwa 8) national budget, which allocates JPY 150 billion (~USD 1bn) to the "Investment Project for Mass Production of Next-Generation Semiconductors" -- a state equity-investment line administered by the Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA) that funds Rapidus Corporation's 2nm-class logic fab in Chitose, Hokkaido. The FY2026 allocation is 50% larger than the JPY 100 billion IPA equity tranche budgeted for FY2025, taking cumulative government equity in Rapidus to roughly JPY 250 billion. The line sits inside METI's wider AI/semiconductor budget of JPY 1.239 trillion for FY2026 (up roughly 4x year-on-year) under the "AI/Semiconductor Industry Base Strengthening Frame," part of the government's pledge of over JPY 10 trillion in public support for AI and chips through FY2030. The budget takes effect with Japan's fiscal year on 1 April 2026, subject to ordinary Diet passage in early 2026.

On 24 December 2025 the Minister of Science and Technology signed Decision No. 4386/QĐ-BKHCN defining the functions, tasks, and organisational structure of the Vietnam National Multi-Project Wafer Coordination Centre (VNMPW/CC). The Centre sits under MOST's Authority of Information Technology Industry and acts as a coordinating hub between domestic chip-design firms, research institutes, and domestic / foreign fabrication and packaging partners. It provides shared EDA software access, IP libraries, technical design verification, performance measurement, training programmes, and pilot-production (MPW shuttle) support — the first concrete institutional node operationalising Vietnam's 2024 semiconductor strategy (Decision 1018/QĐ-TTg).

The US Department of War announced an USD 18.5 million Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III investment in Lattice Materials (Bozeman, Montana) to expand its capacity to produce optical-grade germanium and silicon crystals and to establish a new capability to recover germanium metal from recycled scrap. The award, funded from the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022, was approved on 26 September 2025 but public announcement was delayed to 22 December 2025 by the federal government shutdown. Lattice is a leading US manufacturer of germanium and silicon infrared optical lenses, windows and mirrors used in defense surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting systems.

On 19 December 2025 the Shenzhen Municipal People's Government issued Notice 深府规〔2025〕10号, "Implementation Measures for Further Attracting and Utilizing Foreign Investment" (effective 1 January 2026 - 31 December 2028, superseding 深府规〔2024〕6号). The measures combine market-access steps (advanced-manufacturing FDI access, foreign biomedicine clinical trials, cross-border data-flow pilots) with tiered cash rewards for foreign direct investment: up to RMB 50 million/year (cumulative cap RMB 150 million) for large manufacturing FDI, RMB 5-8 million one-time awards for multinational regional/global headquarters, and up to RMB 6 million one-time awards for foreign-invested R&D centers. Global Trade Alert logged the same state act as two separate interventions split by sector tag.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 (P.L. 119-60), signed into law on 18 December 2025, expands the Department of Defense's existing "covered materials" domestic- sourcing restriction (which already barred DoD contracting for SmCo/NdFeB magnets, tantalum and tungsten sourced from China, Russia, Iran or North Korea) to add gallium, germanium and molybdenum under Section 844. Restrictions on materials "melted or produced" in a covered nation take effect 31 December 2026, widening on 1 January 2027 to also cover materials "mined, refined, or separated" in a covered nation; the gallium/germanium additions specifically phase in on 18 December 2027. The same NDAA bundles two related supply-chain provisions: Section 867 gives DoD broader authority (contracts, grants, other-transaction agreements, equity-style investments, and anti-market-manipulation subsidies) to invest in the domestic industrial base for critical minerals, microelectronics, machine tools and other defense-relevant capacity, and Section 842 bars DoD from procuring advanced batteries whose cells or key components are owned, sourced, refined or produced by a foreign entity of concern, phased in 2028-2031.

The UK Export Control (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2025 (SI 2025/1197) entered into force on 16 December 2025, extending the UK's strategic export control regime to cover quantum computing hardware (ECCN-aligned 4A506), advanced and cryogenic semiconductor technologies (3A501, 3A504, 3B501), and associated software and technology categories. The regulations also transfer existing national controls on quantum and advanced semiconductor items from the Export Control Order 2008 into the UK's assimilated Dual-Use Regulation (retained EU 428/2009 as amended), harmonising the UK's dual-use schedule with Wassenaar Arrangement 2024 updates. The action is explicitly calibrated as "Wassenaar Minus One" — aligning UK controls with the US BIS (EAR / ECCN framework) and EU (Regulation 2021/821 as amended) without requiring multilateral consensus on each item. It is the first UK statutory instrument since Brexit to add substantial new technology-specific dual-use controls targeting advanced semiconductor and quantum capabilities.

The US Department of Commerce awarded Crucible Metals, LLC — a subsidiary of South Korea's Korea Zinc — USD 210 million in direct CHIPS Incentives Program funding to build a smelter and critical-minerals processing facility in Clarksville, Tennessee. The facility, styled "Project Crucible," is an advanced replica of Korea Zinc's Onsan complex and is expected to cost roughly USD 6.6 billion in capital expenditure (USD 7.4 billion in total project financing), targeting first production in 2029. At full scale it is designed to produce 13 critical and strategic minerals — including gallium, germanium, antimony, indium, bismuth, tellurium, cadmium and palladium alongside roughly 300,000 tons/year of zinc, 200,000 tons/year of lead and 35,000+ tons/year of copper. As a condition of the award, Korea Zinc committed to give the US government and US customers priority access to its existing Korean-refined output of 10 critical minerals beginning in 2026, and the project separately secured conditional Department of War (Office of Strategic Capital) loan support and FAST-41 covered-project permitting status.

The European Investment Bank and STMicroelectronics signed a EUR 500 million financing agreement, the first tranche of a EUR 1 billion credit line approved by the EIB, to support semiconductor research, development and high-volume manufacturing investments at ST's Catania and Agrate sites in Italy and its Crolles site in France. About 60% of the facility is earmarked for high-volume manufacturing capacity and 40% for R&D. It is the ninth financing agreement between EIB and STMicroelectronics since 1994, bringing cumulative EIB financing to the company to roughly EUR 4.2 billion, and is explicitly framed by the EIB around European semiconductor competitiveness and strategic autonomy.

On 11 December 2025 the Council of the EU presidency, the European Parliament, and the European Commission reached provisional political (trilogue) agreement on the revision of Regulation (EU) 2019/452 establishing a framework for the screening of foreign direct investments into the Union, concluding interinstitutional negotiations on the Commission's proposal of 24 January 2024. The revised regime upgrades the 2019 cooperation-mechanism-only framework into a hybrid harmonised/mandatory regime: all 27 Member States must establish FDI screening mechanisms (replacing the current patchwork in which some Member States have no mechanism at all); mandatory minimum sectoral scope is set EU-wide and covers dual-use items, military equipment, hyper-critical technologies (general-purpose AI with space/defence relevance, quantum technologies, semiconductors), critical raw materials, critical entities in energy/transport/digital infrastructure, electoral infrastructure, and certain financial-system entities; foreign investments routed through EU subsidiaries fall within the perimeter; a shared database prevents Member-State arbitrage; and an optional single electronic-filing portal becomes available if requested by at least nine Member States. Screening decisions remain the exclusive responsibility of the Member State in which the investment is made. Once the Regulation enters into force (after Council and Parliament formal adoption and OJ publication, both pending as of the political-agreement date), the new rules will apply after an 18-month transition period — implementation expected toward the end of 2027.

The European Commission approved German State aid of approximately €495 million to GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) to support a €1.1 billion expansion of its Dresden 300mm fab (the "SPRINT" project), funding roughly 45% of eligible project costs. The decision was issued alongside a companion approval of ~€128 million for X-FAB's Erfurt MEMS-sensor expansion, together totalling €623 million in German semiconductor state aid under the EU Chips Act's "first-of-a-kind facility" framework. Conditions attached include prioritising EU customer orders during a supply crisis and funding skills/training programmes for engineers.

Vietnam's 15th National Assembly adopted the Law on Investment 2025 (Law No. 143/2025/QH15) at its 10th session on 11 December 2025, effective 1 March 2026. The law replaces the 2020 Law on Investment (Law 61/2020/QH14) as the umbrella FDI framework. Article 19 lets foreign investors establish enterprises in Vietnam without a prior investment project, unlocking holding-company / regional-headquarters structures. A fast-track Special Investment Procedure (SIP) covers industrial parks, export-processing zones, hi-tech parks, concentrated digital-technology zones, free-trade zones, international financial centres and economic-zone functional areas, targeting semiconductor, data-centre and 5G/digital-infrastructure capex. Appendix IV abolishes 38 conditional business sectors and adjusts 20 others (from 1 July 2026 only 199 conditional sectors remain). Operationalised by Decree 96/2026/ND-CP (issued and effective 31 March 2026) and Decree 103/2026/ND-CP for outbound investment.

On 11 December 2025 the US Department of State announced the inaugural Pax Silica Summit, held in Washington D.C. on 12 December 2025, at which the United States, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Israel signed the non-binding Pax Silica Declaration. The declaration commits signatories to coordinate "trusted" supply chains across the full technology stack — software, frontier foundation models, network infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, transportation logistics, minerals refining and processing, and energy — explicitly to reduce "coercive dependencies." The coalition has since expanded to add the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Qatar, Sweden and India (signed 20 February 2026 at the India AI Impact Summit), and on 26 March 2026 State announced a USD 250 million Pax Silica Fund intended to catalyse trusted-capital co-investment in critical-minerals processing and semiconductor supply chains.

Singapore's National Research Foundation (NRF), under the Prime Minister's Office, launched the five-year Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2030 Plan on 5 December 2025, allocating S$37 billion (approximately 1% of GDP) for 2026-2030. The plan succeeds RIE2025 (S$25 billion) and introduces two named RIE Flagships and two RIE Grand Challenges; the first Flagship is in semiconductors and is explicitly aimed at making Singapore a strategically important R&D and manufacturing node in the global semiconductor supply chain. The budget envelope is split 24% foundational research, 20% innovation and enterprise, 17% infrastructure / new programmes ("white space"), 10% talent development.

The Government of Ontario's Invest Ontario Fund agreed to provide Marvell Technology with a grant of up to CAD 17 million to support the company's planned CAD 238 million, five-year expansion of its Ontario R&D workforce. The expansion is aimed at developing next-generation semiconductor solutions for AI data-centre infrastructure, including an 8,000-square-foot optical lab, and is expected to create up to 350 high-value technology jobs at a new office near the University of Toronto plus expanded operations in York Region and Ottawa. Support is subject to Invest Ontario and Marvell reaching a definitive funding agreement.

Russia's Government adopted Resolution N° 1958 on 29 November 2025, amending Resolution N° 313 of 9 March 2022 to add eight commodity positions to Appendix 3 — the list of dual-use goods banned for export to "unfriendly" states. The added items are specialty electro-optical and semiconductor materials: lithium niobate, zinc telluride, gadolinium-gallium garnet, gallium arsenide, gallium phosphide, unprocessed and processed quartz wafers/plates, and polished tellurium-oxide prisms. These materials are inputs to electro-optical components (modulators, acousto-optic devices, IR/laser optics) with both civil and military (guidance, imaging) applications. The measure took effect 1 December 2025 and runs through the underlying ban's 31 December 2027 expiry; it applies to all countries except Eurasian Economic Union member states.

The Canadian federal government announced a Strategic Response Fund contribution of up to CAD 210 million (~USD 151 million) toward a CAD 662 million project to expand semiconductor advanced-packaging and R&D commercialisation capacity at IBM Canada's Bromont, Quebec facility and the MiQro Innovation Collaborative Centre (C2MI). The federal contribution covers roughly one-third of total project cost. Ministers Mélanie Joly (Industry) and Evan Solomon (AI and Digital Innovation) announced the investment on 2025-11-28, framing it around domestic supply-chain resilience for AI/HPC, aerospace and defence, telecommunications, and automotive end-markets. The project is projected to create 75 new highly-skilled jobs and sustain over 1,000 existing jobs in the Bromont region.

The European Commission approved, under EU State aid rules (Article 107(3)(c) TFEU and the 2022 Chips Act framework), a Czech direct grant of approximately €450 million to Onsemi to support a €1.64 billion investment establishing the EU's first 8-inch, fully vertically-integrated silicon-carbide (SiC) power-semiconductor manufacturing facility in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. The plant will span SiC crystal growth, 8-inch wafer processing, and power-device fabrication, with commercial output targeted for 2027. The decision is the largest Chips-Act-era state-aid approval for an Eastern European Member State and a cornerstone implementing instrument of the Czech Semiconductor Cluster industrial-policy programme launched in 2024.

On 21 November 2025, METI Minister Yoji Akazawa designated Rapidus Corporation as the official next-generation semiconductor manufacturer under Japan's Act on Facilitation of Information Processing (情報処理の促進に関する法律, as amended by the Cabinet-approved partial-amendment bill of 7 February 2025), following a public solicitation run 3 September – 2 October 2025. The designation makes Rapidus eligible for a multi-year METI funding envelope reported at roughly JPY 1tn (~USD 6.4bn), with an initial JPY 100bn equity investment by the Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA) planned for FY2025; the funds support Rapidus' Hokkaido (Chitose) IIM-1 fab targeting 2nm GAA mass production from April 2027 and successor 1.4nm / 1nm nodes. The action is the first standalone Rapidus entry in the IPTM register and operationalises the supply-chain pillar of the 2022 Economic Security Promotion Act for advanced logic.

On 20 November 2025 the White House and US Department of Commerce / Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) authorised Abu Dhabi AI holding company G42 to import advanced computing chips — equivalent to approximately 35,000 Nvidia GB300 Blackwell processors — under the UAE-pioneered Regulated Technology Environment (RTE) compliance framework. The RTE is an Emirati-designed technology governance and audit architecture, developed by G42 and approved under BIS guidelines, with binding UAE-side controls to prevent onward diversion to foreign adversary nations. The authorisation accelerates the Stargate UAE project — a 1 GW AI compute cluster being built by G42 for OpenAI in partnership with Oracle, Cisco, NVIDIA, and SoftBank Group — and represents the first concluded major country-level advanced-compute authorisation following the May 2025 rescission of the Biden-era AI Diffusion Rule.

Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs International Trade Administration (MOEA-ITA) published a draft amendment to the Strategic High-Tech Commodities (SHTC) export control lists on 18 November 2025, subject to a 60-day public-preview period, adding 18 items in three new categories — advanced 3D printing equipment (metal-powder-bed- fusion, laser-sintering, electron-beam-melting capable systems), advanced semiconductor equipment (CMOS chips, low-temperature cryogenic cooling, scanning electron microscope equipment, cryogenic wafer probers), and quantum computers (general-purpose programmable quantum computing systems). Exporters must obtain MOEA-ITA prior approval before shipment; permits will be issued only after confirming goods will not be used in weapons-of-mass-destruction programmes.

Cyprus Law 194(I)/2025 "The Establishment of a Framework for the Screening of Foreign Direct Investments Law of 2025" was enacted by the House of Representatives and published in the Official Gazette on 14 November 2025, entering into force on 2 April 2026. It establishes Cyprus's first-ever mandatory pre-approval FDI screening regime, designating the Ministry of Finance as the competent Screening Authority and applying to non-EU/EEA/Swiss investors acquiring ≥25% equity or voting rights in Cyprus entities valued at ≥€2 million across covered strategic sectors. The regime implements EU Regulation 2019/452 and includes a Cyprus-specific sectoral extension covering tourism and real estate — addressing golden-passport-era concerns about non-EU capital flows into the island's financial and hospitality economy.

SETT, the operational vehicle of Spain's PERTE Chip programme, announced a EUR 9.5 million public investment in Ideaded, a Viladecans (Barcelona) company developing microchips on alternative substrates to silicon. The funding is earmarked to complete Spain's first pilot plant for silicon-alternative microchips, financed under the Plan de Recuperacion, Transformacion y Resiliencia (NextGenerationEU). Target output is 50 wafers/month (first wafer expected 2026) plus up to 300 million RFID antennas/year, aimed at advanced-computing, AI and defence applications.

On 13 November 2025, the United States and the Republic of Korea released a Joint Fact Sheet reaffirming the July 2025 announcement of the Korea Strategic Trade and Investment Deal — the first standalone US-Korea trade-and-investment agreement since the 2012 KORUS FTA. USTR issued the implementing Federal Register notice (90 FR 55964, Notice 2025-21940) on 3 December 2025, effective 4 December 2025, with retroactive HTSUS application to 1 November 2025 for autos and auto parts and to 14 November 2025 for reciprocal-tariff goods, timber, lumber, derivatives, and certain aircraft and aircraft parts. On the US tariff side: (i) the country-specific IEEPA reciprocal tariff on Korean originating goods is set at the higher of the KORUS FTA / MFN rate or 15% (parallel to the Japan and EU framework deals); (ii) the Section 232 tariffs on autos, auto parts, timber, lumber and wood derivatives are reduced to 15% (no incremental duty when the pre-existing KORUS/MFN rate already meets or exceeds 15%); (iii) Korean exports of qualifying goods on the Potential Tariff Adjustments for Aligned Partners (PTAAP) list are exempt from reciprocal tariffs (covering generic pharmaceuticals and unavailable natural resources); (iv) Section 232 pharmaceuticals capped at 15%; semiconductors granted MFN-style "no less favourable" treatment in any future sectoral deal. On the investment side, Korea commits to a USD 350bn package: USD 150bn into US shipbuilding ("Approved Investments") plus USD 200bn into US strategic industries via a separate Strategic Investments MOU, with annual currency-funding cap of USD 20bn. Non-tariff commitments include streamlined US biotech approvals on the Korean side, US meat and cheese market access, fair treatment for US digital services, removal of Korea's 50,000-unit cap on US vehicles meeting FMVSS, and joint WTO support for the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a final rule suspending, for one year, the interim final rule "Expansion of End-User Controls to Cover Affiliates of Certain Listed Entities" (90 FR 47201, Sept. 30, 2025). Effective November 10, 2025 and ending November 9, 2026, the amendments to 15 CFR parts 732, 734, 736, 744, and 748 made by the Affiliates Rule are stayed; the original Entity List restrictions on named parties remain in force, but the automatic 50%-ownership-based extension to unlisted affiliates is paused. Phase two — re-instating the Affiliates Rule changes — is scheduled for November 10, 2026 absent a future extension.

Japan's Cabinet adopted a Cabinet Order on 11 November 2025 (promulgated 14 November 2025, effective 14 February 2026) amending Appended Table 1 of the Export Trade Control Order (輸出貿易管理令) to add three new list-control item categories: (i) peptide synthesizers and related components (Item group mapping to Australia Group 2023–2024 plenary dual-use biotechnology controls, aligning Japan with the US BIS implementation promulgated December 2024), (ii) powders of refractory metals or their alloys below specified particle-size and purity thresholds — tungsten, molybdenum, niobium, tantalum, and rhenium powders used as additive- manufacturing feedstocks (Item 5(20), implementing a Wassenaar Arrangement plenary outcome on metal-powder dual-use), and (iii) modules, assemblies, or devices incorporating field-programmable logic devices (FPGAs) above specified gate-count and process-node thresholds (Item 7(10-2), extending Japan's semiconductor-component AI-compute perimeter). This is the first discrete Appended Table 1 list-control amendment filed under the post-October-2025 FEFTA catch-all- controls overhaul architecture.

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and General Administration of Customs (GAC) issued Announcement No. 72 (2025) on November 9, 2025, suspending Article 2 of Announcement No. 46 (2024) — the provision that had imposed a categorical export ban on gallium, germanium, antimony, superhard materials, and graphite dual-use items destined for the United States. The suspension is valid until November 27, 2026, reverting these exports to China's standard dual-use licensing framework for that period. Article 1 of Announcement No. 46 — prohibiting re-exports to US military end-users regardless of routing — remains fully in force. The measure followed bilateral US-China trade consultations and signals a conditional de-escalation window within China's established critical-minerals counter-strike posture.

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and General Administration of Customs (GAC) issued Announcement No. 70 (2025) on November 7, 2025, suspending for one year the package of rare-earth export-control measures announced on October 9, 2025 (Announcements Nos. 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 62). The suspended measures include the licensing regime on medium- and heavy-rare-earth elements, rare-earth processing equipment and technologies, lithium-battery and synthetic-graphite anode materials, superhard materials, and — most significantly — the extraterritorial "0.1% content" rule of Announcement No. 61 that asserted licence jurisdiction over foreign-made products containing Chinese-origin controlled rare earths. The gazette text fixes the window explicitly: "自即日起至2026年11月10日" (from the date of issue until November 10, 2026). This is the rare-earth leg of the post-Busan US-China truce; the dual-use leg (gallium, germanium, antimony, graphite) was suspended two days later by the separate Announcement No. 72 (2025), which runs to November 27, 2026. The two instruments create a two-step expiry cliff in November 2026.

On 6 November 2025, the US Department of the Interior (DOI) and the US Geological Survey (USGS) released the final 2025 List of Critical Minerals under the Energy Act of 2020 (30 U.S.C. § 1606), expanding the designation from 50 to 60 minerals. The final list adds 10 newly designated commodities — boron, copper, lead, metallurgical coal, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver, and uranium — based on updated supply-chain disruption modelling, public comment, and interagency recommendations. The list constitutes the foundational statutory anchor for downstream US critical-minerals policy instruments including DPA Title III awards, DOE LPO Title 17 loan eligibility, IRA Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit eligibility, Section 30D FEOC determinations, BIS export-control predicate assessments, Section 232 trade-investigation predicates, and CFIUS critical-technology triggers under 31 CFR § 800.215.

Canada's Budget 2025 (released 4 November 2025) expands the Critical Mineral Exploration Tax Credit (CMETC) to cover 12 additional minerals: bismuth, cesium, chromium, fluorspar, germanium, indium, manganese, molybdenum, niobium, tantalum, tin, and tungsten. The 30% flow-through share enhanced rate (double the standard 15% Mineral Exploration Tax Credit) is maintained and applies to agreements entered after November 4, 2025 and before March 31, 2027. This is the first scope expansion since CMETC's creation in 2022, bringing the total eligible mineral count to approximately 27 and aligning the credit with Canada's 2024 Critical Minerals List update.

On 3 November 2025 the US Department of Commerce's CHIPS Program Office (administered via NIST) announced a non-binding preliminary letter of intent to take a $50 million equity stake in Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina-based rare-earth magnet producer. The CHIPS and Science Act funding is earmarked for equipment to separate, metallize and manufacture Neodymium Iron Boron (NdFeB) magnets, targeting up to 10,000 metric tonnes of annual domestic production capacity. Commerce framed the investment around NdFeB magnets' role in the semiconductor equipment supply chain (EUV lithography, CVD, etch and pump systems). The equity stake is conditioned on final negotiation and approval and runs alongside a separately-tracked $620 million Department of War Office of Strategic Capital loan to Vulcan Elements and ReElement Technologies announced the same day.

On 31 October 2025, Japan Investment Corporation (JIC) and its subsidiary JIC Capital, Ltd. (JICC) announced the establishment of two new private-equity limited partnerships — JIC PEF2 (JPY600 billion) and JIC PEFJ2 (JPY200 billion), collectively "JIC PE2" and totalling approximately JPY800 billion (~USD 5.36 billion) — launching 1 November 2025. The funds provide state-backed risk capital for large-scale industry restructuring, growth investment, and business-restructuring deals in capital-intensive sectors (mobility, semiconductors, chemicals, materials, healthcare) where JIC judges private PE capital in Japan to be insufficient. PEF2 is the main investment vehicle (10-year term, 5-year investment period); PEFJ2 co-invests alongside PEF2 in large-scale projects.

At the APEC Busan summit on 30 October 2025, Presidents Trump and Xi reached the "Economic and Trade Arrangement Between the United States and the People's Republic of China," subsequently implemented on the US side by the executive order "Modifying Reciprocal Tariff Rates Consistent with the Economic and Trade Arrangement" (issued 4 November 2025; effective 12:01 am EST on 10 November 2025; published in the Federal Register on 7 November 2025 as 90 FR 50729 / 2025-19826) and on the Chinese side by a series of MOFCOM and State Council Tariff Commission announcements (notably MOFCOM 2025 No. 90 of 8–9 November 2025). The arrangement is structurally parallel to the already-filed US-Japan, US-Korea and US-Taiwan framework deals but uniquely material because it freezes the highest-stakes bilateral tariff and export-control confrontation of the post-2024 reset. Core US commitments: (i) reciprocal-tariff "additional ad valorem rate of duty" on PRC-origin goods reduced from a prior 20% IEEPA-fentanyl + 10% IEEPA-reciprocal stack to a 10% rate (i.e., the prior 24% / 34% scheduled escalation is suspended), extended through 10 November 2026; (ii) US BIS suspends the so-called "affiliates rule" expanding entity-list controls to majority-owned subsidiaries of listed Chinese firms; (iii) USTR pauses Section 301 maritime / shipbuilding / logistics countermeasures against Chinese vessels for one year. Core PRC commitments: (i) MOFCOM suspends for one year (until 10 November 2026) the 9 October 2025 extraterritorial rare-earth export-control package — including controls on REE processing equipment, lithium-battery manufacturing equipment, and superhard materials; (ii) PRC suspends retaliatory tariffs on a broad swath of US agricultural products through 31 December 2026; (iii) commitment to purchase ≥25 million metric tonnes of US soybeans annually in 2026-2028 and to resume sorghum and log imports; (iv) suspension of MOFCOM antitrust and "unreliable-entity" probes against named US semiconductor and chip-equipment companies; (v) cooperation on fentanyl precursor enforcement. The arrangement does not repeal underlying authorities (IEEPA tariffs, MOFCOM export-control list, Entity List) — it is a calibrated mutual freeze with a one-year sunset and quarterly review checkpoints.

MOFCOM Announcement No. 68 of 2025 (商务部公告2025年第68号), issued on 26 October 2025, sets the application requirements and procedures for state-owned trading enterprises (STEs) authorised to export tungsten, antimony and silver during the 2026-2027 cycle. The notice formalises a quota review and joint-approval gate operated through the Key Export Supervision Catalog under MOFCOM's foreign-trade STE authority — distinct from the Export Control Law dual-use regime used in Announcement No. 10 of February 2025. Silver is added for the first time to the STE-managed list, framed by MOFCOM as defence of strategic supply for defence, electronics and photovoltaics. Approved-exporter lists were published in a follow-on review-results notice; the new regime applies to export shipments dated 1 January 2026 onwards.

On 26 October 2025 in Kuala Lumpur, on the margins of the ASEAN Summit, President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim signed two complementary instruments structuring the US-Malaysia economic relationship: (i) a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Cooperation to Diversify Global Critical Minerals Supply Chains and Promote Investments, establishing quarterly working-level meetings on bilateral exploration, extraction, processing, refining, manufacturing, and recycling, plus shared commitments on streamlined permitting and protection from non-market policies; and (ii) a legally-binding Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) covering goods (chemicals, machinery, electrical equipment, metals, vehicles, dairy, horticulture, poultry, pork, rice, fuel ethanol), digital trade, services, and investment. Under the ART, the United States maintains a 19% reciprocal tariff on Malaysian imports (with carve-outs for products receiving 0% under EO 14346) while Malaysia commits to refrain from banning or quota-restricting exports of critical minerals or rare earths to the US, ensure no restrictions on rare-earth magnet sales to US firms, and grant extended operating licenses to US partners. The ART enters into force 60 days after exchange of notifications of completed domestic procedures.

South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources (MOTIR) announced the 2026–2030 Basic Plan for Strengthening the Materials, Parts & Equipment (MPE / 소부장) Industry on 24 October 2025, succeeding the 2020–2025 MPE Basic Plan born from the 2019 Japan export shock. The new five-year plan targets three pillars — innovation, market, and ecosystem — to cut import dependence on 100+ strategic materials, components, and equipment items underpinning Korea's semiconductor, display, battery, and advanced-manufacturing sectors. Key instruments include ten additional MPE Specialized Clusters, 15 "Super Eul" world- leading technology projects, five AI New Materials projects, and KRW 35 billion in joint R&D funding; full annual appropriations flow through the government budget cycle.

On 21 October 2025, the Queensland Government announced an AUD 30 million investment via the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) into Silica Resources Australia (SRA), backing the Mourilyan Silica Sands Project roughly 30km south of Innisfail in Far North Queensland, near the Port of Mourilyan. The funding supports plant, equipment and land acquisition for a project producing high-purity silica sand and silica flour used in glass (including display/TFT glass), solar-panel manufacturing, semiconductors, fibreglass composites and foundry applications. Production is targeted to reach 360,000+ tonnes per year within 12 months and 750,000+ tonnes within 5 years, with Japan, South Korea and the US identified as target export markets.

On 20 October 2025, President Donald J. Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed at the White House the "United States-Australia Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths" — a non-binding common-policy instrument committing both governments to provide at least USD 1 billion each in financing within six months (USD 3bn+ joint commitment against an USD 8.5bn project pipeline and a stated USD 53bn recoverable-resource pipeline). The framework establishes a US-Australia Critical Minerals Supply Security Response Group co-led by the US Secretary of Energy and the Australian Minister for Resources, mandates streamlined permitting for mining/separation/processing projects, and explicitly couples the US demand-side architecture (DPA Title III + Defense Logistics Agency stockpile) to Australia's Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve. Concurrent with signing, EXIM issued seven Letters of Interest totalling USD 2.2bn (unlocking up to USD 5bn) to Arafura Rare Earths, Northern Minerals, Graphinex, La Trobe Magnesium, VHM, RZ Resources, and Sunrise Energy Metals; the US Department of War separately committed to a 100 metric-ton-per-year advanced gallium refinery in Western Australia, and Australia took USD 200m concessional equity in the Alcoa-Sojitz Wagerup gallium project and USD 100m equity in the Arafura Nolans rare-earths project.

On 15 October 2025 the German Federal Cabinet adopted the Microelectronics Strategy of the Federal Government, jointly presented by the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE). The strategy is the first comprehensive cabinet-adopted German microelectronics policy framework in over a decade and operationalises Germany's contribution to the European Chips Act envelope. It is organised around three pillars — Research, Skilled Labour and Production — and creates a "Chips Office" to coordinate stakeholder interaction and implementation. It establishes a competence centre for chip design and a flagship "supercomputer in the car" project, and is framed as a key implementation instrument under the High-Tech Agenda Germany (HTAD) and as Germany's contribution to the September 29 2025 Semicon Declaration signed by all 27 EU member states calling for a revised EU Chips Act II.

On 10 October 2025 Vietnam's Government issued Decree No. 259/2025/NĐ-CP, establishing the country's first comprehensive statutory framework for strategic trade control — covering the export, temporary import for re-export, transshipment, transit, and cross-border trade of strategic goods defined as: (a) WMD-related items, (b) conventional weapons, and (c) dual-use goods spanning nuclear, electronics, telecommunications, sensors, aviation, maritime, aerospace, biochemical, metals, and chemical categories. The decree creates a Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) licensing regime with an ICP (Internal Compliance Programme) fast-track for certified exporters of two or more years' standing, and includes catch-all provisions requiring licensing even for unlisted goods where WMD end-use or a designated end-user is suspected. Structurally, the decree represents Vietnam's transition from ad-hoc export-management provisions under legacy Decree 69/2018/NĐ-CP to a unified strategic-trade-control architecture analytically aligned with the Wassenaar Arrangement, Australia Group, Nuclear Suppliers Group, and MTCR control-list architecture. It positions Vietnam as a compliant strategic-goods manufacturing hub within the US-led friend-shoring supply chain, directly preceding the US announcement in February 2026 of Vietnam's removal from EAR Country Groups D:1–D:3.

China's Ministry of Commerce on 9 October 2025 issued Announcements No. 61 and No. 62, jointly constituting the largest single architectural escalation of PRC export controls to date. No. 61 expands the controlled rare-earth list from 7 to 12 of 17 elements (adding holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, ytterbium) and — for the first time — imposes extraterritorial application via a 0.1% de-minimis rule, a foreign-direct-product (FDP) rule, and a 50%-affiliate rule, directly mirroring US BIS architecture. No. 62 places rare-earth extraction, smelting, separation, magnet manufacturing, and recycling technologies (including IP licensing, investment, and provision to foreign persons) under export licensing. PRC-direct exports were controlled from publication; the de-minimis and FDP offshore-items provisions were due to take effect 1 December 2025. On 7 November 2025 MOFCOM Announcement No. 70 suspended both measures until 10 November 2026 as part of the post-APEC Trump-Xi tariff detente — see amendments block.

China's Unreliable Entity List Working Mechanism, led by MOFCOM, issued Announcement [2025] No. 10 on 9 October 2025 designating 14 foreign entities — Dedrone by Axon Inc., DZYNE Technologies Incorporated, Elbit Systems of America LLC, Epirus Inc., AeroVironment Inc., Exelis Inc., Alliant Techsystems Operations LLC, BAE Systems Inc., Teledyne FLIR LLC, VSE Corporation, Cubic Global Defense, Recorded Future Inc., the Halifax International Security Forum, and TechInsights Inc. (with nine named subsidiaries) — for engaging in military-technical cooperation with Taiwan, harmful statements concerning China, and assisting foreign governments in suppressing Chinese enterprises. The measures (i) prohibit the listed entities from China-related import-export activity, (ii) ban new investment in Chinese territory, and (iii) for the first time under the UEL framework explicitly prohibit Chinese organisations and individuals from transmitting data or providing sensitive information to the listed entities. Issued the same day as MOFCOM/GAC Announcements No. 61/62 extending rare-earth export controls extraterritorially under a 0.1% de minimis content rule, the package marks the first UEL deployment targeting counter-drone original equipment manufacturers and the first to introduce a data-transmission restriction.

Singapore issued a package of four companion instruments in 2025 to modernise its strategic-goods control architecture: (i) the Strategic Goods (Control) Order 2025 (SGCO 2025), which revokes and replaces SGCO 2024 (S 641/2024) and expands the Singapore Strategic Goods Control List to align with the 2024 Wassenaar Arrangement Munitions List and 2024 EU List of Dual-Use Items, effective 1 December 2025; (ii) the Strategic Goods (Control) (Brokering) (Amendment) Order 2025 (S 662/2025), published 1 October 2025, updating Singapore's extraterritorial brokering regime for controlled goods; (iii) Singapore Customs Circular 01/2025 of 8 April 2025, amending import/export declaration requirements to mandate disclosure of the final destination country of goods rather than the consignee address on the commercial invoice; and (iv) a 4 April 2025 joint MTI–Singapore Customs advisory explicitly warning Singapore-based businesses and intermediaries that their compliance obligations extend beyond Singapore's own controls — i.e., that Singapore authorities will not condone deliberate circumvention or violation of US, EU, or Japanese export controls by Singapore-domiciled intermediaries. This package constitutes the first Singapore export-control-architecture filing in the IPTM register and is directly framed by the February 2025 Singapore–NVIDIA–Inspur–DeepSeek GPU-diversion case in which three Singapore residents were charged for fraudulent re-export of restricted AI accelerators to PRC end-users.

On 26 September 2025, Japan's Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato announced the establishment of the Japan Strategic Investment Facility, a JBIC-administered financing vehicle operationalising the USD 550bn investment pledge from the July 2025 US-Japan tariff and investment agreement. The facility launched 1 October 2025 and runs through March 2029, supporting the overseas expansion of Japanese companies across nine economic-security sectors: semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, steel, shipbuilding, critical minerals, aviation, energy, automobiles, and AI/quantum technology. Funding draws on three sources — dollar-denominated JBIC bonds, yen-denominated Japanese government loans to JBIC, and a "supplemental" transfer from Japan's USD 1.324tn foreign-currency reserves — with private-sector loans and NEXI-backed loan guarantees supplementing JBIC's own financing.

The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC), Australia's AUD 15 billion sovereign industrial-financing vehicle, took a AUD 35 million (~USD 23.1 million) equity stake in Morse Micro, announced 23 September 2025. Morse Micro — described by NRFC as Australia's largest semiconductor manufacturer — designs Wi-Fi HaLow chips for long-range, low-power IoT connectivity, with a design and production hub in Picton, regional New South Wales. The investment forms part of Morse Micro's broader AUD 88 million Series C round, led by Japanese semiconductor designer MegaChips and joined by existing investors Blackbird, Main Sequence, and superannuation funds Hostplus, NGS and UniSuper. NRFC frames the deal as strengthening sovereign semiconductor manufacturing capability and supporting skilled jobs in regional NSW.

India's Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) issued Notification No. 31/2025-26 on 23 September 2025, revising Appendix-3 of Schedule-II of the ITC(HS) Export Policy to add a new Category 7 — "Certain Emerging Technologies and related items" — to the SCOMET (Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment and Technologies) list. Category 7 brings under export-licence control: quantum-computing systems (≥34 qubits with controlled error rates), cryogenic CMOS integrated circuits, advanced lithography tools (≤45 nm minimum resolvable feature), additive-manufacturing equipment under vacuum, and related software/technology. The notification took effect 30 days from issuance, on 23 October 2025, and is the first new SCOMET category created since the list's last major restructure, aligning India's strategic-trade-control regime with parallel US BIS, Wassenaar Arrangement, and EU dual-use list updates.

On 19 September 2025, the European Investment Fund (EIF), part of the European Investment Bank Group, signed a EUR 260 million (USD ~305 million) anchor-investor commitment into Jolt Capital V, a growth-stage deep-technology venture capital fund targeting a EUR 1 billion final close. The commitment is funded largely through the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI), an EU-backed programme that has committed over EUR 2.5 billion across 11 scale-up technology funds and aims to mobilise EUR 10 billion in total resources for late-stage European tech companies. Jolt Capital V will invest in growth-stage B2B companies across semiconductors, cybersecurity, AI, industry 4.0, new materials and mobility, sectors the EIB Group frames explicitly around European strategic autonomy and competitiveness.

On 18 September 2025 the Bundestag adopted the Gesetz zur Errichtung eines Sondervermögens "Infrastruktur und Klimaneutralität" (SVIKG), authorising up to EUR 500 bn of additional federal borrowing over a twelve-year horizon outside the constitutional debt brake, on the basis of the new Article 143h Grundgesetz inserted by the March 2025 constitutional amendment. The envelope splits into up to EUR 100 bn for Länder and municipal infrastructure (channelled via the companion Länder- und Kommunal-Infrastrukturfinanzierungsgesetz, LuKIFG, passed 9 October 2025), EUR 100 bn transferred to the Klima- und Trans- formationsfonds (KTF) in annual instalments through 2034, and up to EUR 300 bn for additional federal investments in transport, energy/ heat, hospital, education, digitalisation, civil protection and R&D infrastructure. Investments are eligible retroactively from 1 January 2025 and may be approved through 31 December 2036; loan repayment begins no later than 1 January 2044. SVIKG is the largest single industrial-finance instrument launched by an EU member state in the post-2022 industrial-policy cycle.