Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2665 actions· ✨ 90 recent

On 3 December 2025, Export Finance Australia (EFA) disclosed a €120 million (~AU$196 million) loan commitment to Vulcan Energy Resources' Phase One Lionheart Project in Germany's Upper Rhine Valley, which will produce battery-quality lithium hydroxide monohydrate (LHM) from geothermal brine while co-generating renewable heat and power. The loan is part of a syndicated, multi-country export-credit package alongside Germany's KfW Raw Materials Fund, the European Investment Bank, Export Development Canada, Denmark's EIFO, France's Bpifrance Assurance Export, and Italy's SACE, financing a project with total capital cost of ~€2.193 billion (~AU$3.9 billion). Phase One targets 24,000 tonnes per annum of LHM, enough for roughly 500,000 electric vehicles.

On 3 December 2025 the European Commission adopted the RESourceEU Action Plan (COM(2025) 945 final), a horizontal critical-raw-materials supply-security instrument complementing the 2023 Critical Raw Materials Act. The plan mobilises €3 billion in EU funds within twelve months for priority CRM projects, creates a European Critical Raw Materials Centre operational from 2026 (modelled on Japan's JOGMEC) acting as portfolio manager for diversified supply chains, joint purchasing and stockpiling, and activates the Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act (IMERA) "vigilance" and "emergency" modes from May 2026 with mandatory information requests, priority deliveries and coordinated stockpile distribution. A targeted CRMA amendment expands product labelling for permanent-magnet recycling and adds export controls on permanent-magnet and aluminium scrap. Targets a 30-50% reduction by 2029 in single-country dependency for battery, rare-earth and defence raw-material value chains.

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.

On 25 November 2025 the US EPA announced USD 3 billion in new Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) assistance under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), plus reallocation of a further USD 1.1 billion in previously awarded but unspent state funds, bringing total redirected funding to USD 4.1 billion for state lead service line replacement (LSLR) programmes. Global Trade Alert logs the intervention as a public-procurement-localisation measure because DWSRF/IIJA capital- grant assistance carries standing Build America, Buy America Act (BABA) domestic-content requirements for the iron, steel, and manufactured construction products (pipe, fittings) used in funded replacement work. States that have not obligated or spent funds awarded since FY2023 must submit an implementation plan before accessing new funding.

On 24 November 2025, six Beijing municipal departments — the Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, Development and Reform Commission, Science and Technology Commission, Health Commission, Drug Administration and Medical Insurance Bureau — jointly issued Notice 京经信发〔2025〕50号 ("Several Measures to Promote High-Quality Development of the Beijing Medical Device Industry"), effective immediately through 31 December 2028. The 15-measure package subsidises the full medical-device value chain: early-stage innovation (up to RMB 1m per project), product approval/launch (up to RMB 2m per product, RMB 10m annual enterprise cap), industrial-park and public-service infrastructure construction (up to 50% of investment, capped at RMB 50m), supply-chain-resilience R&D for critical components/materials (up to 30% of investment, capped at RMB 30m), AI-diagnostic-model development (up to RMB 30m), smart-factory digitalisation (up to 30% of investment, capped at RMB 30m per project), and international regulatory approval/market entry (up to RMB 1m per product, RMB 3m annual cap; up to RMB 10m for introducing overseas products to China).

On 20 November 2025 the US EPA opened the 9th round of Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) lending — USD 6.5 billion in WIFIA financing plus USD 550 million under the State WIFIA (SWIFIA) program, USD 7.05 billion in total newly available capacity — and simultaneously approved five new WIFIA loans totaling USD 711 million across Fort Worth TX (USD 347m), Pflugerville TX (USD 176m), Joliet IL (USD 87m), Ashland OR (USD 73m) and Wilton Manors FL (USD 28m). Global Trade Alert logs each individual loan as a public-procurement-localisation intervention because WIFIA capital assistance carries a standing American Iron and Steel (AIS) domestic-content requirement for iron, steel and manufactured products used in EPA-financed water infrastructure — a structural condition of the WIFIA statute rather than a provision unique to this announcement.

Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma'aden), MP Materials Corp., and the US Department of Defense signed a binding term sheet on November 19, 2025 to establish a joint venture that will build and operate a rare earth refining and separation facility in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Ma'aden holds a minimum 51% controlling stake; MP Materials and the DoD together hold the remaining 49%. The facility will process rare earth feedstock from Saudi and global sources to produce separated light and heavy rare earth oxides, with a validity window to commercial agreement extending through March 31, 2027.

On 18 November 2025, during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's White House visit (17-19 November 2025), the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia signed a Strategic Framework for Cooperation on Securing Uranium, Metals, Permanent Magnets, and Critical Minerals Supply Chains. The framework was signed by US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Saudi Minister of Energy H.R.H. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and positions Saudi Arabia (via Ma'aden + Public Investment Fund vehicles) as a regional hub for processing rare earths and producing permanent magnets, supports a US-backed rare-earths refinery in the Kingdom, and channels Saudi capital — alongside the broader USD ~1 trillion Saudi investment commitment in the US announced the same week — into US and allied critical-mineral projects. It is paired with a separate joint declaration on civil nuclear cooperation (Section 123 Agreement contemplated) and was operationalised one day later by the 19 November 2025 binding term sheet between MP Materials, the US Department of War, and Ma'aden to develop a rare-earth refinery in Saudi Arabia (Department of War financing the US side's 49% stake; Ma'aden retaining ≥51%).

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry amended the Export Trade Control Order (輸出貿易管理令) to add four technology categories to the prior-notification-of-transfer list under the Technology Management Scheme through Public-Private Dialogue (TMS-PPD): quantum-dot materials, TADF (thermally-activated delayed fluorescence) emissive materials, phase-difference film, and flexible endoscopes. Announced 11 November 2025, promulgated 19 November 2025, and effective 19 January 2026. This is the first list-control update produced by the TMS-PPD mechanism, which was established in December 2024 as an annual METI–industry review process for adding emerging-technology items to prior-notification controls outside the slower Wassenaar Arrangement / FEFTA catch-all channels.

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.

The European Commission approved on 6 November 2025 a EUR 700 million Spanish State aid scheme (SA.119884) under the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF Section 6.1), to support the build-out of new manufacturing capacity for net-zero technologies listed in CISAF Annex II. The scheme funds direct grants, open Spain-wide and available until 31 December 2028, for investments producing batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, electrolysers, carbon capture/storage/utilisation equipment, and the critical raw materials used to make these components. It is a distinct, larger sister scheme to Spain's EUR 408 million SA.119880 CISAF Section 5 scheme (approved five weeks later), which instead funds decarbonisation of existing industrial processes rather than new clean-tech production capacity.

On 5 November 2025 the Riksdag voted in favour of the Government's proposal to repeal Sweden's 2018 moratorium on uranium mining and exploration. The decision amends the Environmental Code (Miljöbalken) and the Minerals Act (Minerallagen) to reclassify uranium as a "concession mineral" — a mineral "especially useful for society" — allowing bedrock exploration and full mining-concession applications under Sweden's existing mineral-rights framework. The new rules enter into force on 1 January 2026. Sweden hosts an estimated 27% of Europe's known uranium reserves (per the Geological Survey of Sweden, SGU); the reversal is the first European uranium-mining policy opening of the post-Chernobyl era and complements the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (which lists uranium as a strategic raw material) and the emerging EU Nuclear Common Industrial Agenda.

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.

On 23 October 2025, the Council of the European Union adopted Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2041 (amending Regulation (EC) No 765/2006) and Council Decision (CFSP) 2025/2040 (amending Decision 2012/642/CFSP), widening the EU's Belarus restrictive-measures regime in lockstep with the 19th Russia sanctions package adopted the same day. The package widens the export ban to industrial goods (salts, ores, rubber articles, tyres, millstones, construction materials, electronic components, rangefinders, propellant chemicals, metals/oxides/alloys), extends the import ban to all acyclic hydrocarbons, introduces a new prior-licensing requirement for services supplied to Belarus, its government, or public bodies, and mirrors the Russia regime's space, AI, and high-performance/ quantum-computing service restrictions. A companion instrument, Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2039, adds 5 new asset-freeze listings (2 individuals + 3 entities, including JSC Holography Industry, Horizont Holding, and ICT Horizont). Entered into force 24 October 2025.

DOE's Loan Programs Office restructured the terms of its USD 2.23 billion Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan to Lithium Nevada LLC (Lithium Americas Corp.'s subsidiary) for the Thacker Pass lithium project in Nevada, in exchange for a direct government equity stake. The DOE received warrants for a 5% equity stake in Lithium Americas Corp. and a 5% economic stake in the Lithium Americas/General Motors joint venture, both at a nominal USD 0.01 exercise price, in consideration for deferring USD 184 million of scheduled debt service from the loan's first five repayment years to later maturity. Lithium Americas in turn agreed to contribute an additional USD 120 million to DOE loan reserve accounts within 12 months, and the restructuring unlocked the loan's first USD 435 million drawdown, disbursed October 20, 2025.

President Trump signed "Adjusting Imports of Timber, Lumber, and their Derivative Products into the United States" on 29 September 2025 invoking Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (19 U.S.C. § 1862), following a Section 232 investigation initiated 1 March 2025 and a Commerce report transmitted 1 July 2025 that found wood- product imports threaten US national security. The proclamation imposes a 10% ad valorem global tariff on imports of softwood timber and lumber, a 25% global tariff on upholstered wooden furniture, and a 25% global tariff on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, effective 12:01 a.m. EDT 14 October 2025 (Federal Register doc 2025-19482, published 6 October 2025). The upholstered-furniture rate was scheduled to step up to 30% and the cabinet/vanity rate to 50% on 1 January 2026; both step-ups were postponed to 1 January 2027 by a 31 December 2025 amendment proclamation. EU and Japan rates are capped at 15% and UK rates at 10% under bilateral framework deals. This is the first wood/forest-products Section 232 instrument in US history.

China's State Council General Office issued Guobanfa [2025] No. 34 ("Notice on Implementing Domestic Product Standards and Related Policies in Government Procurement") on 28 September 2025, effective 1 January 2026. The notice applies a 20% price deduction to domestic-product bids when evaluating government procurement tenders; suppliers whose domestic-content cost share reaches 80% or more of total product cost get the deduction applied to their entire quoted price rather than only the domestic-content portion. Coverage is economy-wide across the government's Goods Classification Directory (Global Trade Alert separately tagged natural/man-made textile fibres and yarn under this measure), with narrow carve-outs for real estate, cultural relics, agricultural/forestry/fishery products, minerals, utilities, and food/tobacco raw materials. The Ministry of Finance published implementing guidance (Caiku [2025] No. 30) shortly after.

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 17 September 2025 the General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government issued Hufubangui [2025] No. 8, a five-year (26 September 2025 - 25 September 2030) state-aid framework to accelerate frontier-technology innovation and cultivate "future industries" across six domains — future manufacturing, future information, future materials, future energy, future space and future health. Targeted technology areas include cell and gene therapy, brain-computer interfaces, biomanufacturing, embodied intelligence (humanoid robotics/AI hardware), fourth-generation semiconductors, silicon photonics, 6G, neuromorphic computing, quantum technology, controlled nuclear fusion and regenerative medicine. Support is disbursed as tiered direct subsidies rather than tax relief, with named ceilings up to CNY 30 million per proof-of-concept/R&D platform and CNY 20 million per high-quality incubator or first-product/batch innovation award.

The European Commission adopted Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1063 of 12 May 2026, imposing a provisional anti-dumping duty on imports of PET spunbond originating in the People's Republic of China — non-woven needle-punched sheets of polyester filaments, whether or not reinforced by glass fibres, weighing more than 70 g/m2, thickness 0.5-1.8 mm, impregnated with one or more binders, falling under CN codes ex 5603 13 90, 5603 14 20 and ex 5603 14 80. Provisional duties range from 45.6% to 50.0% depending on the exporting producer, entering into force on 14 May 2026 (the day after Official Journal publication) and applying until 13 November 2026, by which date the Commission must decide on definitive measures. The measure follows an investigation initiated on 15 September 2025 (OJ C/2025/5010) pursuant to a complaint lodged on 8 August 2025 by Freudenberg Performance Materials and Johns Manville, alleging that dumped Chinese imports — whose EU market share rose from roughly 0-5% to 15-20% between 2021 and 2024 — caused material injury to Union producers.

Paraguay promulgated Ley Nº 7548/2025 on 8 September 2025, establishing a modernised fiscal-incentive regime for national and foreign investment that replaces the 35-year-old Ley 60/90 framework. The statute extends IDU (dividend-distribution tax) exemptions to domestic investors — equalising treatment with foreign-owned enterprises for the first time — and provides customs-duty and VAT exemptions on capital goods, raw materials, and inputs for qualifying investment projects approved via bi-ministerial resolution by MIC and MEF. The law is the third pillar of Paraguay's September 2025 industrial-policy reset, companion to Ley 7546/2025 (electronics sector strategy) and Ley 7547/2025 (maquila regime overhaul), and anchors the Peña administration's FDI-promotion architecture with explicit fiscal-stability guarantees and tiered regional/sectoral premium support.

On 8 September 2025, the UK Ministry of Defence published the Defence Industrial Strategy 2025 — "Making Defence an Engine for Growth" (CP 1388) — the first comprehensive cabinet-level UK defence industrial strategy in over a decade and the sector plan for Defence under the UK Modern Industrial Strategy umbrella (IS-8). The strategy was published alongside the Strategic Defence Review 2025 and operationalises the largest sustained defence- spending increase since the Cold War (rising to 2.6% of GDP by 2027 with ambition to 3% in the next Parliament). It defines six priority outcomes (growth, backing UK businesses, defence innovation, resilient industrial base, procurement transformation, enduring partnerships); establishes UK Defence Innovation (UKDI) within the MOD with a ringfenced £400m budget to accelerate dual-use technology; identifies priority defence capabilities (combat air, complex weapons, directed-energy weapons, next- generation land and maritime systems) plus dual-use sub-sectors (quantum, drones/autonomy, space, AI, cyber, engineering biology, advanced connectivity); and flags resilience priorities in steel, construction, energetic materials, batteries, semiconductors and rare earths.

France's Ministry of Industry and Energy, under Minister Marc Ferracci, announced a EUR 200 million green-industry tax credit (crédit d'impôt au titre des investissements dans l'industrie verte, C3IV) for Imerys' EMILI project at Échassières (Allier) — France's first domestic lithium mining and refining operation. The award was made as the project's total construction cost was revised up to EUR 1.8 billion. Once operational (targeted 2030), the site is expected to produce 34,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide per year, enough to supply around 700,000 electric vehicles and cover over 20% of French battery factories' lithium needs. The award was announced alongside a wider package of C3IV support: seven critical-metals projects received a combined ~EUR 809 million in tax credits, part of ~EUR 5.4 billion in supported critical raw materials investment nationally.

MIIT, NDRC and MNR jointly issued the Interim Measures for Total Volume Control of Rare Earth Mining and Rare Earth Smelting and Separation on August 22, 2025, the first implementing regulation under State Council Order No. 785. The measures establish annual national production ceilings (for both mining and smelting/separation), distributed directly to designated enterprises at the start of each year, and — in the most novel provision — extend quota controls to rare-earth content in imported raw materials (e.g. Myanmar concentrate, Kazakh monazite, Guinea feedstocks) for the first time. Enterprises must report monthly output against quotas to local authorities and submit the prior month's flow data to an MIIT-operated traceability platform by the 10th of each month.

On 19 August 2025 the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) opened applications for the Battery Breakthrough Initiative (BBI), an AUD 500 million capital-grant and production-incentive program to build domestic battery manufacturing capability across the value chain, from active materials to finished cells and packs. The program was first announced in the May 2024 Federal Budget as a pillar of the Future Made in Australia agenda and the National Battery Strategy, and is designed to strengthen supply-chain resilience by leveraging Australia's position as the world's largest lithium producer and a major nickel/cobalt/graphite supplier. Funding was subsequently cut to AUD 142.32 million in the 2026 Federal Budget (see amendments).

The European Commission cleared EUR 264 million (approx. HUF 103 billion) in Hungarian regional investment aid for Hungary Sunwoda Automotive Energy Technology Kft., the local unit of Chinese battery maker Sunwoda Electronic (300207.SZ), to support a EUR 1.43 billion lithium-ion battery-cell plant in Nyíregyháza (Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county). Aid takes the form of a direct cash grant plus a corporate development tax allowance, granted under Hungary's national investment-promotion regime (Government Decree 210/2014, as amended, and Government Decree 165/2014 on the development tax incentive). The Commission found the measure necessary, appropriate and proportionate under Article 107(3)(c) TFEU regional-aid rules and raised no objections; the project is expected to create over 2,500 direct and 470 indirect jobs.

Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-SURE), a Korean government export-credit agency, announced on 4 August 2025 a US$1bn (~KRW 1.4tn) financial guarantee backing LG Chem's construction of a cathode material plant in Clarksville, Montgomery County, Tennessee. The facility is being built in a first phase for roughly KRW 2tn, with 60,000 tons/year of NCMA (nickel-cobalt-manganese- aluminum) cathode capacity — described by K-SURE as the largest cathode material production line in the United States, sufficient for around 600,000 electric vehicles. K-SURE stated this is the first US investment guarantee issued following the Korea-US tariff negotiation, under which Seoul agreed to channel a large bilateral investment package into the United States; the guarantee lets LG Chem access lower-cost, longer-tenor financing from global banks for the project.

President Trump signed Proclamation 10962 on 30 July 2025, imposing a 50% Section 232 tariff on imports of semi-finished copper products (pipes, wires, rods, sheets, tubes, foils) and copper-intensive derivative products (cables, connectors, electrical components, pipe fittings) effective 12:01 a.m. ET on 1 August 2025. The proclamation also authorises the Commerce Secretary to impose a 25% domestic-sales requirement and export controls on high-quality copper scrap, and lays out a phased schedule for refined-copper tariffs (15% from 1 Jan 2027, 30% from 1 Jan 2028) contingent on a Commerce review report due 30 June 2026. Copper input materials (ores, concentrates, cathodes, anodes) and copper scrap itself are exempt from the 50% tariff. The original 90-day "inclusions" process for expanding the derivative list was terminated by a follow-on April 2026 proclamation that consolidated authority with Commerce + USTR.

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) jointly issued Announcement No. 28 of 2025 on 15 July 2025, partially adjusting the "Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited or Restricted from Export" first published under Announcement No. 57 of 2023. The revision adds new restricted-export entries covering LFP/LMFP cathode electrode material preparation technology, lithium carbonate/lithium hydroxide preparation technology, and gallium processing technology, extending Beijing's export-control perimeter from raw critical minerals into upstream battery-material process technology. The same revision removed three unrelated entries (traditional Chinese architectural technology and building environment-control technology) from the prohibited/restricted lists. The catalogue took effect immediately upon publication and followed a January 2025 public-consultation draft.

On 14 July 2025, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted Resolution No. 845 "On the approval of the lists of minerals and components of strategic and critical importance, and the lists of subsoil areas (mineral deposits) of strategic and/or critical importance," establishing Ukraine's first national taxonomy for critical-minerals governance: 11 strategic minerals (incl. uranium, titanium, zirconium, copper, nickel, tantalum, strontium, niobium, beryllium, aluminium, fluorite) and 28 critical minerals (incl. lithium, rare earths, vanadium, gallium, indium, caesium, tin). The resolution simultaneously designates 60 subsoil-area blocks for electronic auction of special permits for subsoil use and 26 deposits for competitive tender under Production Sharing Agreements, operationalising Chapter 13 (Critical Raw Materials Management) of Ukraine's Plan under the Ukraine Facility (Resolution No. 244-p of 18 March 2024) and providing the domestic licensing scaffolding through which obligations under the 30 April 2025 US-Ukraine Mineral Resources Agreement and EU Critical Raw Materials Act strategic-partnership track will flow.

On July 12, 2025, French and New Caledonian political parties signed the Bougival Accord ("Accord pour l'Avenir de la Nouvelle-Calédonie"), establishing a Pacte de Refondation Économique et Sociale that commits the French state to €2 billion+ over five years for territorial reconstruction, paired with a dedicated strategic nickel plan to rescue New Caledonia's three severely stressed metallurgical plants — SLN/Doniambo (Eramet), KNS/Koniambo (shut since August 2024), and Prony Resources/Goro. An interministerial mission under the Prime Minister was established to coordinate the recovery. New Caledonia holds approximately 25% of known global nickel reserves and supplies roughly 8% of world mine output, making the fate of its three processing plants a material chokepoint for battery-grade and aerospace-alloy nickel supply chains.

On 6 February 2026 the Canadian International Trade Tribunal (CITT) found that dumped and subsidized imports of cast iron soil pipe from China have caused material injury to the Canadian domestic industry, triggering collection of definitive duties by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Final anti-dumping duties range from 155.5% to 444.2% of export price by exporter (444.2% for all other exporters), and a flat countervailing (subsidy) duty of 28.5% of export price (equivalent to CNY 1,550.44 per metric tonne) applies to all Chinese exporters. CBSA had initiated the dumping and subsidizing investigation on 11 July 2025 following a complaint from Canada Pipe Company ULC, d.b.a. Bibby-Ste-Croix (Sainte-Croix, Québec), and imposed provisional duties from 9 October 2025 pending the final determination and injury finding.

Business Finland granted €115.4 million in investment aid under Finland's EU-TCTF-aligned clean transition aid scheme to Easpring Finland New Materials Oy for the construction of a cathode active material (CAM) factory in Kotka. The €800 million total project is a joint venture majority-owned (70%) by China's Beijing Easpring Material Technology Co. Ltd. (300073.SZ), with Finnish Minerals Group (30%) as the Finnish state minority partner. At full capacity of 60,000 tonnes/year the plant will supply CAM for approximately 750,000 EV battery packs annually; first product samples are targeted for summer 2026 with commercial production in 2027.

Portugal's Secretary of State for Energy (Jean Paulo Gil Barroca) declared public utility and constituted an administrative easement over 24 land parcels (~228 hectares) of private and communal land in the Barroso mining concession area (Boticas, Trás-os-Montes) in favour of Savannah Lithium, Lda. via Despacho n.º 7824/2025, published in the Diário da República 2.ª série n.º 131 on 10 July 2025. The easement, valid for one year from administrative possession, grants Savannah Lithium access rights to conduct geological surveys, geotechnical investigations, and preparatory exploratory works at the Mina do Barroso — the EU's largest known spodumene (hard-rock lithium) resource. The Barroso project was designated a Strategic Project under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) Regulation 2024/1252 in March 2025, making this despacho the first concrete member-state compulsory-easement instrument implementing CRMA Strategic Project status in Portugal.

Minister of Trade Regulation No. 20 of 2025, signed by Minister Budi Santoso on 30 June 2025 and effective 29 August 2025 (60 days after promulgation), reorganises Indonesia's import regime for chemicals, Hazardous Materials (B2), and a defined set of mining and energy inputs. The regulation revokes Permendag 8/2024 and requires holders of designated importer status (Importir Terdaftar / Importir Produsen) to secure an Import Approval (Persetujuan Impor) plus a post-arrival Surveyor Report (Laporan Surveyor) for an eleven-cluster commodity bundle including lubricant raw materials, cement clinker and cement, rough diamonds, non-pharmaceutical precursors, crude oil and natural gas, nitrocellulose, commercial-industrial explosives, ozone-depleting substances, hydrofluorocarbons, B2, and certain other chemicals (BKT). It is one of nine commodity-cluster Permendags issued the same day under the Prabowo administration's umbrella import-policy deregulation package.

Australia's Anti-Dumping Commission (ADC) imposed a provisional anti-subsidy (countervailing) duty on imports of light gauge steel stud and track (LGST) from China, effective 18 June 2026, under Case 679. The investigation — initiated 30 June 2025 (initiation notice ADN 2025/053) following an application from local manufacturer Rondo Building Services Pty Ltd — covers metallic-coated LGST with a profile up to 170mm x 170mm and base metal thickness up to 0.69mm, imported under HS codes 7216.61.00, 7216.69.00, 7308.90.00 and 7216.91.00. A parallel provisional anti-dumping duty investigation on the same product is running on the same case timeline. The Commission's Statement of Essential Facts was delayed to no later than 17 June 2026, with final recommendations to the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science expected by 17 August 2026.

The US Department of Commerce initiated antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on steel concrete reinforcing bar (rebar) from Algeria, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Vietnam following a June 2025 petition by the Rebar Trade Action Coalition. On 19 December 2025, Commerce published its preliminary affirmative less-than-fair-value determination for Algeria, setting a 127.32% dumping margin (Tosyali Iron and Steel Industry — Algeria, applied to all other Algerian exporters) and requiring cash deposits at that rate. Parallel LTFV and countervailing-duty investigations on Bulgaria, Egypt, and Vietnam remained pending at the provisional/preliminary stage as of this determination, with Bulgaria and Egypt preliminary determinations later postponed to March 2026 (Egypt/Vietnam preliminary CVD margins of 29.51% and 1.08% respectively were set earlier in the case). The investigation covers rebar in straight-length or coil form (HTS-classified, excluding plain/smooth rounds), imported for use in reinforced-concrete construction. Algeria's period of investigation was April 2024–March 2025.

China Chengtong Holdings Group, a SASAC-supervised central state capital operation company, completed business registration of the "Chengtong Science and Technology Innovation Investment Fund (Beijing) Limited Partnership" in late May/early June 2025, jointly capitalised with Sinopec, China Aviation Oil, and the Haidian District Government of Beijing. The fund has a total planned scale of CNY 30 billion (~USD 4.2 billion) with a first-phase scale of CNY 10 billion (~USD 1.4 billion) and a 15-year term. It prioritises "early-stage, small-scale, long-term, hard-technology" equity investment across new materials, advanced manufacturing, and next-generation information technology, targeting industry-leading tech firms, "little giant" specialised-and-innovative enterprises, technology-transfer projects, and upstream/downstream suppliers in central-SOE industrial chains.

Sultan Haitham bin Tariq issued Royal Decree 38/2025 on 7 April 2025, published in the Sultanate of Oman Official Gazette on 13 April 2025, enacting a unified statutory framework for Oman's special economic zones (SEZs) and free zones (FZs) under the Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones (OPAZ). The law consolidates the previously fragmented regimes governing Duqm SEZ, Salalah Free Zone, Sohar Free Zone, Al Mazunah Free Zone, and Knowledge Oasis Muscat into a single overarching statutory architecture, granting a 10-year corporate income tax exemption (renewable for high-value activities), 100% foreign ownership, full capital and profit repatriation, customs-duty exemptions on construction inputs and operational goods, and a statutory one-stop-shop through OPAZ. The law establishes OPAZ as the consolidated regulatory authority with ring-fenced powers over labour, immigration, customs, environment, and land-use within zone boundaries, and creates a new statutory basis for OPAZ to negotiate sector-specific concessions using usufruct, leasehold, and sub-concession instruments. Royal Decree 38/2025 is the principal Vision 2040 FDI-architecture instrument — the parent statute under which the GFCL Salalah LFP battery-materials usufruct, the Hyport Duqm green-ammonia project, and the Karwa Motors EV-assembly arrangement all operate.

At the first-ever EU-Central Asia Summit in Samarkand (4 April 2025), the European Commission and Kazakhstan endorsed the EU-Kazakhstan Strategic Partnership Roadmap 2025-2026, operationalising the 7 November 2022 MoU on Sustainable Raw Materials, Batteries, and Renewable Hydrogen with concrete two-year workstreams: geological exploration cooperation, joint R&I programmes (Horizon Europe linkages), skills and training cooperation, and promotion of ESG standards aligned with the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA, Reg. (EU) 2024/1252). The Roadmap positions Kazakhstan as the EU's primary Central-Asian CRMA Strategic Partner under Art. 37, unlocking a potential multi-billion-EUR Global Gateway financing pipeline and structurally rebalancing KZ critical-mineral export flows away from China/Russia dependencies.

Stortinget adopted Norway's new Minerals Act (Lov om mineralvirksomhet og forvaltning av mineralressurser) on 12 June 2025, replacing the 2009 Minerals Act and entering into force 1 July 2026. The statute introduces a national-security review pillar enabling authorities to deny or condition projects that threaten national preparedness, reduces exploration-licence duration from seven to three years to accelerate project initiation, expands Sámi consultation protections from Finnmark to all traditional Sámi areas (Sápmi), and mandates explicit alignment with the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA, Regulation (EU) 2024/1252). The Act covers Norway's most strategically significant mineral assets including the Fen carbonatite REE field (Europe's largest known REE deposit) and major copper-zinc deposits.

On 25 March 2025 the European Commission adopted the first list of 47 Strategic Projects inside the EU under Article 7 of the Critical Raw Materials Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1252), followed on 4 June 2025 by 13 Strategic Projects located in third countries — 60 designations in total. The 47 EU projects span 13 Member States and 14 strategic raw materials, with an expected EUR 22.5bn capital-investment envelope; the 13 third-country projects require a further EUR 5.5bn. Designation triggers fast-track permitting (max 27 months for extraction, 15 months for processing/recycling), preferential access to EU/EIB/EBRD finance, and Member State priority status, operationalising the CRMA's 2030 benchmarks (≥10% extraction, ≥40% processing, ≥25% recycling, ≤65% single-country dependence).

On 11 March 2025 the European Commission published its proposal for a Critical Medicines Act (CMA), pillar of the broader EU pharmaceutical-resilience agenda alongside the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (filed: 2024-05-23-eu-crma-entry-into-force) and the IRA-style industrial-policy stack. The proposal targets supply security of an EU "Union List" of critical medicines (antibiotics, anti-thrombotics, oncology, cardiovascular, insulin, painkillers) by introducing four mechanisms: (1) Strategic Project status with expedited funding access for critical-medicine manufacturing or active-substance production; (2) public-procurement preferences favouring resilient supply chains and — in defined cases — EU-based production; (3) collaborative cross-Member-State procurement to address fragmented small markets; (4) state-aid framework guidance + international-partnership diversification to reduce single-country (often China-routed) API dependency.

Spain's Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) launched the first Mineral Raw Materials Action Plan 2025-2029 on 11 March 2025 — the country's first five-year national Critical Raw Materials plan, aligned with EU Regulation 2024/1252 (CRMA). The plan bundles 30+ inter-departmental measures across four categories (regulatory, sectoral, cross-cutting, R&D+I), including the first National Mining Exploration Programme in Spanish democracy (analysing 1,000+ historical tailings dams and mining-waste sites for lithium / nickel / cobalt / REE / copper recovery) and a €400m PRTR (Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan) allocation for restoration of mining-affected areas. The plan sustains 30,000+ existing mining-sector jobs and is structured as Spain's domestic implementation framework for the EU CRMA.

On 7 March 2025, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev reviewed and endorsed a three-year national programme to develop Uzbekistan's critical-minerals raw-material base, totalling USD 2.6 bn across 76 projects covering 28 rare-metal elements (tungsten, lithium, titanium, vanadium, molybdenum, magnesium, germanium, graphite, rare earths and others). The plan, presented by Minister of Mining Industry and Geology Bobur Islamov, structures the effort along a "raw materials → processing → science & technology → finished products" value chain, establishes technology parks in the Tashkent and Samarkand regions, and directs ministries to facilitate technology transfer, modern laboratories, and training centres. It is Uzbekistan's first programmatic critical-minerals push at this scale and the first Central-Asia upstream-capture filing in the IPTM register.

Indonesia issued Government Regulation (Peraturan Pemerintah) No. 8 of 2025 on Foreign-Exchange Proceeds from Natural-Resource Exports (DHE SDA), amending PP No. 36/2023. President Prabowo Subianto announced the policy at Merdeka Palace on 17–18 February 2025 and the regulation takes effect on 1 March 2025. It mandates that exporters of non-oil- and-gas mining, plantation, forestry, and fisheries products with export-proceeds value of USD 250,000 or more per shipment retain 100 percent of those foreign-exchange proceeds inside Indonesia's financial system for 12 months — sharply up from the prior 30 percent for 3 months under PP 36/2023. Oil-and-gas exporters remain on the earlier 30 percent / 3-month regime. Permitted in-period uses include rupiah conversion at the holding bank, payment of state obligations in foreign currency, dividend distribution, payment for imported raw materials and capital goods unavailable domestically, and servicing of foreign-currency capital-expenditure loans. Non-compliance carries administrative sanctions including suspension of export services. The government has projected the measure could lift retained foreign- exchange proceeds by USD 80 billion in 2025 and over USD 100 billion on a full 12-month basis.