Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 recent

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Raw Materials Industry Division opened a 30-day public consultation on 28 April 2026 on the Administrative Penalty Discretion Standards Table operationalising the State Council's Rare Earth Management Regulation (Order No. 785, in force 1 October 2024). The draft sets a tiered fines schedule for breaches across the entire mining → smelting → separation → sales value chain — fines up to five times "illegal gains" for production-quota breaches under 10%, escalating to product/equipment confiscation and licence revocation for breaches over 30%. Traceability-reporting failures under MIIT's national rare-earth traceability platform are penalised separately with fines up to ten times illegal gains. Comments close 28 May 2026.

Minister of Trade Regulation No. 6 of 2026 (Permendag 6/2026), signed 26 March 2026 and effective 1 April 2026, amends the appendix of Permendag 22/2023 on Goods Prohibited for Export, making four substantive changes to Indonesia's prohibited-export list: (i) nitrogen-containing mineral and chemical fertilizers, including urea in all forms, are added to the prohibited-export list as a food-security instrument; (ii) rice is removed from the prohibited-export list, partially reversing a long-standing prohibition; (iii) rough wood, sawn wood, and wood carpentry and building products are added as value-added-export-requirement items, extending Indonesia's hilirisasi downstream-processing doctrine from minerals into the forestry-products sector; and (iv) rattan weaving materials remain prohibited for export. Together with the simultaneously enacted Permendag 5/2026 (fourth amendment to Permendag 23/2023 on export-licensing procedures), this forms Indonesia's most consequential 2026 export-regulation package.

Arrêté ministériel n° 00964/CAB.MIN/MINES/01/2025, signed 19 December 2025 by DRC Mines Minister Louis Watum Kabamba, suspends with immediate effect all activities of entities (notably comptoirs d'achat / buying counters, treatment units and similar structures) involved in the purchase, processing, transformation and commercialisation of copper and cobalt minerals sourced from artisanal exploitation across the country. Industrial, legally established mining operators are excluded. The order requires affected entities to submit compliance documentation within ten days, establishes an ad hoc commission to verify administrative, legal, technical and traceability conformity (15-day review window), and obliges operators to demonstrate the lawful origin of their supplies in line with OECD due-diligence guidance. Framed as a "conservatory" measure to restore order in the cupro-cobaltifère value chain and curb illicit exports.

Morocco's Loi de Finances n° 50-25 for fiscal year 2026, promulgated by Dahir n° 1-25-67 of 10 December 2025 and published in Bulletin Officiel n° 7465 bis of 16 December 2025, sets the FY2026 customs-tariff schedule (continuing the EU Common External Tariff alignment process at 2.5%/17.5%/40% tiers with sector-specific input reductions), amends the fiscal regimes for Zones d'Accélération Industrielle and Casablanca Finance City, and delivers the 2026 tranche of the multi-year IS (corporate-tax) rate-convergence schedule under Framework Law n° 69-19. The law also extends green-investment fiscal accelerators aligned with the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and the EU-Morocco Strategic Partnership on Sustainable Raw Materials Value Chains, and contains phosphate-sector fiscal provisions affecting OCP Group's DAP/MAP/TSP export treatment. Entry into force: 1 January 2026.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), replaces the 2009 Ecodesign Directive with a cross-cutting product-sustainability framework covering nearly all physical goods placed on the EU single market. It empowers the Commission to adopt binding delegated acts setting ecodesign requirements (durability, reparability, recyclability, recycled content, chemical restrictions, energy and resource efficiency) by product category, establishes a mandatory Digital Product Passport (DPP) for supply-chain traceability, and bans the destruction of unsold consumer products. The regulation entered into force on 18 July 2024; the Commission's first ESPR and Energy Labelling Working Plan (2025–2030, COM(2025) 187) was adopted in April 2025, prioritising textiles, furniture, tyres, electronics, and iron/steel/aluminium.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 establishes a comprehensive EU statutory framework for all battery categories (portable, SLI, LMT, EV, industrial), imposing supply-chain due-diligence obligations for cobalt, lithium, nickel, and natural graphite; mandatory recycled-content thresholds; carbon-footprint declarations; a digital battery passport; and ambitious collection and recycling-efficiency targets, with rolling application dates running from February 2024 through August 2036. It repeals Battery Directive 2006/66/EC and applies to every economic operator placing batteries on the EU market, binding every EV, consumer-electronics, and stationary-storage supply chain that relies on DRC cobalt, Australian/Chilean lithium, Indonesian/Philippine nickel, and Chinese/Mozambican graphite.

On 27 January 2018 the DRC National Assembly adopted Loi n° 18/001, comprehensively amending the foundational 2002 Mining Code (Loi n° 007/2002); President Joseph Kabila promulgated the law on 9 March 2018, published in the Journal Officiel special issue of 28 March 2018, with implementing Décret n° 18/024 (Règlement Minier) following on 8 June 2018. The Code introduces a 10% royalty on minerals designated "strategic" by the Council of Ministers — cobalt, coltan, lithium, and germanium confirmed — up from the 2% standard non-ferrous rate, and raises all standard mining royalties (non-ferrous 2→3.5%, precious metals 2.5→3.5%, precious stones 4→6%). The state's mandatory free-carry interest in new mining projects is doubled from 5% to 10% (Article 71), with a further 10% paid-carry option creating an effective 20% state-participation floor; contract-stability guarantees are simultaneously curtailed from 10 to 5 years (Article 276), explicitly invalidating pre-existing stabilisation clauses. As the foundational statute governing every DRC mining-rights grant, royalty-rate setting, and export-control delegation, the 2018 Code is the parent authority for ARECOMS (established 2019 under its strategic-minerals framework) and the legal basis for both the 2025 cobalt export-ban/quota regime and the 2025 artisanal-processing suspension — making it the mandatory upstream context for the entire filed DRC action cluster.

South Korea's Foreign Trade Act (대외무역법, Act No. 5211, enacted 31 December 1986 and repeatedly amended) is the foundational statutory framework of the Republic of Korea's foreign trade and export-control regime. It establishes the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) as the administering authority for foreign trade policy and empowers it to designate strategic items, issue and revoke export licences, operate catch-all controls over non-listed goods destined for WMD-development end-uses, and coordinate with the Nuclear Suppliers Group-administered National Security Authority for Strategic Commerce (NSASC) on Category-0 nuclear items and the Defence Acquisition Programme Administration (DAPA) on military goods. Every MOTIE strategic-items notification (the "Public Notice on Export and Import of Strategic Materials," currently encompassing Categories 1-9 dual-use items harmonised with Wassenaar, MTCR, AG, and NSG) and every MOTIE outbound-investment screening measure derives its legal authority from the Act.

Japan's Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (FEFTA, Act No. 228 of 1 December 1949; 外国為替及び外国貿易法) is the foundational umbrella statute governing the entire modern Japanese economic-statecraft toolkit. Originally a restrictive positive-list regime for foreign-exchange transactions, FEFTA was fundamentally liberalised by the 1980 revision (positive-list to negative-list shift) and again overhauled in 1998 to establish the modern regulatory architecture. Three principal enforcement arms operate under FEFTA: (i) security export controls administered by METI via the Export Trade Control Order and the Foreign Exchange Order (covering the Wassenaar Arrangement, Australia Group, MTCR, NSG, and CWC controlled-items lists plus Japan-specific catch-all controls); (ii) inward FDI screening administered jointly by the Ministry of Finance and sector ministries (prior notification and pre-notification regime, substantially expanded 2019–2020 with Core Business Sectors covering semiconductors, critical minerals, advanced materials, cloud computing, and aerospace added 2021); and (iii) autonomous economic sanctions (asset- freeze and payment-restriction designations against Russia, Iran, DPRK, Myanmar, Belarus, and others via Cabinet Orders made under FEFTA authority). Structurally peer-foundational to the US Trade Expansion Act 1962, US Trade Act 1974, UK SAMLA 2018, CN Export Control Law 2020, and CN Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law 2021 as the G7+CN foundational economic- statecraft statute cluster.