Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The European Commission on 4 March 2026 adopted COM(2026) 100 final, the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), the central horizontal industrial- policy instrument of the 2024-29 Commission term. The proposal targets raising EU manufacturing's share of GDP from 14.3% (2024) to at least 20% by 2035 via three pillars: (i) demand-side "Made in EU" and low-carbon public-procurement preferences for strategic sectors; (ii) FDI conditionality on investments above €100 million from countries with >40% global manufacturing share in batteries, EVs, solar PV or critical raw materials; (iii) accelerated permitting through a one-stop-shop and member-state-designated Industrial Acceleration Areas. The IAA is a proposal — co-decision adoption is expected mid-to-late 2027.

On 25 February 2026 Zimbabwe's Ministry of Mines and Mining Development, under Minister Polite Kambamura, announced an immediate and indefinite suspension of exports of all unprocessed minerals — including lithium-bearing spodumene concentrates, which had previously been exempt from the country's December 2022 ban on raw lithium ore (Statutory Instrument 213 of 2022). The directive was communicated by ministerial letter dated 17 February 2026 to the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe and copied to lithium producers; the suspension took effect on 25 February and explicitly covered consignments already in transit, with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) and the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) ordered to halt clearance at the border. The measure brings forward by roughly eleven months a lithium-concentrate export ban that had been telegraphed for January 2027, and broadens it to all raw mineral exports. The Minister cited "national interest", in-country beneficiation, transparency, and prevention of mineral export "leakages" (smuggling and under-invoicing) as the rationale. Bloomberg and Reuters reporting noted under-declaration of grade and value as a proximate trigger; the government later (April 2026) clarified that reinstated exports would require Quota Verification certificates, monthly reporting, on-site assay laboratories, and individual producer-level export ceilings — i.e. the suspension functions as a reset to a quota regime rather than a permanent embargo. Zimbabwe is the world's fifth-largest lithium producer (~6-7% of global supply on a contained-LCE basis) and exported 1.128 million tonnes of spodumene concentrate in 2025 (an 11% YoY increase). The producer base is overwhelmingly Chinese-owned: Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt (Arcadia / Prospect), Sinomine Resource Group (Bikita Minerals), Chengxin Lithium (Sabi Star), and Sichuan Yahua (Kamativi) together account for the majority of output. The ban therefore primarily disrupts Chinese midstream lithium converters in Sichuan and Jiangxi that depend on Zimbabwean spodumene feedstock, while incrementally tightening the global seaborne concentrate market. The action is structurally a continuation of the EM resource-nationalism / upstream-capture template pioneered by Indonesia's nickel-ore ban (2020) and most recently extended by the DRC's ARECOMS cobalt suspension and quota system (Feb-Oct 2025). It reinforces a pattern in which producing-country governments capture processing margin from consuming-country smelters, and it does so in a commodity (lithium) where ex-China refining capacity is still thin, magnifying near-term price impact even though the headline share of global supply removed is moderate.

On 3 December 2025 President Pedro Sánchez presented the Plan España Auto 2030, a five-year roadmap to mobilise EUR 30 bn (public + private) through 2030 to anchor electric-vehicle, battery and charging- infrastructure manufacturing in Spain. The plan is the first comprehensive Spanish auto-industrial policy of the post-COVID era and is structured as three immediate 2026 envelopes plus a multi-year PERTE-track: (i) Plan Auto+ — EUR 400 m in direct consumer-purchase subsidies effective 1 January 2026, replacing the autonomous-region- managed MOVES III with a centralised dealer-discount model run by MINCOTUR; (ii) MOVES Corredores — EUR 300 m for fast-charging-corridor deployment; and (iii) an additional EUR 580 m allocated to the PERTE VEC (Vehículo Eléctrico y Conectado) industrial-finance instrument in 2026, on top of the EUR ~3 bn already mobilised across previous PERTE VEC calls. The headline ambition is a sub-EUR 25,000 "affordable Spanish electric car" and 95% electrified light-vehicle production by 2035.

On 26 November 2025 the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved a Rs 7,280 crore (~USD 800 million) scheme to establish 6,000 MTPA of integrated sintered Rare Earth Permanent Magnet (REPM) manufacturing capacity in India. The Ministry of Heavy Industries will allocate capacity to five beneficiaries (up to 1,200 MTPA each) via global competitive bidding. The package combines a Rs 6,450 crore sales-linked incentive (PLI-style, paid on REPM sales over 5 years) with a Rs 750 crore capital subsidy for facility build-out. The scheme runs 7 years from award (2-year gestation + 5-year disbursement) and covers the full value chain from rare-earth oxides through metals, alloys, to finished sintered Nd-Fe-B and SmCo magnets.

Presidential Decree (Cumhurbaşkanı Kararı) No. 10436, published in the Resmi Gazete on 22 September 2025, amends Türkiye's Import Regime Decision and the Additional Customs Duty Decision to standardise additional customs duty on passenger-vehicle imports (HS 8703) from all countries other than the ~24 FTA/customs-union partners (EU member states, South Korea, UK, Qatar and others). Rates are set at 25% or a minimum of USD 6,000/unit for conventional and non-plug-in hybrid vehicles, 30% or a minimum of USD 7,000/unit for plug-in hybrids, and 30% or a minimum of USD 8,500/unit for battery-electric vehicles. The decree enters into force 60 days after publication (21 November 2025), with a 30-day transition window in which declarations registered under the prior (lower or absent) duty regime are grandfathered.

H.R.1, the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (Public Law 119-21), was signed into law by President Trump on 4 July 2025. The budget-reconciliation statute is the single largest reversal of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) industrial-policy framework: it accelerates the termination of IRA-era clean- energy tax credits and overlays a new "Foreign Entity of Concern" (FEOC) / "Prohibited Foreign Entity" (PFE) regime on the credits that survive. The §25E used-EV credit, the §30D new clean-vehicle credit, the §45W commercial clean-vehicle credit, and the §30C alternative-fuel-refueling-property credit terminate for vehicles or property placed in service after 30 September 2025. The §25C energy-efficient home improvement credit and the §25D residential clean-energy credit terminate for property placed in service after 31 December 2025. The §45Y clean-electricity production credit and §48E clean-electricity investment credit are eliminated for wind and solar facilities placed in service after 31 December 2027, with a safe harbour for projects whose construction begins on or before 4 July 2026. From 1 January 2026, projects beginning construction must satisfy "material assistance" thresholds limiting the share of components, subcomponents and critical minerals sourced from prohibited foreign entities (PRC, Russia, Iran, DPRK and entities controlled by them). For §45Y/§48E facilities the threshold starts at 40% non-PFE content in 2026 and steps up by 5 percentage points per year through 2030; for §45X advanced manufacturing PTC the analogous schedule begins at 50% in 2026 and rises through the decade. CBO scored the package's energy-credit terminations as generating roughly USD 280bn of revenue (gross), of which USD 77.4bn from §25D termination, USD 21.2bn from §25C, USD 77.8bn from §30D, USD 104.5bn from §45W, and USD 2bn from §30C, partially offsetting the bill's other tax cuts. The bill simultaneously re-authorises and broadens the §48D advanced manufacturing investment tax credit for semiconductor fabs, raising the credit rate from 25% to 35% for property placed in service after 31 December 2025 (preserving the CHIPS Act-aligned semiconductor leg of the IRA-era stack). The OBBBA therefore reshapes the IRA from a broad-based clean-energy + EV + manufacturing pull-through into a narrower, China-decoupling industrial policy concentrated on semiconductors and (residually) §45X battery / critical- mineral processing.

On 22 February 2025 the Authority for the Regulation and Control of Strategic Mineral Substance Markets (ARECOMS) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo issued Decision No. 001/ARECOMS/2025 imposing a four-month suspension of all cobalt exports — industrial and artisanal — in response to a multi-year cobalt price collapse driven by structural oversupply from CMOC's Tenke Fungurume and Kisanfu mines. The DRC accounts for roughly 70-76% of global mined cobalt, so the ban removed the dominant source of feedstock from the seaborne market. The ban was extended in late June 2025 by another three months, then on 10 October 2025 ARECOMS issued Decision No. 005/ARECOMS/2025 lifting the outright suspension and replacing it with a hard annual export quota: 18,125 t for the November-December 2025 transition window, then 96,600 t per year for 2026 and 2027. The annual ceiling consists of an 87,000 t "base quota" distributed pro-rata using each producer's January 2022 - December 2024 historical export volumes, plus a 9,600 t "strategic quota" allocated at ARECOMS' sole discretion to projects of national strategic importance. Allocations for Q4 2025 went disproportionately to the largest incumbents: CMOC received 6,500 t (Tenke Fungurume + Kisanfu), Glencore 3,925 t (Kamoto + Mutanda), and Eurasian Resources Group 2,125 t (Metalkol). CMOC's award is far below its ~115 kt 2024 production rate, structurally capping the world's top cobalt producer below 30% of its operating capacity. Exporters must obtain a Quota Verification Certificate (AVQ) from ARECOMS, submit to joint sampling, weighing, sealing and physical inspection by multiple government agencies, and prepay the 10% mining royalty within 48 hours of declaring origin and sale. ARECOMS reserves the right to revise quotas quarterly in case of "significant imbalance in the cobalt market," and explicitly retained discretion to re-set 2027 volumes. The measure is the EM resource-nationalism complement to Indonesia's nickel-ore ban template, applied to the single material where one country has the most concentrated global supply share.

On 1 February 2025, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the National Manufacturing Mission (NMM) in the Union Budget 2025-26 as a horizontal umbrella framework extending the 2014 "Make in India" architecture across small, medium and large industries. The mission rests on five focal areas: (i) ease and cost of doing business; (ii) a future-ready workforce for in-demand jobs; (iii) a vibrant and dynamic MSME sector; (iv) availability of technology; and (v) quality manufacturing. It will deliver policy support, execution roadmaps, and a governance/monitoring framework binding central ministries with states. NMM specifically commits to building a clean-tech manufacturing ecosystem with explicit coverage of solar PV cells, EV batteries, motors and controllers, electrolysers, wind turbines, very-high-voltage transmission equipment, and grid-scale batteries — i.e., the full hardware stack for India's Panchamrit (500 GW non-fossil by 2030), FAME-III EV ramp, and National Green Hydrogen Mission. NMM is the first horizontal Indian manufacturing-mission instrument in the IPTM register; existing IND entries are sector-specific PLIs (electronics, batteries, steel, semiconductors) and the National Critical Mineral Mission. Operational rollout flows through subsequent Cabinet-level scheme approvals (e.g. Biopharma SHAKTI ₹10,000 cr, Chemical Parks ₹600 cr in BE 2026-27); the mission itself does not carry a single headline outlay because it is the framework rather than an instrument.

On 29 January 2025 the Union Cabinet of India approved the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM), a seven-year programme running FY2024-25 through FY2030-31 with a headline financial envelope of ₹34,300 crore (≈USD 4.0 bn). The structure is split: ₹16,300 crore of direct government outlay administered by the Ministry of Mines, plus an expected ₹18,000 crore of investment by central public-sector undertakings (PSUs) and other stakeholders. The mission was first announced by the Finance Minister in the Union Budget 2024-25 (23 July 2024) and the Cabinet approval gave it formal sanction. The NCMM covers the full critical-minerals value chain: domestic exploration, mining, beneficiation, processing, recycling from end-of-life products, and acquisition of overseas mineral assets. The Geological Survey of India (GSI) is tasked with executing 1,200 exploration projects over the seven-year window (vs. 368 projects over the prior three years), expanded to offshore polymetallic-nodule provinces containing cobalt, REE, nickel and manganese. More than 100 critical-mineral blocks are slated for auction. Khanij Bidesh India Ltd (KABIL) — the JV of NALCO, HCL and MECL — is the designated vehicle for overseas acquisitions, with active Argentina lithium (CAMYEN SE, 15,703 ha) and Australia lithium/cobalt off-take pipelines. India's official critical-minerals list contains 30 commodities, of which 24 are inscribed in Part D of Schedule I of the MMDR Act 1957 (after the 2023 amendment), reserving central-government auction authority over them. The NCMM sets an explicit recycling target of 15-20% of domestic critical-mineral demand met from secondary sources (e-waste, battery scrap, industrial waste) by 2035. The mission also funds a National Centre of Excellence for Critical Minerals and offers customs-duty waivers on 25 critical minerals (announced in the same FY24-25 budget) to lower import costs while domestic capacity scales. NCMM is India's pull-side complement to the US IRA, EU Critical Raw Materials Act, Canada Critical Minerals Strategy and Australia Critical Minerals Strategy — a coordinated allied response to Chinese dominance over refined cobalt, REE, graphite and gallium/germanium. For India specifically it is framed as the supply-chain underpinning for FAME-III (EV adoption), the Semicon India programme (gallium/germanium/silicon), and the National Solar Mission (silicon, indium, tellurium, gallium for thin-film PV).

On 26 July 2024 President Erdoğan unveiled the HIT-30 (High-Technology Investment Programme), Türkiye's largest single industrial-finance instrument since the 2018 Investment Office reform, allocating USD 30 billion in state support over 2024-2030 to attract investment across 37 priority programmes spanning electric vehicles, batteries, semiconductors, solar/wind energy, green hydrogen, hyperscale data centres, biotechnological medicine, industrial robotics, and R&D. The Ministry of Industry and Technology is the operating agency, with the Industrialization Executive Committee chaired by the President providing high-level oversight; an Industrialisation Executive Committee under the President directs sectoral allocations. Headline tools include USD 4.5bn earmarked for an 80 GWh battery-manufacturing capacity (with USD 6,000/MWh grants through 2030), USD 2.5bn for 15 GW of domestic solar-cell capacity, USD 1.7bn for wind-component manufacturing, USD 1bn for top-1000 corporate R&D centre support (covering 50% of personnel costs for 5 years), corporate tax reductions, social-security-contribution coverage, energy-cost subsidies covering 50% of bills for energy-intensive projects, customs/VAT exemptions, and free or discounted land allocation in organised industrial zones. Programme targets at least USD 20bn in private-sector co-investment.

Presidential Decree (Cumhurbaşkanı Kararı) No. 8639, dated 7 June 2024 and published in the Resmi Gazete on 8 June 2024, amends Türkiye's Decision on the Application of Additional Customs Duty on Imports to impose a 40% additional ad valorem duty (or USD 7,000 per unit, whichever is higher) on China-origin passenger vehicles classified under HS heading 8703 — covering internal-combustion, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery-electric models. The measure entered into force 30 days after publication, on 7 July 2024, with an exemption for imports made under an Investment Incentive Certificate (Yatırım Teşvik Belgesi) — explicitly designed to channel Chinese OEMs into domestic Turkish assembly.

The Diet enacted on 31 May 2024 (promulgated 7 June 2024 as Law No. 45 of 2024) the "Act on Partially Amending the Act on Strengthening Industrial Competitiveness and Other Acts to Create New Business and Encourage Investment in Industries". The provisions establishing Japan's first US IRA-style production-and-sales-linked tax credit took effect 2 September 2024 per METI's press release of the same date. Eligible enterprises with a METI-certified business plan can claim tax deductions tied to domestic production-and-sales volume of five designated strategic products: electric vehicles, green steel, green chemicals, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), and semiconductors. The credit is available for ten years from certification (certifications must be issued by 31 March 2027), with an annual cap of 40% of corporate tax liability (20% for semiconductors) and a 4-year carry-forward. Eligibility is conditional on meeting wage-growth or capital-investment thresholds in each fiscal year.

On 19 December 2023, the Thai Cabinet endorsed the second phase of the national electric-vehicle support programme ("EV 3.5") covering 2024-2027, following its approval by the National Electric Vehicle Policy Committee. The Excise Department published the implementing Notification on 28 December 2023; the regime entered into force on 1 January 2024. EV 3.5 combines (i) per-vehicle purchase subsidies of THB 50,000-100,000 for battery-electric passenger cars and pick-ups, (ii) a reduction in excise duty on BEV passenger cars priced ≤ THB 7 million from 8% to 2%, and (iii) up to 40% import-duty relief on Completely Built-Up (CBU) BEV passenger cars priced ≤ THB 2 million during 2024-2025. Participating OEMs must offset CBU imports with domestic Thai production at a 1:2 ratio by end-2026 and 1:3 by end-2027, or face clawback of the granted incentives. The package is the operational successor to EV 3.0 (2022-2023) and was designed to lock in the wave of Chinese-OEM gigafactory and assembly investment that EV 3.0 attracted (BYD Rayong, MG/SAIC, GAC AION, Great Wall Motor, NETA, Changan, Chery). By the August 2025 EV-Board meeting Thailand had logged > THB 137 billion in approved EV-supply-chain investment under the combined EV 3.0 + EV 3.5 envelope. EV 3.5 is the central instrument in Thailand's "EV Hub of ASEAN" industrial strategy and the principal regional competitor to Indonesia's nickel-anchored EV-cluster bid and Vietnam's Decree 182 investment-support fund.

China's Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs jointly announced (Announcement No. 33 of 2023) export-licensing controls on graphite products, effective 1 December 2023. The regime covers natural flake graphite and products thereof (including spherical graphite and graphite powder used in lithium-ion battery anodes) as well as high-purity, high-hardness, and high-strength synthetic graphite materials. Exporters must obtain dual-use-item licences from MOFCOM citing end-user and end-use; licences are granted at MOFCOM's discretion. The announcement came three days after the 17 October 2023 BIS advanced-chip-controls expansion, continuing the proportional-response pattern established with Ga/Ge in July.

France's first dedicated critical-minerals industrial-finance instrument: a €500m state contribution to a critical metals and rare materials investment fund, jointly announced by the Ministry of the Economy and the Ministry of Ecological Transition on 11 May 2023, targeting €2bn total fundraising including private capital. Managed by InfraVia Capital Partners with Caisse des Dépôts as state operator, the fund invests as minority partner across extraction, processing and recycling — in France, Europe and globally — prioritising off-take agreements for French and European industry. The fund operationalises the Stratégie Nationale Métaux Critiques framework (Varin Report delivered 10 January 2022) alongside the OFREMI critical-minerals observatory at BRGM and the inter-ministerial delegate for strategic-metals supply security.

The Legislative Yuan of Taiwan (ROC) passed amendments to Articles 10-2 and 72 of the Statute for Industrial Innovation ("產業創新條例") on third reading on 7 January 2023. The amendment, internationally termed the "Taiwan Chips Act," is implemented from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2029. Article 10-2 grants Taiwan-registered companies that occupy key positions in international supply chains a 25% investment tax credit on qualifying forward-looking innovative R&D expenditure (capped at 30% of the year's profit-seeking enterprise income tax payable), plus a 5% credit on the purchase of brand-new machinery or equipment used in own-account advanced manufacturing processes (also capped at 30%). Eligibility thresholds set by the Ministry of Finance require annual R&D spend of at least NT$6bn, R&D intensity (R&D / net operating revenue) of at least 6%, and an effective tax rate of at least 15% (12% for FY2023 only); the 5% equipment credit additionally requires equipment expenditure of at least NT$10bn. The measure is Taiwan's principal supply- side response to the US CHIPS Act, the EU Chips Act, the K-Chips Act, and Japan's METI subsidy programme, and is designed to retain TSMC, MediaTek, and other leading-edge silicon investment onshore as overseas subsidies pull capacity to Arizona, Kumamoto, Dresden, and elsewhere.

Statutory Instrument 213 of 2022, gazetted 16 December 2022 by Zimbabwe's Ministry of Mines and Mining Development, banned the export of lithium-bearing ores and unbeneficiated lithium except with the written permission of the Minister. The stated rationale was to force in-country beneficiation and curb revenue lost to illegal mining and smuggling of raw ore. Refined/beneficiated lithium concentrate exports were not covered and continued under the pre-existing regime. This is the foundational instrument that Zimbabwe's later lithium-export architecture (SI 57 of 2023, the February 2026 all-raw-mineral suspension) built on top of.

France 2030 is a €54 billion public investment plan unveiled by President Emmanuel Macron on 12 October 2021 to fund breakthrough innovation and reindustrialisation across ten strategic priorities — small modular nuclear reactors, green hydrogen, low-carbon transport (incl. two million EVs/year), food/agritech, twenty drug therapies for cancer and chronic disease, cultural industries, space, deep-sea exploration, semiconductors and electronic components, and robotics/digital (AI/cloud). Two cross-cutting rules require 50% of investment to flow to decarbonisation and 50% to emerging innovative players. Operationalised from the 2022 budget law, the plan is coordinated by the Secrétariat général pour l'investissement (SGPI) under the Prime Minister and delivered by ANR, ADEME, Bpifrance and Caisse des Dépôts / Banque des Territoires.

The Union Cabinet on 12 May 2021 approved the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme "National Programme on Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) Battery Storage" with a Rs 18,100 crore (~USD 2.4 bn) outlay over five years to build 50 GWh of ACC and 5 GWh of "Niche" ACC manufacturing capacity in India. Selected bidders receive PLI cash incentives over five years on sale of cells made in India, gated on minimum 25% domestic value addition rising to 60% by year five and chemistry-agnostic eligibility (Li-ion, Na-ion, solid-state, flow, lead-acid). The MHI awarded the first 50 GWh tranche on 24 March 2022 (Hyundai Global Motors 20 GWh, Ola Electric 20 GWh, Reliance New Energy Solar 5 GWh, Rajesh Exports 5 GWh) under a QCBS global tender; the Hyundai Global Motors award was withdrawn after Hyundai Motor Company disowned the bidder in August 2022, triggering a re-tender of the orphaned capacity that completed in 2025.

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.