Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 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 5 March 2025 the European Commission adopted Communication COM(2025) 95 final, the "Industrial Action Plan for the European Automotive Sector", a horizontal sectoral industrial-policy framework structured around five pillars: innovation and digitalisation, clean mobility, competitiveness and supply-chain resilience, skills and the social dimension, and a global level playing field. Headline financial commitments include EUR 1bn under Horizon Europe for SDV/AI in mobility (2025-2027), EUR 1.8bn Innovation Fund earmark for EU battery cell manufacturing, EUR 350m for next-generation battery R&D (2025-2027), and EUR 570m under the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Facility (2025-2026) for heavy-duty charging corridors. The plan also delivers a targeted CO2-standards flexibility allowing 2025-2027 combined-year compliance for cars and vans, and the launch of the European Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance.

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.

Statutory Instrument 5 of 2023, gazetted by Zimbabwe's Ministry of Mines and Mining Development, banned the export of unbeneficiated ("raw" / unprocessed) base mineral ores from Zimbabwe, widening the December 2022 lithium-only export ban (SI 213 of 2022) into a horizontal ban covering the entire base-minerals category — including lithium, chrome, copper, nickel and coal — while excluding precious metals, precious stones, oil and natural gas. Exporters need a written ministerial permit, granted only where compelling reasons show the ore cannot be beneficiated inside Zimbabwe, or for small assay samples. Non-compliance carries a level-9 fine or twice the mineral's value (whichever is greater), up to two years' imprisonment, or both. SI 5 was itself amended three months later by SI 57 of 2023, which layered lithium-specific citizenship and beneficiation-plant conditions onto this base order.

The Inflation Reduction Act (Public Law 117-169), signed by President Biden on 16 August 2022, contains the largest single package of clean-energy and clean-manufacturing subsidies in US history — Congressional Budget Office scored the energy and climate provisions at $369B over 10 years, with subsequent Treasury / academic estimates reaching $800B-$1.2T as uptake exceeded baseline. Core mechanisms include the Section 30D Clean Vehicle credit ($7,500 per qualifying EV), the Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit (per-unit credits for domestically-produced battery cells, modules, electrodes, and critical-mineral processing), the Section 48E Clean Electricity Investment Credit, and the Section 45V Clean Hydrogen Production Credit. Critically, the law contains Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) provisions barring credit eligibility for vehicles or components linked to entities controlled by China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.

Indonesia accelerated the implementation of its raw nickel ore export ban, originally scheduled for 2022, to take effect on 1 January 2020. Announced 30 August 2019 by Minister Ignasius Jonan via ESDM Regulation No. 11/2019, the ban prohibits the export of nickel ore with grades below 1.7% Ni (effectively all Indonesian saprolite and limonite ore that previously flowed to Chinese stainless-steel and ferronickel mills) and forces ore to be processed domestically into intermediate products (nickel pig iron, ferronickel, mixed hydroxide precipitate, nickel sulfate). The policy is part of the long-running "hilirisasi" (downstream-isation) strategy and was the trigger for the >$30B wave of Chinese-led nickel- processing investment in Sulawesi (Morowali, Weda Bay) that has since made Indonesia the dominant global nickel producer.

The Defense Production Act of 1950 (Pub. L. 81-774, 64 Stat. 798, codified at 50 U.S.C. §§4501–4568) is the foundational US statute governing wartime and emergency industrial mobilization. Signed by President Truman on 8 September 1950 during the Korean War, the Act empowers the President to compel industrial priority-rated ordering (Title I / DPAS), authorize direct investment in domestic production capacity for critical industries (Title III), and conduct investment security review (Title VII, precursor to CFIUS). Reauthorized approximately 50 times, most recently extended through September 2025 by Pub. L. 115-263 (2018) and further extended under NDAA FY2026; it has been invoked by every Administration since 1950 and has accelerated dramatically since 2020 to target critical-minerals processing, semiconductor manufacturing, battery supply chains, biopharmaceuticals, and energy infrastructure.