Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2673 actions· ✨ 90 recent

The Government of Manitoba announced CAD 51 million in new provincial funding for Arctic Gateway Group — the First Nations- and Bayline community-owned operator of the Hudson Bay Railway and Port of Churchill — to fund capital improvements bringing the rail line up to Class I freight-load standard and to build a new critical-minerals storage and loading facility at the port. The announcement was made jointly with the federal government as part of the "Port of Churchill Plus" initiative, bringing cumulative provincial investment in the project to CAD 87.5 million and combined federal-provincial commitment to CAD 262.5 million over five years (including CAD 175 million in federal funding announced March 2025). The project is explicitly positioned as building sovereign Arctic export capacity for critical minerals and potash, reducing reliance on southern rail/port corridors and US-routed trade.

On 31 October 2025, Canada's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson announced — on the sidelines of the G7 Energy & Environment Ministers' Meeting in Toronto — that the federal government will leverage the Defence Production Act (DPA) to designate critical minerals as defence supplies and build a strategic stockpile, with the Crown acting as buyer of last resort and setting confidential minimum prices to insulate Canadian producers from Chinese price suppression. The announcement was paired with an initial round of 26 investments, partnerships and measures totalling C$6.4 billion in unlocked critical-mineral capital (~C$120m direct federal spend plus up to ~C$1.2 bn in offtake agreements, expressions of interest and export guarantees) and aligned with nine allied countries. It is the first time Canada has invoked DPA stockpiling and priority-procurement powers for non-traditional defence inputs (lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, rare earths, graphite, uranium) and repositions Canada as an allied-aligned strategic supplier parallel to US DPA Title III action under EO 14241.

On 18 October 2025 the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania adopted a package of amendments to the Defence and Security Industry Law (XIV-2647, originally adopted May 2024), the Law on Public Procurement in Security and Defence, the Law on Control of Weapons and Ammunition, and cross-cutting territorial-planning and construction laws. The central measure, proposed by the Ministry of Economy and Innovation (EIMIN), replaces the full construction-permit requirement for defence-production facilities with a notification-of-commencement procedure, compressing typical procurement-to-groundbreaking timelines from approximately 2–2.5 years to a few months. Complementary provisions reserve public-land investment plots for defence projects, enable defence-industry development outside designated military territories, and enshrine industrial cooperation as a procurement principle requiring foreign OEMs fulfilling Lithuanian defence contracts to source a defined share of obligations from Lithuanian-registered entities. The package directly enables inbound defence-industrial FDI from Rheinmetall (155 mm artillery-shell JV) and the Northrop Grumman / Nammo medium-calibre ammunition programme at the state-owned Giraitė Armament Factory.

Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, announced on 2025-09-17 a US$500 million strategic private placement in TSX/NYSE-listed Ivanhoe Mines, subscribing for 57,516,666 common shares at C$12.00/share; the placement closed 2025-09-29, giving QIA approximately 4% of Ivanhoe's issued and outstanding shares. On 2025-11-21 the two parties announced a follow-on memorandum of understanding to collaborate on exploration, development and preferential financing of critical-minerals projects across Africa, including support for Ivanhoe's Western Forelands exploration programme in the DRC. Ivanhoe's principal assets are the Kamoa-Kakula copper complex (DRC) and the Platreef platinum-palladium-nickel project (South Africa).

India's Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), a central public-sector power utility under the Ministry of Power, issued Tender Document No. DVC/Tender/Head Quarter/SPE/CMM/Works and Service/00077/Capital on 20 August 2025 for the survey, design, supply, and replacement of existing conductors with high-temperature low-sag (HTLS) conductors on its 132kV D/C transmission lines. The tender restricts eligibility to 'Class-I local suppliers' under India's Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017, giving domestic manufacturers a bid-evaluation advantage in the electrical-equipment/civil-engineering procurement category. Global Trade Alert records the intervention as announced/implemented 20 August 2025; the underlying contract value and full tender scope sit behind GTA's account-gated view and were not independently confirmed via trade press.

Poland's Sejm adopted on 25 July 2025 — and the President signed on 5 August 2025 (Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1080, in force 7 September 2025) — a Special Act on Strategic Investments in the Field of National Defence and Public Security that creates an accelerated authorisation track for defence and public- security infrastructure projects: a single combined administrative decision issued within 90 days of application, simplified notification regime inside closed military zones, replacement of full environmental and water-law assessments with targeted mitigation, and an exemption from the Public Procurement Law for Ministry-of-National-Defence-cleared unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned weapon platforms and counter-drone systems. The statute is the procedural backbone for Poland's PLN 187bn 2025 defence budget (≈4.7% of GDP, the highest share in NATO) and dovetails with Poland's €43.7bn EU SAFE defence-loan allocation signed in May 2026.

India and the UK signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) on 24 July 2025 in Chequers, with Prime Ministers Modi and Starmer presiding. The agreement grants duty-free access on 99% of Indian exports to the UK (textiles, apparel, footwear, auto components, engineering goods and chemicals), and reduces Indian tariffs on UK goods covering ~90% of tariff lines: Scotch whisky duties drop from 150% to 75% on day one and taper to 40% over ten years; high-end UK car tariffs fall from ~110% to 10% under a quota; UK MFN access on a wide industrial-goods envelope. A Double Contribution Convention exempts Indian secondees from UK National Insurance for three years. Bilateral trade currently ~£42 bn / USD 56 bn per year, with the parties targeting doubling by 2030. UK ratification under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRaG) ran from January 2026, with the 21-sitting-day scrutiny period concluding 5 March 2026. Entry into force was delayed from the originally targeted May 2026 date and is now confirmed for July 15, 2026 following a UK Prime Minister announcement at the G7 Évian summit sidelines on June 17, 2026. The confirmed EIF covers 64% of UK exports (£1.9bn) duty-free immediately, with an additional £25.5bn/year in projected additional bilateral trade.

Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 28 Tahun 2025 tentang Penyelenggaraan Perizinan Berusaha Berbasis Risiko ("PP 28/2025") is the cross-sector business-licensing parent statute signed by President Prabowo Subianto on 5 June 2025, replacing PP 5/2021. It expands the Online Single Submission (OSS) risk-based licensing system to six new sectors (creative economy, geospatial information, cooperatives, investment, electronic system & transaction operators, environment), integrates environmental permitting (AMDAL/UKL-UPL) into OSS, and strengthens layered administrative sanctions. Appendix 1F operationalises a de-facto moratorium: the OSS platform now blocks new business-permit applications for intermediate-nickel production lines — nickel matte, mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP), nickel pig iron (NPI), and ferronickel — pushing investment toward higher-value Class-1 / battery-grade nickel sulphate and precursor chemistry. After a four-month grace period, OSS enforcement notifications began October–November 2025, prompting FINI (Indonesian Nickel Smelting Association) exemption petitions on behalf of partially-built projects.

On 27 May 2025 the Council of the EU adopted Council Regulation (EU) 2025/1106 establishing the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) through the Reinforcement of the European Defence Industry Instrument. Published in the Official Journal of the EU and entering into force on 29 May 2025, SAFE is the EU's flagship financial pillar of the ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 plan: it provides up to EUR 150bn in competitively priced long-maturity loans — raised by the Commission on capital markets via NGEU-style EU borrowing — to Member States for joint procurement of defence capabilities. Funded equipment must meet a 65% EU/EEA/Ukraine local-content rule, and procurement must involve at least one SAFE-beneficiary Member State plus another Member State (Ukraine, EEA-EFTA members and SAFE-associated countries also eligible).

Thailand's Board of Investment issued Announcement No. Por. 8/2568, dated 20 May 2025, setting new criteria for approving foreign-worker positions, placing foreign staff into approved positions, and extending position/ personnel terms under Sections 25-26 of the Investment Promotion Act. The announcement requires BOI-promoted manufacturing projects with more than 100 employees to keep Thai nationals at 70% or more of the workforce (verified via Social Security filings), and sets minimum monthly salary floors for foreign hires (THB 150,000 for executives, THB 75,000 for managers/specialists, reduced to THB 50,000 with a relevant degree). It replaces the prior Por. 3/2567 announcement (9 August 2024).

Zambia's Geological and Minerals Development Act, 2025 (Act No. 2 of 2025) was assented to on 8 April 2025, gazetted 15 April 2025, and entered into force 13 June 2025 via a dedicated Commencement Order. The Act reorganises the Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development's executive capacity by establishing three statutory directorates — Geological Survey; Artisanal, Small-Scale Mining and Value Addition; and Large-Scale Mining and Mineral Investment Promotion — and creates a dedicated Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Fund providing grants and capacity-building loans to the informal sector. It functions as a sibling statute to the Minerals Regulation Commission Act, 2024 (No. 14/2024) and is the enabling parent Act for the Local Content Regulations (SI No. 68/2025), completing Zambia's post-2024 three-Act resource-nationalism legislative stack.

On 26 March 2025 President Mamadi Doumbouya presided over the groundbreaking ceremony for Guinea's first alumina refinery since independence, developed by Chinese state enterprise SPIC International Investment and Development (Guinea) Co. Ltd. in Boffa Prefecture (Koundindhé district). The plant — USD 1.03 billion investment — will process 15 Mt/yr of bauxite into 1.2 Mt/yr of alumina, paired with a 250 MW integrated power plant (100 MW to Guinea's national grid); commercial production is targeted for late 2028. The project operationalises Guinea's Simandou 2040 in-country processing mandate, under which all bauxite concession holders must commit to building alumina refineries or face licence revocation, cementing Chinese-capital control of Guinea's bauxite-to-aluminium value chain.

On 19 March 2025 the European Commission adopted the European Steel and Metals Action Plan (COM(2025) 122 final, IP/25/805) — the first standalone sector-specific industrial-policy framework for the EU steel and base-metals industries (~2.6m direct + indirect jobs). The Plan bundles six work strands — affordable energy, trade defence and circularity (including announced replacement of the post-30 Jun 2026 steel safeguard with a "highly effective" successor measure and a melt-and-pour origin requirement), lead-market measures (Steel and Metals Industrial Decarbonisation Bank with a EUR 100bn target and a EUR 1bn pilot auction in 2025, "Made in EU" criteria in public and defence procurement), capacity and investment funding, scrap and critical-input circularity (including CBAM extension to downstream steel and aluminium products by end-2025), and skills / just transition.

On 26 February 2025 the European Commission adopted the "Clean Industrial Deal" (CID), Communication COM(2025) 85 final, framed as a joint roadmap for competitiveness and decarbonisation. The CID bundles state-aid simplification, energy-cost relief, lead-market creation, capital mobilisation and circular-economy mandates into a single industrial strategy targeting both energy-intensive industries (steel, metals, chemicals, cement) and clean-tech manufacturing (batteries, solar, wind, heat pumps, electrolyzers). The Commission claims the package will mobilise more than €100 billion of public-and-private financing for EU-made clean manufacturing through a strengthened Innovation Fund, amendments to the InvestEU Regulation (up to €50bn additional guarantee capacity) and a proposed Industrial Decarbonisation Bank. CID directly precedes the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF, adopted 25 June 2025) and seeds legislative work on an Industrial Accelerator Act, a Circular Economy Act, and a strengthened CBAM. Severity 4 on mixed basis: explicit €100bn+ quant headline plus qualitative breadth across the EU industrial perimeter, formally re-anchoring the von der Leyen II mandate around competitiveness rather than pure decarbonisation.