Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 11–12 December 2025, China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) convened a special meeting with major phosphate fertiliser producers, traders, and industry associations, instructing them to suspend phosphate fertiliser exports in principle until August 2026 to concentrate supply on the domestic market and stabilise prices ahead of the 2026 spring planting season. The measure covers diammonium phosphate (DAP), monoammonium phosphate (MAP), triple superphosphate (TSP), and compound NPK fertilisers. China supplied roughly 40% of global phosphate fertiliser exports before the ban; Chinese export volumes in Q1 2025 fell to ~111,000 t versus a three-year average of 785,000 t for the same period.

The Romanian Government adopted HG 855/2025 on 9 October 2025, approving the National Hydrogen Strategy 2025-2030 with a 2050 perspective and its binding Implementation Action Plan. The strategy sets a production target of 152.9 kt/year of renewable hydrogen by 2030 (interim: 48.7 kt/yr by 2027) and 2,130 MW of electrolyser capacity, with EUR 115 million allocated for a first ~60 MW tranche via PNRR/RRF, Modernisation Fund, and Just Transition Fund pathways. It designates five "hydrogen valleys" co-locating producers with hard-to-abate industrial off-takers (steel, chemicals, fertilisers, heavy transport) and anchors Romania's transposition of EU RED III and alignment with the EU Hydrogen Bank auction architecture.

Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) and the Serviço Geológico do Brasil (SGB) released the final report of the Plano Decenal de Pesquisa de Recursos Minerais (PlanGEO 2026-2035) on 24 September 2025. The plan defines 145 priority research areas selected through public consultation for ten years of focused geological mapping and mineral-resources research, prioritising ten commodities — rare earths, lithium, copper, nickel, manganese, graphite, tin, gold, phosphate, and potassium — covering the battery / magnets demand spectrum plus food-security inputs. The plan is enabled by Portaria Normativa nº 72/GM/MME of 13 March 2024 and operates on a 2026-2035 horizon, with a SGB/MME budget-and-staffing scenario proposing up to a 50% increase in execution team and a 100% expansion in annual financial investment.

Regulation (EU) 2025/1227, published 20 June 2025, imposes an additional 50% ad valorem customs duty on top of the standard Common Customs Tariff rate on roughly 101 tariff lines of agricultural products originating in or exported from Russia or Belarus, closing the remaining gap in the agri-tariff regime first opened in 2024. Fertilisers from the two countries face a separate, gradually escalating specific duty — starting around EUR 40-45 per tonne on top of the existing 6.5% ad valorem rate for the 2025-26 period, rising in annual steps to EUR 430 per tonne by 2028. The measure enters into force 1 July 2025 and is explicitly framed by the Council and Parliament as a further squeeze on Russian export revenue used to fund the war against Ukraine, extending the July 2024 agri-tariff regulation (EU) 2024/1392 to cover the products it left out.

As part of the FY2025-2026 national budget, Bangladesh's National Board of Revenue implemented a package of customs duty amendments under the Finance Act 2025, effective 1 July 2025. The changes are mixed-direction: duties were reduced on some product lines and increased on others, spanning forage/fibre products, chemicals and fertilisers, and basic organic chemicals among other categories. This is a routine annual fiscal-cycle tariff schedule revision rather than a targeted trade-restrictive measure against any single trading partner.

Peraturan Menteri Perdagangan Nomor 8 Tahun 2025 (Permendag 8/2025), signed 6 March 2025 and effective 10 March 2025, is the Third Amendment to Indonesia's Export-Prohibited Goods List (Permendag 22/2023), revising prohibited-export categories across seven commodity groups: forestry (wood, bamboo), agriculture (natural rubber, porang, rice, kratom), subsidised fertilisers (nitrogen-containing mineral/chemical fertilisers), mining (tin and minerals subject to general downstream-processing rules), cultural heritage, metal waste/scrap (iron and steel), and marine sedimentation products (sea sand, marine sludge). The regulation introduces a structured hilirisasi force-majeure relaxation pathway allowing companies that have completed construction of domestic mineral refining/smelting facilities — but cannot yet operate due to force majeure — to temporarily export copper concentrate with a minimum 15% Cu content, subject to Ministry of Trade approval. It is the direct predecessor to the Fourth Amendment (Permendag 6/2026, 26 March 2026).