Europe’s critical raw materials strategy

[FRANKFURT] When US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a one-year truce in their trade war, temporarily easing China’s strict export controls on rare earths and other critical minerals, a quiet sigh of relief swept through corporate headquarters from Paris to Warsaw.

But the underlying structural reality has not changed: Because China controls global supplies – owing to its unrivalled extraction and processing capacity – Europe remains dangerously dependent.

Europe imports nearly all the rare earth magnets it uses in manufacturing electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence systems, as well as the lithium, cobalt and graphite that underpin battery production. With most of the refining of these materials occurring outside European borders, a temporary suspension of Chinese export restrictions merely buys time.