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China’s antimony export controls rattle the tungsten industry

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Pictured are are crystals of the antimony ore stibnite (antimony sulphide). 

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BEIJING — China’s latest export controls has rattled insiders of the critical minerals industry, and some are concerned that Beijing will leverage its global supply chain dominance in unprecedented ways.

China’s Ministry of Commerce announced Thursday that export controls on antimony would take effect Sept. 15. Antimony is used in bullets, nuclear weapons production and lead-acid batteries. It can also strengthen other metals.

“Three months ago, there’s no way [any] one would have thought they would have done this. It’s quite confrontational in that regard,” Lewis Black, CEO of Canada-based Almonty Industries, said in a phone interview. The company has said it’s spending at least $125 million to reopen a tungsten mine in South Korea later this year.

Tungsten is nearly as hard as a diamond, and used in weapons, semiconductors and industrial cutting machines. Both tungsten and antimony are on the U.S. critical minerals list, and less than 10 elements away from each other on the periodic table.

“My sector is now thinking this is getting much closer to home than graphite,” Black said, referring to China’s previous export controls. Last year, Beijing, the world’s largest graphite producer, said it would enforce export permits for the crucial battery material amid scrutiny from foreign countries worried about its dominance.

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“I can’t explain this move and I think that’s what rattled a lot of people in this sector, my customers, and they don’t have a plan B, which China is very aware of. There hasn’t been one for 30 years,” he said.

“There’s always been an equilibrium … they were never weaponized because they could create this snowball of escalation,” he said.

China accounted for 48% of global antimony mine production in 2023, while the U.S. did not mine any marketable antimony, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s latest annual report. The U.S. has not commercially mined tungsten since 2015, and China dominates global tungsten supply, the report said.

“I think it’s the start of some export restrictions in a number of rare earths, minerals,” Tony Adock, executive chair of Tungsten Metals Group, said in a phone interview. He said he found it hard to believe that China would just restrict antimony.

“The way that the [Chinese Commerce Ministry] statement was written, we’ve extrapolated that to tungsten and other rare earths. It may not happen,” Adock said, noting that “tungsten is probably the highest economic importance.”

China’s Ministry of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tungsten’s military importance

The U.S. has sought to restrict China’s access to high-end semiconductors, following which Beijing announced export controls on germanium and gallium, two metals used in chipmaking.

While tungsten is also used to make semiconductors, the metal, like antimony, is used in defense production.

“China has a declining tungsten production, but tungsten is absolutely vital, far more than antimony, in military applications,” said Christopher Ecclestone, principal and mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company.

He expects China will put export controls on tungsten by the end of the year, if not in the next month or two.

“During a situation where there’s a bit of a race to secure metals in case there is some sort of flare up in tensions, frankly we talk about South China Sea or Taiwan, you want to have as much tungsten as you can,” Ecclestone said. “But you also want people on the other side to have as least tungsten as you can engineer.”

The U.S. is already keen to reduce its reliance on China for tungsten.

Starting in 2026, the U.S. REEShore Act prohibits the use of Chinese tungsten in military equipment. That refers to the Restoring Essential Energy and Security Holdings Onshore for Rare Earths Act of 2022.

The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party in June announced a new working group on the U.S. critical minerals policy.

Ecclestone said that last week, the niche market of antimony trading noticed that the U.S. price for buying the metal from Rotterdam was exponentially higher than the price for delivery out of Shanghai. That’s after antimony prices kept rising even after pandemic-related shipping disruptions ended, he said.

“There’s a suspicion that the Pentagon has been re-stuffing its reserves of certain metals, and most notably antimony because it needs antimony for munitions,” said Ecclestone, who founded the mining strategy firm in 2003.

The U.S. Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China is acting more in retaliation “against what it views as an intrusion into its national interests,” Markus Herrmann Chen, co-founder and managing director of China Macro Group, said in an email.

He pointed out that China’s Third Plenum meeting of policymakers in July “put forward a completely new policy goal of better coordinating the entire minerals value chain, likely reflecting the further heightened supply importance of ‘strategic mineral resources’ for both business and geoeconomic interests.”

Emerging alternatives

As China seeks to ensure its national security, companies in the U.S. and elsewhere are looking to tap a nascent opportunity.

“Energy Fuels has been the largest supplier of uranium oxide to the U.S. for several years supporting domestic nuclear energy production,” Mark Chalmers, president and CEO of Colorado-based Energy Fuels, said in a statement. He said the company is creating a U.S. rare earths product line.

“We recognized that our 40-year expertise working in naturally radioactive materials give us a competitive advantage to duplicate China’s success separating multiple [rare earth elements] from low-cost and plentiful monazite,” Chalmers said, referring to a mineral from which the desired metals can be extracted.

It remains unclear whether China will follow through with a blanket implementation of the latest export controls.

“They don’t want to acknowledge that this could escalate,” Black said. “But I don’t think China wants this to escalate either. The last thing you want to create is another boogey man [at] the beginning of a U.S. election. Let’s see in a week whether this is really a policy or not.”

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S&P 500 Outperforms Amid Strong Corporate Earnings as Treasury Yields Cap Equity Multiples

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September 5, 2026

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S&P 500 Outperforms Amid Strong Corporate Earnings as Treasury Yields Cap Equity Multiples

Financial markets opened September on a firm footing following a solid performance in August, where the S&P 500 gained 2.6% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 3.9%. Corporate earnings across major index constituents showed impressive momentum, with S&P 500 year-over-year earnings growth topping historic averages. However, despite robust corporate balance sheets, equity market valuations face headwinds as benchmark 10-year Treasury yields remain elevated near 4.75%.

The current financial environment is characterized by a strong divergence between corporate earnings resilience and bond market pressure. Enterprise technology leaders, financial institutions, and consumer sectors reported strong profit margins, benefiting from operational efficiency gains and disciplined cost management. Yet, institutional investors remain cautious about expanding price-to-earnings multiples when risk-free benchmark bond yields offer yields near 4.7%.

Fixed income markets continue to reflect restrictive monetary conditions. The broader aggregate bond market recorded flat total returns year-to-date, while fixed income yields—such as 30-day SEC yields on core bond funds—stayed above 4.6%. This yield profile provides institutional and retail investors with meaningful cash flow returns without taking on equity market downside risk, creating a competitive alternative for institutional capital allocation.

Portfolio managers and investment strategists recommend a disciplined, quality-oriented approach entering the final quarter of 2026. Rather than chasing speculative momentum, capital flows are favoring companies with strong cash flow generation, low debt-to-equity ratios, and robust pricing power capable of withstanding elevated input costs.

Why This Information Matters
The tension between strong corporate earnings and elevated bond yields directly impacts portfolio allocations and retirement wealth. Individual investors and wealth managers must balance equity market participation with fixed-income yield opportunities, ensuring portfolios are diversified against sudden valuation adjustments caused by fluctuating benchmark interest rates.

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Treasury Bond Volatility Forces Bessent to Double Debt Buyback Size as Yields Swing

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2 weeks ago

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August 26, 2026

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Bessent

A turbulent week in the U.S. Treasury market prompted the Treasury Department to sharply increase the size of its long-term debt buyback program, as bond prices fell even while equity markets pushed toward record highs. The divergence has drawn attention from fixed-income strategists who see it as a signal of underlying investor unease about federal borrowing levels.

What Happened This Week

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Thursday, August 20, 2026, that the Treasury had doubled the size of its long-term debt buyback operations, moving from roughly $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. Bessent indicated the figure could climb further, saying “we’re going to increase the size of the buyback,” and noted the accelerated pace could exceed the announced $4 billion threshold per issue.

Buybacks allow the Treasury to repurchase outstanding government bonds directly from the market, which can help support prices and dampen yield volatility during periods of stress. The expanded program came as stocks staged a late-week recovery: the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 both advanced on Friday, August 21, even as Treasuries logged mild losses, according to Bloomberg market data.

Why Bond and Equity Markets Are Diverging

Capital.com senior market analyst Daniela Hathorn described the week’s dynamic as markets “ending the week on a softer tone after the relative calm of early August was disrupted by renewed pressure in global bond markets, another rise in oil prices, and growing uncertainty around the Federal Reserve’s next move.” She noted that higher long-term borrowing costs are increasingly challenging elevated equity valuations, even as U.S. equities pull back modestly from record highs.

This divergence — equities near record levels while bonds sell off  is unusual and reflects two different sets of investor concerns. Equity investors have remained focused on corporate earnings strength, particularly from large technology companies ahead of Nvidia’s closely watched August 26 earnings report. Bond investors, by contrast, are more directly exposed to concerns about the scale of federal borrowing, highlighted this week by the national debt crossing the $40 trillion threshold for the first time.

The Fed and Treasury “Working in Opposite Directions”

Wilmington Trust senior bond portfolio manager Wil Stith told Yahoo Finance that current conditions reflect “the Fed and the Treasury basically working in sort of opposite directions,” adding that the imbalance will likely require the Federal Reserve  which he described as having “the larger sandbox”  to adjust the federal funds rate rather than relying on Treasury market interventions alone to manage yields.

Notably, the bond market’s reaction to the Treasury’s buyback expansion was relatively muted; strategists described the move as being largely absorbed without a major rally, suggesting the underlying pressure on yields stems from factors, such as inflation persistence and debt sustainability concerns, that a buyback program alone cannot resolve.

What Comes Next

Markets are now looking to two major events in the days ahead: Nvidia’s earnings report on Wednesday, August 26, and the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, running August 27-29. This will be the first Jackson Hole gathering under new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, whose public communication style and policy signals remain less established than his predecessors’, according to market commentary from Regards of Wall Street.

For investors, the key metrics to watch are the size and frequency of future Treasury buyback operations, movements in the 10-year Treasury yield, and any policy signals from Warsh’s keynote address. Continued yield volatility alongside record equity valuations would suggest the market imbalance identified this week has not yet been resolved.

 

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Finance

Cross-Border Settlement Innovation and Real-Time Payment Architecture

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3 weeks ago

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August 15, 2026

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The global banking system is undergoing a comprehensive modernization of cross-border payment infrastructure. Driven by real-time settlement networks, open banking APIs, and interoperable messaging standards, financial institutions and multinational corporations are eliminating multi-day delays and reducing transaction costs associated with legacy international wire transfers.

Transition to Real-Time Gross Settlement Networks
Historically, international business-to-business (B2B) payments relied on complex correspondent banking relationships involving intermediary fees and processing delays. In 2026, the widespread adoption of ISO 20022 messaging protocols alongside interconnected Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems allows direct, end-to-end processing of cross-border transfers.

Commercial banks are providing corporate clients with continuous, 24/7 payment clearing capabilities. Real-time transaction confirmation and automated FX rate locking allow international businesses to settle cross-border trade obligations within minutes, significantly reducing counterparty risk.

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Interoperability
Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot initiatives are reaching operational maturity across several key financial centers. Collaborative multi-CBDC platforms enable participating central banks and commercial institutions to settle foreign exchange and international trade transactions directly on shared distributed ledgers.

These wholesale digital currency networks eliminate traditional clearinghouse delays and minimize foreign exchange slippage. Enterprise treasury departments benefit from enhanced liquidity management, as cross-border cash balances can be deployed and repatriated instantaneously.

Corporate Treasury Transformation
For enterprise treasurers, instant cross-border settlement transforms cash management strategies:
– Working Capital Optimization: Reduced transaction float allows companies to lower precautionary cash reserves and optimize short-term liquidity investments.
– Automated Reconciliation: Enriched data formats embedded in ISO 20022 payment messages streamline automated general ledger posting and invoice matching.
– Reduced Processing Overhead: Account-to-account (A2A) real-time clearing bypasses costly intermediary correspondent banking fees.

Strategic Financial Priorities
1. Upgrade Treasury Systems: Ensure internal core enterprise software supports real-time ISO 20022 payment messaging standards.
2. Leverage Instant Clearing Rails: Utilize direct payment networks to lower cross-border transaction fees and eliminate settlement delays.
3. Evaluate Multi-Currency Liquidity: Modernize liquidity management frameworks to capitalize on 24/7 real-time settlement capabilities.

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