China imposed export license requirements on antimony on September 15, 2024, then on December 3 announced an outright prohibition on antimony exports to US military end-users. The effect was immediate: Chinese antimony shipments to the US fell 97% while prices rose 200% in six weeks. China accounts for 48% of global antimony production and had previously supplied 63% of US imports. The US currently has zero domestic antimony production.
Antimony is not a battery material. It is critical for armor-piercing ammunition, night-vision goggles, infrared sensors, and artillery rounds, placing this supply shock directly in the defense industrial base rather than the clean energy supply chain. The DOD responded with a $24.8 million Defense Production Act investment in Perpetua Resources to advance the Stibnite Gold Mine project in Idaho toward production, though first output is not expected before 2028 at the earliest given permitting requirements.
The antimony shock is the sharpest single example of China using export controls as a geopolitical instrument in the 2024 escalation cycle, and the US response reveals the structural problem: DPA investment can accelerate a domestic project, but a five-year mine development timeline means the immediate supply gap is not closed by domestic policy. The short-term answer is allied-country sourcing diversification, which is constrained because China’s market dominance in antimony is not an artifact of trade policy but of geology and decades of production investment.