HUFF POST
China has slapped export controls on graphite, a key mineral used to make steel and electric car batteries, ratcheting up a trade fight with the United States over the technologies needed to wean the world’s economy off planet-heating fossil fuels.
The measures, announced Friday in a joint declaration from Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs, banned exports of artificial graphite, the natural flake version of the mineral, and products made with them unless the government grants permission. The restrictions take effect on Dec. 1.
“Graphite is a key material that holds strategic significance in new-energy industry and global players are fiercely competing with one another in this sector,” Tian Yun, an economist in Beijing, told the Chinese nationalist newspaper Global Times. “It can be expected that similar moves will be more commonplace if the US continues to escalate sanctions in the technological field against China.”
The restrictions come as President Joe Biden has expanded the Trump administration’s trade war with China, placing export bans on technologies like the semiconductors needed to power artificial intelligence applications. The Biden administration is set to ramp up tariffs on Chinese-made solar equipment as Beijing provides its own factories with so much government support that even dairy companies are opening factories to churn out the materials for panels. In response, China in July put new export controls on two metals used to make computer chips and solar panels, gallium and germanium…
