USA no longer receiving gallium and germanium from China!

Tit for Tat: This principle has guided the US-Chinese trade war since approximately 2016. China’s latest move can be seen as a new stage of escalation. Having already imposed export controls on gallium and germanium in 2023, China has now, for the first time, prohibited the delivery of specific critical metals to a single nation. In addition to gallium and germanium, antimony and as-yet-unspecified “super-hard materials” are also affected by the export ban.

China’s logic here is clear: if you stop providing us with chips, we will stop providing you with the commodities needed to build them. We shall see who holds the upper hand. The Chinese government justifies the move on the grounds of national security. This is logical considering that gallium, germanium, and antimony are dual-use goods, meaning they also have military significance. Gallium is used in radar and missile guidance systems, germanium in night-vision devices, and antimony can be used for hardening ammunition and as a flame retardant.

Restricting the People’s Republic’s access to advanced memory chips and chip manufacturing technologies dates back to Joe Biden. From January 20, Donald Trump will continue the trade war. De-escalation is not foreseeable, especially since Trump intends to further expand Biden’s already very high tariffs against China. The system by which China responds to what it perceives as harassment is now clear. The only question is which commodities will be affected next. Also important: what will Europe do if China extends the export ban to us? Without China’s critical metals, we cannot stand on our own feet either. Thus, the same applies to this escalation as to the previous ones: it is a (now even louder) warning shot for us to build our own stable supply chains for high-tech metals such as gallium and rare earths like neodymium oxide.