On Friday (20 Oct), China Ministry of Commerce announced the export permit requirement for graphite products from 1st December onward. Graphite is strategically critical to Chinese EV industries as it’s a material used in almost every anode of EV batteries. Both Japan, India and South Korea would be the first to be impacted as they are the top graphites buyer from China, according to Chinese customs data.
The economic tension between world superpowers continued. As for the EV front, the European Union is considering tariffs on Chinese EV imports, while China, who has a stranglehold on electronics materials, already restricted gallium and germanium exports earlier in August.
China is globally supplying 67% of natural form graphite, according to the US Geological Survey. The two new restrictions require exporters to apply for permits on the synthetic type that has high purity, hardness and intensity, and the natural flake type. This could be a hard wall to break as the low cost and mass producible graphites also play a part in western EV industries.
