US Tungsten Scrap Export Ban Takes Effect As Global Supply Crisis Deepens

The Trump administration's export halt on tungsten scrap and shredded battery material took effect Thursday as the latest effort to retain critical supplies within the US. The measure comes as the US confronts a tungsten-supply crisis marked by limited to nonexistent domestic mine production and years of alarming dependence on China-dominated supply chains, even as Beijing increasingly uses critical-mineral exports as geopolitical leverage and curtails shipments abroad.

The Commerce Department directive prohibits exports of tungsten scrap and so-called black mass, the shredded remains of lithium-ion batteries that can be processed to recover lithium, nickel, cobalt and other valuable materials. The restrictions take effect today and will remain in place for one year.

The action follows President Trump's executive order authorizing federal agencies to restrict overseas shipments of scrap containing recoverable critical minerals. Waivers will be considered only when companies can demonstrate "undue hardship" or "irreparable harm."

As of 2025, the US had no mined tungsten production, while China produced 67,000 tons, nearly 79% of global output. Trade data from 2024 show that the US relied on imports for roughly half of its tungsten consumption.

In February 2025, China imposed export controls on selected tungsten products. Rotterdam prices have subsequently jumped nearly 800% since China limited exports of the industrial metal. This has only driven up tungsten and scrap prices.

Wall Street has generally viewed tungsten's role in the industrial economy primarily through a defense lens, such as armor-piercing ammunition, missile components, penetrators, fragmentation materials, and counterweights. But as Lewis Black, CEO of Almonty Industries, recently pointed out, the critical material has many uses beyond defense, including aerospace, energy, medical, automotive and consumer products. It is also, in fact, a critical building block of the artificial-intelligence boom and its associated data-center buildout.

Black, whose mining company controls the largest high-grade tungsten reserves outside China, wrote in a corporate update: "While everyone watches the defense story, you need to keep an eye on semiconductors too. There's a gas called tungsten hexafluoride: WF₆. It's what lays down the microscopic tungsten wiring inside advanced memory chips, the kind the entire AI boom is built on. No WF₆, no advanced chips."

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• The AI Boom Runs On Tungsten, But Global Supplies Are "Running On Empty"

Wall Street has largely framed the tungsten shortage as a defense story. But what Black stresses is that this view is far from the complete view. With the entire US economic boom predicated on data center buildouts and chip stacks, the obscure tungsten-based process gas that sits deep inside the manufacturing chain for advanced logic, high-bandwidth memory, DRAM, and 3D NAND chips may become one of the biggest risks capable of derailing the buildout if China continues to throttle exports of the critical material.