Mineral rulebook
What governments have done about critical minerals, set against who controls supply. Built from the IEA's tracker of national and international measures, IEA supply data and the World Bank's 2026 minerals plan.
Coming up
Deadlines and decisions ahead
Upcoming dates from the ledger below. Each links to its source.
Since November 2025
Government moves since November 2025
Analysis as of Nov 1, 2026. The ledger and counts update each weekday.
Producers are enforcing processing at home. Eleven of Africa's 37 measures are border controls. The DRC went from cobalt quotas in October 2025 to a ban on copper and cobalt concentrate exports in June. Zimbabwe's lithium concentrate ban starts on Jan 1, 2027, after a sudden halt and a restart under quotas. Mozambique, Malawi and Guinea added curbs on raw exports, and Kenya plans one.
Washington became a shareholder. US agencies took or lined up equity in USA Rare Earth (up to 16%), Vulcan Elements and Korea Zinc's Tennessee smelter, and backed a consortium buying 40% of Glencore's DRC copper-cobalt mines. Project Vault adds a US$12 billion stockpile backed by an EXIM loan.
Beijing moved from blanket curbs to targeted ones. China paused its broadest controls, with pauses ending Nov 10 and Nov 27. It also limited silver, tungsten and antimony exports to approved traders and put named Japanese, US and EU entities on control lists, MP Materials among them.
Price floors are mostly talk so far. The US proposed floors at its February ministerial and opened talks on a plurilateral pact. Australia's reserve made a first offtake commitment. Germany told parliament it holds no state reserves.
Permits got faster in the Americas and Europe. Canada and Ontario agreed one review per project. The US completed the Oak Flat land swap, lifted the Boundary Waters ban and fast-tracked seabed permits. Argentina reformed its glacier law and the EU named 46 more strategic projects.
Each entry is checked against its source before it is added. Regions follow Ore Daily's research split: Europe includes Russia, the Gulf and multilateral bodies.
Tax breaks and incentives for explorers, miners and processors
What governments offer, and what's coming
Rates and caps as legislated or announced; check the source for conditions. "In the works" covers bills before a legislature, budget measures not yet law, consultations and proposals. Each entry is checked against its source.
The policy wave measures by year written
Half the rulebook was written in three years
Governments wrote more mineral policy in 2021 to 2023 than in the decade before. The international share jumped in 2022 and again in 2025 as bilateral deals took over.
2025 and 2026 are still being catalogued, so their bars will grow. "Pre-2010" groups eight older measures still on the books, the oldest from 1976.
Chokepoints top country share, 2025
Where supply is tightest, and the levers being pulled
Bars show the largest single country's share of mining and refining (IEA base case). Chips are levers governments have pulled on that mineral. The counts show measures naming it in the IEA record and in Ore Daily's 12-month ledger.
IEA counts use measure titles; 12-month counts use the ledger's mineral tags. Broad measures such as critical mineral lists cover these minerals without naming them.
Two playbooks IEA's own classification
Buyers sign deals. Producers set terms at the border
Consumer economies lean on strategies, critical lists and partnerships. Producers lean on export curbs. China has seven trade measures in force and no international partnership in the tracker. Indonesia has four and none.
Counts cover the tracker's supply-security category, all statuses. "Trade curbs" combines export and import bans, non-tariff measures, tariffs and duties.
Partnership web deals between two or more governments
Washington is the hub. New Delhi is the fastest riser
Each line is a minerals deal between governments, from the IEA record and Ore Daily's ledger. Pink lines are from 2025 and 2026. India signed ten in 2026 alone. Tap a country to see its deals.
Where the map is blank World Bank priority producers
Thirty producers the World Bank is courting
The World Bank has shortlisted 30 mineral-rich developing countries for new country compacts, backed by a target of US$19 billion in financing over FY26 to FY30, up from about US$3.6 billion in the five years before. Shading shows how many measures each has on record, combining IEA domestic entries and the 12-month ledger.
For scale, the US has – measures on record across both sources. The 30 priority countries have – combined.