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Trade in Commodities, Obstacles to Trade and Illegal Trade
Free trade in raw materials is of great importance for the EU. China remains the EU’s main supplier of critical raw materials and thus concentrates on the most recent evidence on its export restrictions. Despite recent WTO rulings, China is still implementing a wide range of trade distorting measures in the form of export licensing or through the introduction of a resource tax. While we can trace certain welfare benefits for the Chinese domestic market following the introduction of export restrictions ...
Trade in critical raw materials (CRMs): Main challenges
EU industry depends almost entirely on a handful of countries for imports of 14 critical raw materials (CRMs). These are of high economic significance and are at particularly high risk of supply shortages. Geographical concentration of CRM production, growing global demand and a tendency of main suppliers to apply export restrictions to reserve CRM stocks for domestic industrialisation has rendered access to CRM markets increasingly difficult.