Our new global political economy is increasingly defined by ‘critical raw materials’ (CRMs). Firstly, low and middle-income countries joining the race for industrialization are increasing demands for high-tech goods ranging from computers, mobile phones, and flat screens, as well as for low-carbon consumer products, such as energy efficient cars, solar panels, wind turbines, and even lights – all of which constitute further pressures to accelerate the natural resource exploitation. Secondly, growing demands for critical minerals are currently suffering from a supply constraint given that China – the dominant market player in the CRM sector – has begun to impose export restrictions and reorient its mining policy to support domestic industrialization. The impending resource crunch creates incentives for mineral states to gain strategic and economic advantage. Our project analyses the full production chain – mining, processing, manufacturing, use, and recycling – and pays attention to domestic motives, strategies, and power relations between resource producing and importing countries.
GRIP-ARM draws from a trans-regional comparison to analyze both (1) resource-producing countries that deploy various industrial strategies to (re)shape world supply and production; and (2) resource-importing countries and manufacturing firms that seek to reduce supply vulnerability while also reducing socio-environmental costs of rare earth extraction. In particular, the research examines how industrial policy designs in both mineral producers and consumers have evolved as new geopolitical uncertainties emerge and as supply chains of critical minerals linked to advanced manufacturing and clean energy technologies become disrupted.
Thus, GRIP-ARM breaks new ground in the political economy and development studies scholarship in three ways:
(a) We examine the causal factors as regards why new industrial policies linked to critical minerals have emerged since 2015;
(b) We assess the key factors explaining the success and failure of specific mineral-based industrial policies being adopted by Brazil, China and Kazakhstan; and
(c) We examine how advanced industrialized countries seeking access to critical minerals, notably the European Union, South Korea and Japan, are re-organizing their business strategies and industrial policies in response to growing geopolitical uncertainties and supply chain disruptions.
