US Restrictions Put China’s Battery Recyclers in a Bind

With Washington moving to ensure that tungsten scrap and lithium-ion battery “black mass” stay in the United States, analysts warn that the new restrictions will deprive Chinese refiners of a source of lower-cost feedstock and prompt Beijing to seek alternativesupplies.

China could also accelerate domestic recycling and use its own export controls on rare earths and magnets as leverage, they said.

The administration of US President Donald Trump on Thursday barred exports of tungsten scrap and battery black mass – the shredded residue from used batteries that can be processed to recover valuable materials such as lithium, nickel and cobalt.

Tungsten, known for its density, strength and exceptionally high melting point, is widely used in semiconductors, artificial intelligence chips, aerospace equipment and weapons.

The year-long directive mandates that suppliers offer 100 per cent of their monthly output of tungsten scrap and black mass to US buyers and to keep the materials within the country.

The order marks Washington’s latest attempt to shore up its strategic resource pipeline, coming after China imposed export controls on a range of tungsten products in February 2025 and required exporters to obtain government licences.

Beijing subsequently moved to widen access to overseas recycling feedstock, formally allowing imports of compliant battery black mass in August 2025 and cutting the tariff to 3 per cent from 6.5 per cent at the start of 2026.

Chinese customs data showed that shipments of most controlled tungsten products to the US had fallen to zero in the first seven months of this year.

However, the one-year timeline was unlikely to be long enough for the US to secure its supplies, as it lacked the capacity to process tungsten scrap and black mass, while building new refineries could take between two and five years, according to Liang Yan, a professor of economics at Willamette University in the United States.

“What the one-year rule achieves is supply lock-up and government stockpile buying,” she said.

“China will be impacted in the short term, as this ban will reduce its refiners’ feedstock.” Shipping electronic waste overseas is common in the US. The country generates about 6.9 million tonnes of electronic waste annually – second only to China – and exports roughly 1.5 million tonnes, according to electronics recycler EWaste Phoenix.

US black-mass exports reached 100,667 tonnes in 2025, an increase of 48.7 per cent from a year earlier, according to S&P Global.

Chinese customs data showed that the country imported 111,657 tonnes of industrial waste, including lithium-ion battery black mass, from the US in the first seven months of this year, accounting for nearly a tenth of China’s supplies.

The restrictions could reshape global black-mass supply chains, reducing feedstock available to China’s battery recyclers while creating opportunities for domestic companies with advanced processing capabilities, S&P Global said in a report this month.

It said tighter export controls from the US could reduce overseas black-mass supplies available to Chinese refiners, though Chinese companies have stepped up overseas investment in recent years to secure raw materials and expand their global recycling networks.

Xu Tianchen, a senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said the restriction, intended to bolster US domestic supplies, could eventually extend beyond tungsten and black mass to cover discarded rare earth magnets, other critical-mineral waste and any additional materials designated by the US government.

“So, tungsten is the first tranche,” Xu explained. “But anything that the US faces Chinese export controls on could be included in the future: rare earths, antimony, gallium and germanium.”

Beyond officially recorded trade, China has long had an active informal market for retired batteries and black mass, with unlicensed workshops competing against accredited recyclers for supplies, according to reports by the Financial Times and S&P Global.