Silver Plunges to $70 Low Amid China’s Export Crackdown Bite
The greyish metal traded at the $70 support line at the last trading session of the year, down 5% for the past day.
Quick overview
- China is implementing stricter export regulations on silver, impacting the US industrial and defense supply chains.
- Elon Musk criticized the impending restrictions, highlighting the importance of silver in various industrial processes.
- The new regulations elevate silver to a strategic material status, aligning its export controls with those of rare earths.
- China, a major silver producer, exported over 4,600 tons of silver in the first eleven months of the year.
China will impose stricter export regulations on silver, tightening limits on the once-common metal that is vital to the United States’ industrial and defense supply chains. Over the weekend, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, responded to a post on his social media platform X about the impending restrictions by criticizing the action.
“This isn’t good. Many industrial processes require silver,” Musk wrote. The greyish metal traded at the $70 support line at the last trading session of the year, down 5% for the past day.
In October, the same day Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump met in South Korea, China’s Commerce Ministry first announced new steps to improve oversight of rare metals. At that time, the US lowered tariffs while Beijing agreed to a one-year suspension of some rare earth export restrictions.
China, earlier this month,h made public a list of 44 businesses authorized to export silver under the new regulations in 2026 and 2027.
The 2026 regulations also limit exports of antimony and tungsten, two materials whose supply chains are dominated by China. The state-run Securities Times on Tuesday quoted an unnamed industry insider who said the new policy formally elevates silver from an ordinary commodity to a strategic material, placing its export controls on the same regulatory footing as rare earths, even though China hasn’t explicitly announced a blanket ban on silver exports.
The EU Chamber of Commerce in China found that most participants had either experienced or expected to be affected by those Chinese export restrictions. Due to its use in solar cells, batteries, electrical circuits, and antibacterial medical devices, the US added silver to its nationally recognized list of essential minerals in November.
China had one of the largest silver deposits and was one of the world’s top producers in 2024. In the first eleven months of the year, China exported over 4, 4,600 tons of silver, which is significantly more than the approximately 220 tons that were imported.
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