Highlights

• USGS Open-File Report 2025-1047 introduces a sophisticated GDP-based methodology to assess mineral supply chain risks across 84 commodities.
• Six new minerals added to critical list: potash, silicon, copper, silver, rhenium, and lead.
• China identified as the primary risk driver for 46 commodities.
• Report highlights structural vulnerabilities in mineral supply chains.
• Emphasizes that criticality stems from trade concentration and single points of failure, not just geological scarcity.

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The U.S. Geological Survey’s Open-File Report 2025–1047, Methodology and Technical Input for the 2025 U.S. List of Critical Minerals (opens in a new tab), represents the most data-heavy attempt yet to quantify supply chain risks. Using over 1,200 disruption scenarios across 84 mineral commodities, the agency modeled probability-weighted impacts on U.S. GDP and recommended list revisions under the Energy Act of 2020. Six new minerals are slated for inclusion: potash, silicon, copper, silver, rhenium, and lead. Two—arsenic and tellurium—are set for removal.

Methodology: GDP at the Center

Breaking with earlier reliance on import dependence and qualitative indicators, USGS applied an equilibrium displacement model linked to Bureau of Economic Analysis input–output tables. The goal: translate trade shocks into measurable GDP impacts. Disruption scenarios assumed yearlong export bans from key suppliers, with probabilities derived from machine-learning classifiers trained on past trade policy behavior.

Crucially, the model set 100% probability for China’s currently enacted export restrictions on gallium, germanium, tungsten, indium, bismuth, molybdenum, tellurium, and several rare earths. All other scenarios carried probabilities based on historical patterns of trade barriers.

Minerals were then grouped by risk using the Jenks natural breaks optimization method. Commodities with annualized, probability-weighted GDP losses above $2 million qualified for inclusion unless a domestic single point of failure justified listing at lower thresholds.

Findings: China Dominates, but Canada and South Africa Matter

Results underscore the continued dominance of Chinese supply in shaping U.S. vulnerability. For 46 of 84 commodities—including all rare earths plus gallium, germanium, and tungsten—China was the primary driver of modeled GDP losses. Among rare earths, samarium stood out with a probability-weighted GDP impact of nearly $4.5 billion.

Yet exposure is not exclusively Chinese. South Africa emerged as the critical supplier for rhodium, platinum, ruthenium, and iridium. Canada, long viewed as a safe partner, carried significant modeled risk for potash, aluminum, zinc, and lead. For potash, the gross disruption scenario was valued at $2.5 billion, but after weighting by probability (≈11%), the expected GDP impact fell to $287 million—still enough to justify critical status.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The methodology improves transparency by delivering comparable economic risk metrics across commodities. By quantifying impacts in dollar terms, policymakers can weigh mitigation costs against modeled exposure. This is a notable advance over prior indicator-based lists.

But the framework is also vulnerable to assumptions. Extraterritorial enforcement of export bans, fixed price elasticities, and streamlined industry disaggregation may skew results. Assigning 100% probability to all active Chinese restrictions may overstate risk, while backward-looking trade policy data may understate geopolitical volatility elsewhere. Moreover, the model only examines one-year disruptions, ignoring cascading impacts of prolonged shortages or conflict scenarios.

Equally important, GDP is not the same as national security. While semiconductor and missile guidance industries appear in the tables, broader defense and strategic consequences remain underrepresented.

Policy Implications

The recommendations carry weight. Adding copper, silver, and lead could reshape investment flows and stockpiling priorities, especially given their large markets and entrenched domestic industries. The inclusion of potash underscores agricultural vulnerability, often overlooked in critical minerals discourse. Conversely, removing arsenic and tellurium may prove premature—tellurium demand in solar PV and arsenic’s role in semiconductors suggest strategic importance not fully captured by GDP-weighted models.

For investors and policymakers, the central message is clear: U.S. exposure is structurally concentrated, not just in exotic rare earths but also in mainstream commodities where allies like Canada and Mexico dominate supply. Criticality stems less from geology than from single points of failure and concentrated trade flows.

Bottom Line

The 2025 USGS assessment is a more rigorous, economically grounded tool for mineral risk, but one that may over-rely on GDP at the expense of national security nuance. It's call to add potash, silicon, copper, silver, rhenium, and lead is defensible but will spark debate, particularly among industries that must now navigate the “critical” designation’s regulatory and investment consequences.

As supply chains tighten under geopolitics, the real test will be whether these risk metrics spur meaningful policy—stockpiles, domestic processing, allied partnerships—or remain another technical exercise shelved until the next crisis.

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