Self-Sufficiency in Raw Materials

Citations come in three tiers, and the distinction matters more than any count. Verified means a specific figure for that country and commodity was read out of the cited document and supports the value shown. Referenced means the citation is the standing reference table for that commodity — a USGS commodity chapter, an annual statistical review, a trade circular — and covers that country, or conspicuously omits it, which is its own evidence for a low value; the individual percentage was not re-derived from it. Untraced means no document stands behind the cell at all. Hovering or tapping any circle says which of the three applies.   Most of this plate is referenced rather than verified, and it should be read that way: the citation tells you where to check, not that the checking was done.

Each circle is the share of domestic consumption met from domestic supply, rounded to indicative bands rather than reported to the decimal. Where a source publishes a country as a net exporter, the circle is drawn as a surplus rather than given a number.

Columns deliberately mix stages. Copper appears twice, mined and refined, because the difference is the whole point; so do lithium and rare earths. Where a column names a finished good — magnets, polysilicon, refining capacity — the circle measures capacity to make it, not ore in the ground.

The red ring began as an editorial judgement and is being replaced with sourced import-origin data commodity by commodity. Where USGS publishes leading import sources, hovering the cell now names them and their shares, so the reader can see what the ring rests on. Where it has not yet been replaced, it remains a judgement: It marks cells where the compiler judges the residual dependence to be structural rather than geological: a refining step held abroad, a single dominant supplier, or a sea lane under contest at the time of compilation. Reasonable people would ring a different set.

Energy and shipping conditions are those of late July 2026 and are moving fast. Commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been severely disrupted since late February 2026, with transits falling by more than 90% at the worst point, Iraq declaring force majeure, and dated Brent touching levels not seen since 2008 in the spring before easing back into the $80s by July. China's October 2025 rare-earth controls are suspended, not withdrawn, until 10 November 2026; the separate April 2025 licensing regime was never suspended and remains in force. Both will date this plate faster than anything else on it.