Critical Supply-Chain Dependencies

Critical Supply-Chain Dependencies

LEARN / REINDUSTRIALIZATION

Critical Supply-Chain Dependencies

Dependency and concentration are different measurements, and the second is the one that determines what happens during a disruption. A country can source a material from four suppliers and still stop producing when one of them halts, if that supplier holds the only refining step.

Key points

Two different measurements

Import reliance answers a question about origin: what share of domestic consumption arrives from abroad. It is calculated at the national level, it is published annually, and it is the figure that appears in most coverage of supply chain risk.

Concentration answers a question about structure: how many independent producers, facilities or processing routes exist, and whether the loss of any one of them stops the flow. Two commodities with identical import reliance can carry entirely different risk, because one arrives from six unrelated producers on three continents and the other passes through a single refinery that serves the world.

Confusing the two produces the most common error in supply chain policy, which is to treat reducing imports as equivalent to reducing the chance of a stoppage. A domestic facility that becomes the sole American source has changed the location of the chokepoint without removing it, and has arguably concentrated the risk further by eliminating the redundancy that multiple foreign suppliers provided.

What the mineral data shows

The U.S. Geological Survey publishes annual import reliance figures for more than ninety nonfuel mineral commodities in its Mineral Commodity Summaries, the earliest government publication each year to furnish estimates of nonfuel mineral industry data.

Data100%
U.S. net import reliance for yttrium, graphite, gallium, arsenic and tantalum. Rare earth compounds and metals stood at 80 percent and antimony at 85 percent. Of consumption met by imports, China supplied an estimated 93 percent for yttrium, 56 percent for rare earths, 54 percent for antimony and 52 percent for arsenic, averaged over 2020 to 2023. Source: U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries.

Series and provenance
Agency
U.S. Geological Survey
Program
National Minerals Information Center
Series
Mineral Commodity Summaries
Measure
Net import reliance for nonfuel mineral commodities
Units
Percent of apparent consumption met by net imports
Adjustment
Import share by country averaged 2020 to 2023
Period
Published annually
Latest
100 percent for yttrium, graphite, gallium, arsenic and tantalum; 80 percent rare earths; 85 percent antimony
Source tier
Primary
Retrieved
August 9, 2026

Import reliance describes origin, not concentration. Reliance can be expressed by volume or by value, producing different rankings, and neither captures criticality.

Open the source

Read carefully, those pairs of figures make the concentration point better than any argument could. Rare earths show 80 percent import reliance and 56 percent of consumption arriving from a single country, which means the majority of the dependency is not diversified across the many suppliers the first number might suggest. USGS reports the United States was 100 percent net import reliant on sixteen nonfuel mineral commodities in its 2026 assessment, and more than 50 percent reliant on fifty-four.

Refining is the constraint

Mineral supply chains have at least four stages: extraction, concentration, refining or separation into usable purity, and fabrication into a component. Public discussion attends almost entirely to the first, because a mine is visible, sited, permitted and photographable, while a separation facility is a chemical plant that looks like any other.

The consequence is that opening a domestic mine can leave a dependency exactly where it was. If the ore must be shipped abroad for separation and returned as refined material, the country controls extraction and depends on a foreign facility for everything that makes the ore usable. During a disruption, possession of unrefined ore is possession of rock.

Institute analysisThe stage that binds is the one with the fewest independent facilities, and in minerals that is almost never extraction. A strategy organized around domestic mining without a matching separation capability relocates the visible half of the chain and leaves the constraining half untouched.

Where the measurement stops

The pattern recurs in components. Transformer cores require grain-oriented electrical steel, made by a single domestic producer, which places a sub-tier dependency underneath the equipment gating electricity supply. Long-Lead Equipment and Transformers traces that chain. Import reliance is measured for materials, and concentration risk in manufactured components is measured much less well, and below the second tier of suppliers it is largely not measured at all. A prime contractor knows its first tier by contract and usually its second tier by inspection. Whether a single heat-treating shop, forging house or specialty coater serves six programs across four primes is a question that typically gets answered after a disruption rather than before one.

Measurement noteImport reliance can be expressed by volume or by value, and the two produce different rankings. A commodity that is cheap and heavy looks significant by tonnage and minor by dollars, while a low-volume material essential to one process looks negligible by both and can halt production entirely. Neither weighting captures criticality, which depends on substitutability and on what stops if the material is unavailable.

Common misconceptions

That domestic sourcing removes the exposure. A sole domestic supplier is a single point of failure inside the border. What protects production is the number of independent paths to the material, and their location is a separate question.

That import reliance percentages rank risk. They rank origin. A commodity at 40 percent reliance sourced through one refinery can carry more risk than one at 100 percent sourced from many.

That allied sourcing removes the dependency. It changes who holds it. Whether that reduces exposure depends on the scenario contemplated, and an arrangement that survives a commercial dispute may not survive a conflict.

What the evidence says, and where it is contested

ContestedWhether allied sourcing adequately protects supply is disputed, and the disagreement is about which scenario the policy is designed against. One position holds that production within a trusted group of countries gives adequate assurance, spreads cost, and can be built on a realistic timeline. A second holds that any capability outside domestic control is contingent on the relationship holding under stress, and that the scenarios worth planning against are precisely those in which relationships are strained. Both positions are coherent. They differ on the probability assigned to the case where the alliance does not hold, and no data resolves that.

Related Institute research

Reshoring Nitrile Gloves: America’s Cheapest Industrial Vulnerability
A single-product case study in concentration and what reversing it costs.

SIOP for Aerospace and Defense
Planning industrial readiness at the capability level.

What Is the U.S. Industrial Base?
Why the tiers that matter are the ones nobody measures.

Sources

Reference entry maintained by the Institute for American Manufacturing & Technology. Figures are drawn from primary sources and cited above. Where the Institute states a position rather than a finding, it is marked as such.

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