In this article SKBL ALM Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT A worker pans through ore at a tungsten mine, operated by Trinity Metals Group, in northwest of Kigali, Rwanda, on Friday, May 23, 2025. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images The Iran war has caused well-documented price spikes and shortages on a range of items Americans depend upon. Oil and gas, of course, but also petrochemi...
In this article SKBL ALM Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT A worker pans through ore at a tungsten mine, operated by Trinity Metals Group, in northwest of Kigali, Rwanda, on Friday, May 23, 2025. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images The Iran war has caused well-documented price spikes and shortages on a range of items Americans depend upon. Oil and gas, of course, but also petrochemicals and everything derived from them (e.g. plastics) and helium are among raw materials that have been besieged by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz . Still, there is another element which has seen its price surge amid increasingly short supply because of war, but where the shock will not relent even if the Strait is reopened. The vast amount of U.S. munitions used in battle combined with weapons shipped to Ukraine has left many U.S.-based entities in search of tungsten. If you don't know you need tungsten, that's understandable. While tungsten's role in weapons is driving the current crisis, its reach extends to far more mundane corners of American life, from the dentist's chair to the fishing hole. It flies under the radar for most people, but not those within supply chains where it is critical. "The tungsten topic comes up in almost every vendor conversation," said Mark Vena, CEO and principal analyst at SmartTech Research. "Tungsten is the metal nobody talks about until missiles, factories, and machine shops all need it at the same time," Vena said, noting that it connects warfighting, manufacturing, electronics, aerospace, EVs, and everyday tools. Vena described the current situation as "one ugly supply chain knot" and said the tungsten crisis is a reminder that for all of AI's and tech's advancement, the economy is still dependent on physical materials. As with other situations involving rare earth materials in recent years, China looms large in the supply chain bottleneck. China is the dominant supplier, controlling as much as 80% of the world's tungsten , though ...