How the data is made

Methodology

The boundaries of this project are its credibility. This page sets out exactly what is and is not tracked, how sources are graded, how translations are handled, what every label means, and how framing is assigned.

Three questions to ask of every record

Who makes the claim?

Follow the original document and quoted passage. A government rationale and an issuer's activity report have different evidentiary roles.

Source hierarchy

What state is established?

An announcement, binding agreement, payment and industrial observation are separate. A programme ceiling is not an individual award.

Financial counting rules

What is missing?

Unknown dates stay unknown. Coverage is selective; absent records do not prove inactivity. Shared materials never establish causation.

Limits of the evidence

What this tracks — and does not

This database tracks policy instruments and official framing: the export controls, licensing regimes, critical-mineral designations, supply-chain-security laws, funding, stockpiling and offtake measures governments use around rare earths and adjacent strategic materials — and the language each government uses to justify them.

The comparative unit is a documented measure, financial instrument or reported industrial observation, not a preferred country. This does not imply equally complete coverage across jurisdictions: absence from the corpus is not evidence of government inaction, and records appearing near one another do not establish causation.

It does not model the global minerals market. It does not track or forecast market prices, estimate reserves or tonnages, publish supply-risk numbers or rankings, or make projections its sources do not state. Where market-share figures appear — for example, that China processes roughly 90% of rare earths — they are cited context drawn from bodies such as the IEA and USGS, not original estimates.

The one kind of figure it does record is a term of a policy instrument: a number that a government states, or that a binding filing sets out, as part of the measure itself — a price floor written into an agreement, a tax-offset percentage, a capacity covenant, a contract term. Such a term is recorded only when it can be cited precisely. It describes the instrument; it is not an estimate of the market.

Scope is deliberately bounded: 8 actors, a rare-earth-centred material set, and events from 2018 forward. The boundary is the point — it is what lets every record be sourced. Some records carry no material at all: a framework statute names none of its own, and an instrument may name minerals that fall outside this material set. Both are recorded as an empty scope and said so on the record, rather than being filled in from the measures issued under them.

Capital & Control

Version 0.5 extends the model so that one announcement can hold the separate financial instruments and control measures inside it. The event stays the unit of announcement and citation. Beneath it, a financial commitment (ids beginning fin-) records one instrument, such as a grant, loan, equity stake, price floor or program envelope, and a control measure (ids beginning ctl-) records one operative clause of an export, import, investment or domestic control. The tracker remains a policy-intelligence record, not a commodity-price or market-forecasting model.

· Original currency is authoritative. An amount is kept as the source states it, with its currency and any qualifier such as “up to”. Nothing is converted, adjusted for inflation or totalled across currencies.
· Unlike instruments are never combined. A loan, an equity stake, a tax credit and a price floor are different promises and are not added into one figure.
· A commitment records how it relates to larger ones: it can be part of a reserve or package, drawn from a facility or program envelope, or both at once. An amount is never counted both on its own and inside a commitment it is linked to.
· Private financing, a recipient's own funds and total project cost are recorded so they can be kept apart. None of them is presented as public support.
· Announced, authorized, contracted and disbursed money are different stages, and a project under construction is not an operational one. Each status carries the date and the source that support it.
· Each important field names the source that supports it. Where the sources do not state something, the field is left empty rather than inferred.
· A company's binding securities filing, or a recipient's own official disclosure, can support contract, financing, capacity or implementation facts that it states directly. It cannot, on its own, establish a government's rationale or framing, a status the government has not stated, a speculative valuation, a market-price estimate or an unsupported projection. What it supports stays visibly attributed to the company, not to the government.
· A control clause whose status differs from the rest of its instrument — one limb in force, another suspended — is recorded on its own, so one record never hides a conflict.
· There is no synthetic economic-security score, index or ranking, and none will be added.

The dataset now holds 96 financial commitments and 45 control clauses, across 52 events, each verified field by field against its sources. They are browsable on Capital, Controls and Capital × Control; how figures are added up is set out under counting rules.

Capital intelligence: who, what and under which scheme

Version 0.6 adds the parties and undertakings the instruments connect, as registries the financial rows point to. An organization (org-) is a provider, recipient, sponsor or holder: a government body, public financier, joint vehicle, company, project company or bank. A project (prj-) is one physical undertaking, such as a mine, a refinery or a magnet plant. A programme (prg-) is a named scheme that awards, lends, credits, reserves or designates. A project designation (dsg-) records a project recognized under a designation scheme, such as an EU strategic project under the Critical Raw Materials Act.

· Registry records are factual claims like any other. An organization's name, kind, country, government and parent bodies each name the source that states them.
· A renamed body keeps one record and lists its other names, so its portfolio does not split in two.
· A portfolio rolls up from an office to the department it is part of. It does not roll up from a joint vehicle to the bodies that set it up: a joint vehicle's money is not its founders' money, and the public share of it is not stated.
· A registry record holds no money. Capital stacks, portfolios, co-investment and flows are derived from the financial rows under the same counting rules, one value role at a time and one currency at a time. There is no grand stack total, no public-share percentage, no leverage ratio and no programme utilisation rate.
· A designation confers standing, not money, and never enters a sum. Where a designation publishes expected investment, that is total project cost and is not recorded as support.
· Each control clause records the kind of item it covers (goods, equipment, technology) and the supply-chain stages those items belong to. Controlling exports of separation technology places the item at the separation stage; it does not mean the clause restricts separation itself. End-use restrictions, customs enforcement, divestiture orders and suspensions define no items of their own and carry neither.
· Whether money stays at home or goes abroad is read from the funded row's stated location, or its project's, against the provider's home territory: the member states for the EU, and the United Kingdom as GB. Where no location is stated, the row is counted as location not stated, never guessed.

Source hierarchy

Records are graded by a four-tier confidence hierarchy, shown as a badge on every source. Higher tiers are preferred; where a record currently rests on a lower tier, that is visible in the badge, and upgrading it is tracked work.

Primary source: The government document or official announcement in its original language.
Official translation: An English rendering of a primary document — official, or a faithful institutional translation.
Government / state media: State or government-affiliated outlets; treated as the actor's own voice, not neutral reporting.
Secondary analysis: Legal commentary, analysis and news used to corroborate facts.

Translation policy

Official English is preferred wherever the issuing body publishes one. Where it does not, every translated field is marked by provenance:

Official translation: The issuing government's own English.
Project / third-party translation: A non-official translation — this project's, or a cited institutional translation.
English original: The source is already in English; no translation is involved.

Only short passages are quoted, always alongside or linked to the original. The original-language text is retained; nothing is paraphrased into a quotation.

Provenance and coverage

Sources are cited in their original language, with an English translation where the issuing body does not publish its own. Every source is labelled with its provenance and a confidence level — the four tiers set out above — so the basis for each record is visible.

Coverage is multi-actor by design: it follows the whole contest across the tracked governments — the incumbent producer-processor and the states working to diversify away from it — rather than any single country's measures in isolation.

Label definitions

There are no numeric scores anywhere in the model. Every classification is one of the categorical labels below.

Policy status

Active: The measure is in effect now.
Suspended: Adopted but paused; it can resume.
Proposed: Announced or drafted, not yet in force.
Superseded: Replaced by a later measure.
In force: A standing law or regulation in continuing effect.
Unclear: Status not established from the available sources.
Ended: Concluded, withdrawn or expired with no continuing effect and nothing replacing it — for example a trade investigation that ended without an order.

Mechanism

Export control: Restriction on exporting specified items.
Dual-use license: Licensing for items with civilian and military uses.
Catalogue listing: Addition of items to a control or prohibition catalogue.
Critical-mineral designation: Official labelling of a material as critical or strategic.
Supply-chain security measure: A law or rule that secures supply chains.
Countermeasure: A measure framed or used as a response to another state's action.
Customs enforcement: Border and customs enforcement of controls.
Funding or subsidy: Subsidy, grant or financing to build capacity.
Stockpiling: Building or releasing strategic stocks.
Offtake agreement: A commitment to purchase output, often with a price floor.
Investment screening: Review or restriction of inbound/outbound investment.
Trade action: A tariff, truce or other trade measure affecting the materials.

Material sensitivity (sectors)

Defense: Defense and military systems.
Semiconductor: Chips and semiconductor manufacturing.
Energy: Power generation and the grid, including wind.
Battery: Batteries and EV supply chains.
Industrial: General industrial and manufacturing use.

Framing category

National security or defense: Justified as protecting national security or defense.
Economic security or industrial competitiveness: Justified as protecting economic security or industrial competitiveness.
Supply-chain resilience or de-risking: Justified as securing or diversifying supply — de-risking.
Leverage, retaliation or countermeasure: Framed as leverage, retaliation or a countermeasure.
Resource and environmental protection: Justified by resource conservation or environmental protection.
Anti-smuggling or enforcement integrity: Justified as preventing smuggling or preserving enforcement integrity.
Allied coordination or friend-shoring: Justified by coordination with allies or friend-shoring.
Regulatory or compliance modernization: Framed as aligning rules with international norms or dual-use compliance.

How framing is assigned

A framing category is assigned to an event only from a quoted passage in the source — never inferred from context, headlines or analyst interpretation. This is the project's central commitment.

· Every framing claim carries a short quote in the original language, its translation, the translation provenance, and a source that resolves to the document the quote came from.
· If no such anchor exists yet, the event's framing is left “Not yet coded” rather than guessed — you will see this on several events.
· Categories are multi-select: one passage can carry more than one label when the text supports it.
· Readings the source does not state in its own words — for example, that a control is “retaliation” — live in the event's analytical-significance note, not in a framing label attributed to the actor.

Capital & Control: counting rules

Every figure on the Capital and Controls pages, in the summary API and in the exports is derived by one module from the seed records, under these rules. They exist because the commonest error in public reporting on industrial policy is adding up numbers that are not the same kind of thing.

· Per currency, never converted. Totals are shown separately for each currency the sources use. No exchange rate is applied anywhere.
· One value role at a time. Only rows whose value role is “commitment” are ever summed. Envelopes, appropriations and lending authorities are listed, never totalled: two envelopes can share a drawdown (the Australian Reserve's A$1 billion for transactions is both part of the Reserve and drawn from the Critical Minerals Facility), and an envelope is not money committed to anyone.
· One instrument at a time. Within a currency, each instrument has its own sums: grants, loans, equity and loan guarantees are never added into one figure, because a guaranteed loan, a grant and a shareholding are different promises. Rows whose instrument the sources do not name, and packages that combine instruments without a split, are listed with their own figures and never summed, since adding them could add a loan to a grant unseen. Version 0.5 printed one sum per currency across instruments, contrary to this rule; version 0.6 corrects it.
· Ended commitments are not money. A commitment whose current status is withdrawn or lapsed is listed as ended and left out of every sum. It is also not capital in any count derived from it: it backs no project, adds no government or provider to a stack, is no flow and no co-investment, and is counted only as ended. An ended package does not hide its parts: a part that is still standing counts as a row of its own.
· A status the source does not give is not “not yet binding”. A commitment with an amount whose current status is “not stated” is neither binding nor not yet binding: it is listed with its own figure, counted apart, and never summed. Version 0.5 read it as not yet binding; version 0.6 changes this to match the one for an instrument the source does not name. Such a row also does not hide its parts.
· No part is counted with its package. A row that is part of, or drawn from, another row in the same currency is left out of the sums and named beside them, whatever either row's instrument, when that other row is itself summed. If it is not (it ended, states no amount or no status), it does not suppress the row. If two counted rows were ever to share a descendant, the total for that currency is withheld and the overlap shown instead. The JSON summary says so in a machine-readable way: that currency's entry has status: "withheld" and its sums are null, never zero or partial.
· One project attribution at a time. A row's projectId means its amount can be attributed to that one project. When a source states one unsplit amount supports several identifiable projects, associatedProjectIds records those links without allocating the money among them. A shared row is shown on each linked project for provenance but is excluded from that project's capital stack, backers, co-investment and project-level totals. If a later source gives a real allocation, the allocated child rows can be recorded as parts of the package instead.
· Record counts fold a part only where its package covers it. A part is counted inside its package, so one deal counts once, but only in a count where the package is counted too. Stage and material counts in a portfolio, and the stage response map and the material matrix, work cell by cell: a part is counted at a stage or material its package does not list, and never twice where the package lists it. A package whose parts do not all state a country shows “not stated” in the flow table, and its parts, folded into it there, can be listed on the package's own page.
· An option is not a commitment. A funding option (a ceiling the recipient may call on under a signed agreement) is listed apart and never summed. It counts only once a source records an exercise, which is coded as its own commitment drawn from the option; payment is then tracked in that commitment's status. A draw that has since been withdrawn or has lapsed is listed under the option as an ended draw, never as an exercise or as money moved. Wherever capital is counted (a project's backers, co-investment, a portfolio, the stage response map) an option is shown as an option and never as a commitment or as backing. The site shows each option's three steps (agreement executed, exercise, disbursement) and says “none recorded” where the corpus is silent, never “not exercised”.
· Public means public. “Public commitments” are rows with public or public-enterprise capital. Private financing, a recipient's own funds, expected co-investment and total project cost are shown apart, and so are joint public-private vehicles whose public share is not stated. A row is credited to a government only when a government provides the money: a bank loan or a company's own cash announced in a government's event is never that government's.
· Stated bounds are summed only with their own kind. A committed figure stated “up to”, “about” or “at least” is added only to figures with the same qualifier, within the same currency and instrument, and shown apart from exact figures. An “up to” total is a sum of stated upper bounds, not an amount paid and not an exact commitment; an “at least” total is a sum of stated lower bounds. This is separate from programme envelopes, appropriations, lending authorities and unexercised funding options, which are listed and never summed.
· Binding apart from not yet binding. Within each currency, money under an executed agreement or already paid (contracted, partially disbursed, disbursed) is summed apart from money announced, authorized, allocated or decided — which includes conditional loan commitments. A non-binding letter of intent or interest is not a commitment and is in neither: it is an indication, listed apart and never summed. Binding describes the agreement, not the money: a contracted row may leave the provider's obligation of funds and their payment to later steps. Every row carries its own status.
· No figure without a figure. A price floor, an offtake, a tax offset or a procurement right with no stated total is listed with its terms, never valued. Nothing is estimated.
· Dates mean the data's date. Control statuses and the days left on a suspension are evaluated on the date the data was last checked (3 Nov 2026), not on the day a page is read. What follows a stated end date is recorded only once an official source states it.
· Time charts show sequence, not causation. The Capital × Control chronology places financial and control status changes side by side; it draws no link between them that a source does not state.
· Arithmetic on amounts is exact decimal arithmetic; no amount passes through binary floating point.

Value roles

Commitment: Money, or a money-like promise, committed to a named recipient or project. The only role ever summed.
Program envelope: The ceiling of a programme, fund or facility that awards are drawn from.
Budget appropriation: Money set aside in a budget or allocation.
Lending authority: A ceiling on what a lender may lend or guarantee.
Funding option: A ceiling a party may call on at its own election under an executed agreement. Listed, never summed: an executed option is not committed money. An exercise is recorded as its own commitment drawn from the option, with its own payment status.
Non-binding indication: A non-binding letter of intent or interest that names an amount: possible support, not money committed to anyone. Listed in its own layer, never summed, and never counted as binding, not yet binding, capital, backing or co-investment.
Expected co-investment: Money a government expects others to invest.
Private financing: Commercial capital raised alongside public money.
Recipient's own funds: The recipient's own contribution.
Total project cost: The value of a project or pipeline, whoever pays for it.

Capital sources

Public: A government, ministry or state agency.
Public enterprise: A state-owned company or fund, such as the UK National Wealth Fund.
Mixed public-private vehicle: A joint public-private vehicle whose public share is not stated.
Private: Commercial lenders, investors or the recipient.
Not stated: The source does not say who provides the capital.

Financial statuses

Announced: Publicly announced; no decision or agreement is stated.
Authorized: Legal or budgetary authority exists, e.g. an enacted statute or cabinet approval.
Allocated: Assigned to the purpose, e.g. in a budget.
Decided: The provider has decided to invest, lend or award, including a conditional commitment.
Contracted: A binding agreement has been executed. Not a payment, and not necessarily an obligation of funds: an agreement can leave that to a later step.
Partially disbursed: Some of the money has been paid out.
Disbursed: The money has been paid out.
Withdrawn: The commitment was withdrawn.
Lapsed: The commitment ended unused on its own terms, for example a commitment letter that expired undrawn.
Not stated: The source states no status.

Control statuses

Announced: Announced or deployed without a stated legal effective date.
Scheduled: Adopted, with a stated future effective date.
In force: Legally in effect.
Suspended: Adopted but paused, usually until a stated date.
Expired: Lapsed at the end of its stated term.
Revoked: Repealed or withdrawn.
Under investigation: An inquiry that imposes no restriction yet.
Investigation concluded: An inquiry that has ended with a finding or report; any measure that follows is its own record.
Not stated: The source states no status.

Limitations & disclaimer

· The dataset is a seed. Every tracked actor is event-coded, but framing anchors are not universal: 53 of the 66 events carry one. The others, including the October 2026 Strategic Projects Decision, have none yet, because an anchor is added only from a verified quotation of the issuing government's own wording, never written to fill a gap. Coverage is also deliberately uneven: United States accounts for 20 of the 66 events, while India is represented by a single instrument. Read it as a depth-first sample, not a census.
· Some Chinese document numbers and original-language titles are not yet transcribed against the primary and are marked null or “Not yet coded.”
· Categorical labels are interpretive judgements anchored to sources, not legal determinations. Status reflects the last-updated date; measures change.
· EU Strategic Project rounds are not coded alike in two respects. Four March 2025 designations list battery-grade lithium without coding it as lithium, while the October 2026 list codes it as lithium, so lithium counts across rounds are not like for like. The October 2026 Decision is coded “unclear” because the sources read do not establish when it was notified to its addressees; the 2025 lists are coded in force. That is a coding difference, not a legal finding.

This is not legal or compliance advice. Do not rely on it for export-control classification or licensing decisions; consult the primary instruments and qualified counsel.

Version history

v0.6-capital-intelligence — 3 Nov 2026. Capital intelligence: registries of 122 organizations, 102 projects and 12 programmes that the financial rows point to, and 59 project designations, each evidenced field by field. New pages for portfolios, projects, organizations and programmes; capital stacks by value role; programme ledgers that list ceilings beside recorded awards; co-investment; flows; and a material-by-stage response map of capital, designations and control clauses, with item types and supply-chain stages coded on every control clause that defines items. New records from primaries: China's Announcements Nos. 56, 57, 58 and 62 of 2025; the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act Strategic Projects (March and June 2025, and the 26 of the 46 projects recognised in October 2026 that name a tracked material) and RESourceEU; Japan's certified critical-mineral supply-assurance plans and JOGMEC grants; Canada's G7 Production Alliance round and PDAC 2026 awards; Commerce's CHIPS agreements with USA Rare Earth; and what MP Materials' later filings record about the DoD package. Corrections: currency totals are now split by instrument (version 0.5 added grants, loans and equity together, contrary to its own rule), a withdrawn or lapsed commitment is no longer summed or counted as capital, a commitment whose status is not stated is listed apart instead of being read as not yet binding, an ended or unsummed package no longer hides parts that still stand, and a non-binding letter of intent or interest that names an amount is now an indication and no longer a commitment (three from the G7 round and the CHIPS letter of intent recorded in version 0.5): it is listed in its own layer and never summed, counted as binding or not yet binding, or read as capital, backing or co-investment. New vocabulary values: a financial status “lapsed”, a value role “non-binding indication”, and the registry, designation and item-type vocabularies. In the JSON, the released /api/v1/capital-control/summary (and its copy in dataset.json as capitalControlSummary) moved capital.publicCommitmentTotals[].byQualifier, .binding and .notYetBinding into capital.publicCommitmentTotals[].instruments[]; /api/v1/capital-intelligence/summary is new in this release.
v0.5-capital-control — 23 September 2026. Capital & Control: 39 financial commitments and 32 control clauses, verified field by field against official primaries and binding filings; the Capital, Controls and Capital × Control pages; the counting rules above; new JSON endpoints and CSV exports. Three events added (the US–Australia critical minerals Framework, the OSC loans to Vulcan Elements and ReElement, the US active anode material AD/CVD investigations) and Proclamation 11001, the outcome of the section 232 investigation. New vocabulary values: a policy status “ended”, an instrument “several instruments, split not stated”, a control status “investigation concluded” and a value role “funding option”. Proclamation 11001 is an event, not a control measure: it directs negotiations and imposes no restriction.
Earlier releases — Expanded multi-actor seed: nine events added since v0.1.0 so all six actors are event-coded — the US DoD–MP Materials partnership, Australia's Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve, Japan's JOGMEC/JARE investment in Lynas, Canada's Investment Canada Act divestiture order, and China's 2023–2025 gallium/germanium, graphite, US-directed ban (Announcement No. 46), tungsten and antimony controls. Framing anchors are now coded for every event in the dataset. The gallium/germanium anchor was re-cited to MOFCOM/GACC Announcement No. 23 (2023) itself after review found it pointing at a state-media English report that does not carry the quoted Chinese text.
v0.1.0 — June 2026. Initial public foundation: schema, typed loaders, a passing data validator, and a verified seed — China's April, October and November 2025 rare-earth measures, the US 2025 Critical Minerals List, and the EU Critical Raw Materials Act — with framing anchors across three actors.

Questions about a classification? Each rests on the linked source — start there, then see the source register.