Graphite prices have remained stubbornly low through the first six months of 2026, even as demand from the battery sector continues to climb steadily. It is a disconnect that Amy Bennett, principal consultant at Fastmarkets, attributes to one overriding factor: China’s tightening grip on the supply side. Speaking at the Fastmarks Global Battery and Critical Materials Conference in Las Vegas, Bennett told the Investing News Network that graphite remains “at a crossroads,” noting that the material accounts for roughly a third of total battery weight and about half the weight of a typical NMC cell. Rather than loosening Beijing’s hold on the market, the export controls China introduced at the end of 2023 actually deepened it. At that time, China accounted for around 60 percent of mined natural graphite supply. Instead of triggering the diversification that Western governments and producers had hoped for, the controls prompted China to flood the market with additional material, pushing prices down further and squeezing out competitors elsewhere. Today, China’s share of mined natural graphite has climbed to roughly 80 percent, while its control over the combined natural and synthetic anode market sits near 98 percent, including more than 95 percent of global processing capacity.
The clearest attempt by Western producers to push back came through trade policy, and it ultimately fell flat. American graphite producers filed anti-dumping and countervailing duty petitions in December 2024, and early rulings looked promising for the domestic industry, with preliminary countervailing duties nearing 67 percent and preliminary anti-dumping duties around 94 percent coming in July 2025. Combined with existing tariffs, the total import burden on Chinese anode material briefly approached 200 percent before China adapted almost overnight. Major producers like BTR simply rerouted shipments through Indonesia, sidestepping the duties before they could take full effect. Then in March 2026, the US International Trade Commission ruled against the domestic industry altogether, dismissing the preliminary duties and leaving the tariff burden on Chinese anodes settled at around 40 percent. Bennett contrasted the outcome with successful anti-dumping cases in sectors like steel, where duties have exceeded 600 percent, explaining that petitioners must prove injury to an existing domestic industry — a difficult bar to clear when that industry barely exists yet.
With direct trade between China and the United States now complicated by lingering friction, Indonesia has rapidly emerged as the preferred intermediary. The country imported essentially zero anode material in 2024, but within two years it was bringing in meaningful volumes of both natural graphite feedstock and the GPC precursor material used in synthetic production. Fastmarkets expects Indonesia to become the largest single supplier of anode material to the US in the coming years, with pricing tracking closely alongside Chinese material. Europe, notably, has not seen a comparable shift in sourcing patterns. Meanwhile, the balance between natural and synthetic graphite has shifted decisively in favor of synthetic, which now holds roughly 85 percent of global anode demand after Chinese producers built out enormous capacity following a 2022 supply crunch. Even rising oil and feedstock costs tied to Middle East conflict pushed synthetic premiums higher without delivering the anticipated boost to natural graphite pricing, which continued falling inside China.
Looking ahead, Bennett does not see a meaningful shift away from Chinese control coming anytime soon. She described China’s role in the anode supply chain as “irreplaceable” in the near term and suggested that any real change in supply chain dynamics is at least five years out. Global
