Midstream geopolitics: Processing power in critical mineral supply chains

The emerging geopolitics of critical minerals hinges not only on their extraction but also on their transformation. Smelters, refiners, magnet factories, and other processing facilities are new sites of geopolitical competition and dependencies, linking countries that increasingly see one another as strategic rivals. This article introduces the concept of midstream geopolitics to move beyond notions of resource geopolitics often focused on extraction sites and supply routes to account for the diverse narratives, regulations, commercial relations, and technologies that shape and enable the transformation of ‘critical’ raw materials, including cobalt, lithium, rare earth elements, and other minerals, into industrially useable forms. These midstream capacities are now central to competition among great powers such as the US, EU, and China, as well as regional actors (e.g., Japan, South Korea, Malaysia), each seeking to secure, control, or bypass processing chokepoints in supply chains. China's longstanding investment in processing, enabled in part by Western divestment from industries deemed too polluting, shaped the contemporary strategic landscape. Our framework identifies multidirectional influences—between the downstream, midstream, and upstream—structuring midstream geopolitics and details nine policies through which states exert geopolitical and geoeconomic power over industrial and technological advances. Our analysis underscores the need for attention to the midstream and highlights its growing (geo)political significance, particularly in relation to strategies of onshoring, reshoring, and friendshoring.