Each mineral's real-world supply is dominated by one producer or bloc: DR Congo mines ~70% of the world's cobalt, China performs ~85% of rare-earth refining, and the Bolivia–Chile–Argentina "lithium triangle" holds ~56% of known reserves. This model asks: what happens to price if that chokepoint restricts exports?
lost(t) = share · restriction · D₀
recovered = lost(t) · substitutionShare(t)
shortfall = lost(t) − recovered
stockpile absorbs shortfall while days > 0, else:
S_eff = D₀ − shortfall
Price = 100 · (D₀ / S_eff) ^ elasticity
- Export restriction — the share of the dominant producer's exports withheld from the world market.
- Substitution investment — how fast recycling, new mines and material substitutes close the gap; it approaches the restricted share on an exponential curve, never instantly.
- Stockpile buffer — a strategic reserve (in days of world demand) that fully absorbs the shortfall while it lasts, then runs dry and the price shock hits directly.
- Price elasticity — how sharply price reacts to a supply gap; rare-earth refining is the least substitutable in the short run, so it carries the steepest curve.
This is the mechanism behind China's 2010 rare-earth export cut to Japan and fears of a "lithium OPEC" — distinct from currency-appreciation resource-curse dynamics or transboundary-dam bargaining modelled elsewhere on this site.
2D dashboard note: the market math below is ported unchanged from the original 3D model — the exponential substitution approach, the stockpile-first shortfall absorption, and the price-elasticity power law were checked for internal consistency (no divide-by-zero, no negative supply) and found correct, so nothing needed fixing here, only re-drawing as four coordinated 2D panels instead of a 3D scene.