As demand for nickel rises, the Philippines can strengthen its role in the EV supply chain. However, a proposed ban on raw mineral exports could reshape its industry. At the same time, global trade tensions are adding uncertainty. New US tariffs on nickel imports, combined with an ongoing supply surplus, are keeping prices volatile.
While some experts predict that the long-term nickel price might increase as demand outpaces supply, near-term challenges remain. Can the Philippines capitalize on this shift, or will market instability hinder progress?
Nickel and Copper Demand Soars – Can the Philippines Capitalize?
The Philippines is the world’s second-largest producer of mined nickel. Copper and nickel both are essential for lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs). With the demand for these metals rising, the Philippines has a unique opportunity to become a key supplier in the EV supply chain.
But on February 3, Senate President Francis Chiz G. Escudero approved the measure to ban the export of raw minerals.
He said,
“What we are looking at is to shift our policy from merely exporting raw minerals that will be utilized by other countries to produce higher value products, to developing our processing capabilities. This will result in added value for our minerals-related exports, provide a much-needed boost to our economy and generate employment for our people.”
Boosting Domestic Nickel Refining
If enacted, the ban will take effect in five years, giving mining companies time to establish processing plants. This policy shift is especially significant for key energy metals like nickel, which play a crucial role in the global battery and renewable energy sectors.
Escudero highlighted Indonesia’s 2020 ban on nickel ore exports as a successful example. He hopes that by processing nickel and copper within the country, the Philippines can become a major supplier of battery materials and a key player in the global EV industry.
He also believes that building a strong refining industry will create jobs, reduce dependence on raw material exports, and boost the economy. In the future, this could even help the Philippines manufacture its electric vehicles.
Challenges in Implementation
Mining groups are against a proposed export ban on ore, saying it will hurt the country’s mineral sector.
The Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (COMP) and the Philippine Nickel Industry Association (PNIA) support Senate Bill (SB) 2826 but disagree with the ban. The bill introduces a new tax system based on profits, but the groups believe stopping ore exports will cause problems.
They argue that mining companies cannot build processing plants within five years because of high power costs, poor transport systems, and conflicting local rules. The Philippines also has some of the highest electricity prices in Asia, making local processing too expensive.
They said, “Unless these issues are fixed, processing minerals locally will remain just a dream. There are no shortcuts.”
To make this plan work, the government must improve infrastructure, cut energy costs, and help mining companies build processing plants. Without these steps, the export ban could hurt the industries it aims to support.
Supply Surplus and Investment Risks
Even though the Philippines wants to boost its nickel industry, the global market already has too much supply. Big companies have secured their nickel resources, and experts at the Shanghai Metals Market (SMM) predict this surplus will grow even more in 2025 and beyond.
As this decision takes shape, the Philippines may face challenges in developing a strong local processing industry. With too much nickel already available, demand may not be high enough to make processing profitable. This could make it hard to attract big investors, slowing down the country’s plans to move from raw ore exports to processed nickel products.
Impact on China’s Nickel Supply
According to SMM, the Philippines exported 54 million metric tons of nickel ore in 2024. Out of this, 43.5 million mt went to China, while 10.35 million mt was sent to Indonesia.
If the Philippines decides to ban ore exports, China could face serious supply disruptions. The country relies heavily on Philippine nickel, especially after Indonesia tightened its mining quotas in 2024. A ban would likely create shortages, pushing China to look for other suppliers or invest in processing facilities within the Philippines to secure its supply.
A Short-Lived Rally for Nickel Prices
So, what happened to nickel prices after the Philippine government’s announcement of considering banning nickel ore exports? Well, as reported by S&P Global, this news sparked optimism in the nickel market, helping prices climb back to $15,811 per ton on February 6.
However, further gains were limited. Between February 7 and February 21, prices remained within the $15,400 to $15,800 range, and fears of worsening trade tensions loomed large.
The Larger Picture: How the U.S Tariff War is Shaping Nickel Prices?
S&P Global has provided deeper insights into how U.S. tariffs could affect nickel prices and the broader American nickel market. In January, the White House announced new tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China. Following this, nickel prices tumbled to a one-month low of $15,210 per ton.
In early February, President Trump signed executive orders imposing a 10% tariff on imports from China and an even higher 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico. These tariffs took effect on February 4, keeping nickel prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) below $16,000 per ton throughout the month. As trade tensions escalated, market uncertainty overshadowed concerns about a possible nickel ore export ban in the Philippines.
Canada quickly responded. Trudeau announced a 25% tariff on $155 billion worth of US goods, set to take effect the same day. But just before the deadline, the US government delayed tariffs on Canada and Mexico by 30 days, temporarily easing market concerns.
Will it Backfire on the US EV Industry?
If the US moves forward with a 10% tariff on nickel imports from Canada after the 30-day delay, it could drive up costs for American industries. Canada supplied nearly one-third of the US’s primary nickel imports in 2024, making it the country’s largest source.
The bigger challenge? The US produces very little nickel. The only nickel-producing mine is Lundin Mining’s Eagle Mine in Michigan. It contributed just 0.21% of global output in 2024 and is set to close before the decade ends. On top of that, the US lacks refining capacity for class 1 nickel, a key material for EV batteries.
If tariffs on Canadian nickel remain in place, it could become harder for US manufacturers to access affordable supplies, especially for the EV and stainless-steel industries. The US had expected to depend on Canada to meet its rising demand for battery-grade nickel.
However, trade restrictions might create challenges for this plan. It can also affect the competitiveness of domestic EV companies in the global market.
The Bottom Line
At present, the global nickel market remains volatile, affected by trade tensions, excessive supply, and evolving policies. All these factors are driving prices down. However, this dim nickel environment is expected to shift in the future.
With a declining market balance and reduced oversupply, nickel prices are forecasted to rise. By 2030 and beyond, demand is projected to exceed supply, leading to a further price increase.
The post Philippines’ Nickel Export Ban and U.S. Tariffs: What’s Happening in the Nickel Market Now? appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
-
Climate Change1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Renewable Energy11 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits