Which countries supply U.S. mineral imports
Canada is the most frequent supplier of minerals to the United States. Across the 85 USGS chapters that give a U.S. import-source breakdown for 2021–24, Canada is named in 38 and is the leading source in 21. China is named in 30 and leads 14; Mexico is named in 23 and leads 6.
Each USGS chapter lists the main countries supplying U.S. imports of that commodity, with their percentage shares, usually by quantity and sometimes by value. Counting how often a country appears gives a simple view of which partners matter across the whole mineral range, not just for one commodity.
| Country | Import lists it appears in | Lists it leads | Examples where it leads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canada | 38 | 21 | gold, peat, and construction sand and gravel |
| China | 30 | 14 | heavy rare earths, thorium, and manufactured abrasives |
| Mexico | 23 | 6 | strontium, thallium, and antimony |
| Japan | 12 | 3 | scandium, titanium metal and titanium dioxide, and iron and steel slag |
| South Africa | 10 | 7 | chromium, industrial garnet, and kyanite and related minerals |
| Brazil | 10 | 4 | asbestos, iron ore, and clays |
| Turkey | 10 | 4 | feldspar and nepheline syenite, boron, and soda ash |
| South Korea | 9 | 1 | indium |
| Germany | 9 | 0 | – |
| Chile | 8 | 3 | iodine, molybdenum, and lithium |
| Australia | 8 | 2 | tantalum and niobium |
| Russia | 6 | 1 | silicon |
| Peru | 5 | 3 | phosphate rock, zinc, and tin |
| India | 5 | 2 | gemstones and barite |
| Israel | 5 | 2 | bromine and magnesium metal |
Canada
Canada’s lead in this count comes from breadth rather than from any single mineral. It leads the import lists for commodities as different as gold, peat, construction sand and gravel, and industrial sand and gravel. For several of these the share is very high: gold at 99% and peat at 95%. Canada is itself a listed producer in 33 USGS world tables, so for many of these minerals the supplier and the producer are the same country.
China
China leads the import lists for 14 commodities, including heavy rare earths, thorium, manufactured abrasives, and quartz crystal (high-purity and cultured). China is the top world producer of 8 of those 14 commodities, which the China page shows in full. The match is not automatic: for gallium metal, where China produced almost all low-purity primary output, the U.S. import list is led by Canada, with China third.
Mexico, South Africa and the rest
Mexico appears in 23 lists and leads 6, including silver, where it was also the top world producer in 2025. South Africa leads 7 lists, including chromium, industrial garnet, and kyanite and related minerals. Japan, Brazil, Turkey, and South Korea each appear in between 9 and 12 lists.
How concentrated U.S. imports are
In 28 of the 85 lists, one country supplied 75% or more of U.S. imports, and in 15 it supplied 90% or more. The median share of the leading supplier is 58%. The most concentrated lists include asbestos (100% from Brazil), arsenic (99% from Malaysia), gold (99% from Canada), phosphate rock (>99% from Peru), and strontium (>99% from Mexico). A high share in an import list is a different thing from a high share in world production: it says the United States buys mostly from one partner, whatever the partner’s place among world producers.
Supplier and producer: the same country?
For 16 of the 71 commodities that have both an import list and a world production table, the leading import source is also the world’s largest producer. In the other 55, the United States buys most from a country that is not the top producer, as with aluminum (Canada rather than China), antimony (Mexico rather than China), arsenic (Malaysia rather than Peru), and asbestos (Brazil rather than Russia).
European suppliers
European countries lead 7 of the import lists: Norway for cobalt, Finland for copper, Spain for gypsum, Cyprus for iron oxide pigments, Greece for perlite, and Greece for pumice and pumicite. In 2 of these cases the European supplier is not named in the matching USGS world production table at all, so what it ships to the United States is material it processes or trades rather than its own listed output. Asian suppliers other than China lead 16 lists, among them Malaysia for arsenic, India for barite, Kazakhstan for beryllium, and Turkey for boron.
Reading the import lists
Each list refers to a specific product, named on the mineral page: for example ores and concentrates, refined metal, or a compound. A country that leads the list for zinc ore may play no part in refined zinc. Shares cover 2021–24 as a whole, and a long tail of smaller suppliers is grouped as “other”. A country can lead an import list without appearing among the producers in the matching world table, as the gallium case shows.
The producer pages on this site show, for each country, every U.S. import list it appears in, next to its own production figures, so a country’s role as producer and as supplier can be read side by side.
Sources
U.S. Geological Survey, 2026, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: doi.org/10.3133/mcs2026. Shares, ranks and changes are worked out from the USGS tables as described on Reading the figures. Look up any mineral in the producer explorer.